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Israels impending annexation of the West Bank has put the fate of the two-state solution or, perhaps more accurately its death back in the headlines. Yet neither Benjamin Netanyahus announcement of his annexation intentions, nor the Trump peace plan, killed the chances of two states, which ceased to be realistic long ago. What the great drama of annexation playing out in the Anglo-American press is really about in no small part due to the exclusion of Palestinian voices is whether liberal Zionists will reconcile themselves to this reality or continue to deny it.

While some liberal Zionists, like the Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart, now recognize that, as he wrote last week, the traditional two-state solution no longer offers a compelling alternative to Israels path, most seem likely to choose the path of continued denial. For many liberal Zionists as well as those further to the right a two-state solution has for decades been less a practical policy proposal than an article of faith, a constitutive political fiction that has enabled them to reconcile their contradictory commitments to both ethnonationalism and liberal democracy.

The abstract idea of two states has also served a valuable strategic purpose for the Israeli government and professional Israel advocates. References to Israels putative commitment to two states in theory have become a way to shield Israel from criticism, and consequences, for actions that in practice rendered a two-state solution impossible.

The vast majority of Zionist and pro-Israel groups even, or perhaps especially, the self-defined liberal ones will be loth to confront their contradictions, or surrender their talking points, now.

Indeed, faced with annexation, liberal Jewish groups have so far responded with the same kinds of warnings they have issued for decades. In a joint statement, eight Jewish organizations including the New Israel Fund and Americans for Peace Now declared in May that annexation would show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the government of Israel no longer seeks a two-state solution. Back in March, when Benny Gantz joined Netanyahus government, J Street cautioned that annexation was an absolute red line that Israel must not cross.

Yet its been obvious for years that Israels government no longer seeks a two-state solution: annexation would hardly be the first line Israel has crossed without facing any serious consequences. In fact, since before the Oslo process began in 1993, Israel has continually crossed supposedly decisive lines.

Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, warned in 1982 that, with the settler population in the West Bank approaching 100,000, Israel would cross the threshold past which territorial compromise would become impossible. When Israel blew past that, new lines were drawn: now 250,000 settlers, now 500,000; now construction in the E1 corridor, between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Maaleh Adumim; and now, finally, annexation of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.

With each new line crossed, believers in a two-state solution have found new excuses to ignore the obvious. This is especially true of liberal Zionists. Since 1967, they have clung to the myth that Israels military occupation of the West Bank is temporary, and, consequently, that Israel proper defined as the parliamentary regime within Israels pre-1967 borders can be meaningfully disentangled from the half-century-old military dictatorship on the other side of the Green Line. The occupations putative temporariness enabled liberal Zionists to see themselves as genuine liberals, to define Israel as a democracy. Annexation, which would confirm that the occupation is permanent and inextricable from Israel proper, would in theory force liberal Zionists to decide between support for democratizing the one-state reality, or support for apartheid.

The idea of two states will continue outliving the end of any realistic prospect for a two-state solution

Wholesale ideological reversals are uncommon, however. With a few notable exceptions, liberal Zionists conversion to non-state Zionism, non-Zionism, or anti-Zionism seems unlikely. And, after all, over the course of more than a decade of Netanyahu governments, liberal Zionists have become habituated to the dissonance between their values and those the Israeli government acts on.

But the idea of two states will continue outliving any realistic prospect for a two-state solution for those to the liberal Zionists right, too. Israels foreign ministry and professional Israel advocates alike recognize that the two-state solution has served as a useful means of deflecting criticism of Israeli territorial expansion. After roughly a dozen Democratic congressional representatives signed a letter, spearheaded by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calling to condition US military funding to Israel in the event of annexation, Aipac responded that doing so would, paradoxically, make a two-state solution less likely.

Netanyahu and his allies in the US are making the argument for annexation in similar terms. In a Washington Post op-ed, Ron Dermer, Israels ambassador to the US, argued that annexation actually will open the door to to a realistic two-state solution and get the peace process out of the cul-de-sac it has been stuck in for decades. Likewise, the authors of the Trump administrations peace plan were careful not only to construe it as an instrument for achieving a two-state solution but as the logical continuation of the Oslo process.

While theres no small degree of cynicism here, it also reflects a genuine ideological commitment. Most American Zionists, even rightwing ones, do not openly support an apartheid-style single state, unlike hardline Israeli settlers who oppose the Trump plan because it provides for areas of nominal Palestinian autonomy. In this sense, the position staked out by Dermer and the Trump administration is not that different from the liberal Zionist one: both envision a Palestinian state as an archipelago of isolated, non-contiguous Bantustans subordinated to Israeli control.

Yet as long as Zionists outside of Israel remain uncomfortable with openly defending an apartheid-style regime in terms that reflect the reality on the ground, the rhetoric of the two-state idea will serve as an invaluable means of obscuring the actual ramifications of their position not only from the public, but from themselves. Political fictions of such existential importance take a long time to die, if they ever fully do. The lack of a viable two-state solution does not mean liberal Zionists will stop believing in one.

Joshua Leifer is an assistant editor at Jewish Currents, where a longer version of this article first appeared

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The two-state solution is a political fiction liberal Zionists still cling to - The Guardian

The state secretary for youth and family affairs decried criticism levelled against the Europe Uncensored Conference held in Budapest last week, saying that liberals were intolerant towards ideas other than their own, intolerant regarding open debate and intolerant towards nation states.

Katalin Novk reacted on Twitter to an article written by Romanian MEP Dacian Ciolos, published on the euractiv.com news site earlier on Monday. Ciolos called the speakers of the conference, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn, Serbian President Aleksandar Vui and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jana ignorant and arrogant, and said the conference was a teambuilding event for politicians who seek to exploit their nationalism in a post-truth and populist era.

Orbn: Europe Needs Strategy Not Tactical Responses

In reaction, Novk wrote that liberals today are intolerant towards ideas other than their own, intolerant regarding open debate [and] intolerant towards nation states. Europe Uncensored is about freedom of thought and opinion.

Featured photo illustration by Gergely Botr/ kormany.hu

Link:
Novk: Liberals 'Intolerant Towards Ideas Other than Their Own' - Hungary Today

The people in Rutland and the state who claim to be leaders go from the ridiculous to the sublime. You let a few people dictate to the public what is right in their eyes only changing a school's mascot known as the Raiders to the rattlesnakes is absurd.

What's next? You going to tell veterans who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, that they can't wear their hats? People protested the Vietnam War, a war I proudly served in like so many others. Let them try and take my hat off.

This state has already said they are going to vote for Biden. You voted twice for Obama who put us deep in debt we will never get out of. You voted for Hillary who stole from you and you voted for Clinton who was an adulterer. And you continue to vote for Bernie Sanders who does nothing.

People wonder why other people aren't moving to Vermont because of high taxes, no real jobs and foolish leadership. And now Rutland is losing GE. Vermont was the 14th state to sign the declaration because of wayward thinking. I also bet the students and faculty at Rutland High School don't know what school spirit is. We have the best police force in the state but because of regulations brought on by liberals, their hands are almost tied.

Twenty-one years ago, Rutland was thriving, people were happy, places to eat and shop and a mall, but today, the mall has gone downtown, is almost empty, with no population to go to these places, they close up and move. But Vermont still thinks like a liberal, just keep raising taxes.

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Liberal thinking | Letters - Rutland Herald

Canada is absurdly and self-punitively restrictive about travel. Canadians returning even from European countries with lower incidences of COVID-19 than Canada, such as Germany and Switzerland, are still required to self-quarantine for two weeks. This should apply only to people that have recently been in high-risk places. All intra-Canadian travel should be unrestricted the present regime of in-country travel is like going across Europe 80 years ago from one dictatorship to the next being told your papers are not in order, as in grainy films of the 1930s.

As a country, and as a species, we have to emancipate ourselves from the paralytic fear that has reduced us to inert moles and snitches, a pitiable condition that the federal government has endlessly encouraged. It is hard to be precise about these things but amongst the 80 per cent of comparatively risk-free Canadians the fatality rate of the coronavirus is approximately one in 20,000, a statistical insignificance. Even among those in the 20 per cent who are more vulnerable, the fatality rate is not much more than one in 1,000; our overall death rate, 237 per million people, is lower than all other large advanced countries that publish credible numbers except Australia, Japan and Germany.

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Conrad Black: The Liberals are failing us on many fronts - National Post

Robyn LeGrow is among the thousand-odd people rejected by the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador to vote for its next leader. (Peter Cowan/CBC)

Some people registered to vote in Newfoundland and Labrador's Liberal Party leadership race are being ousted from the process, and left questioning the party's reasoning why.

Among the rejected is Robyn LeGrow of St. John's,who two weeks ago posted on herpersonal Facebook account a critique of candidate Andrew Furey's campaign policies.

"I can only assume that that is why I have been disqualified. I had no idea when I put that post out on my personal page, to my personal friends, that it would get as much attention as it has," LeGrow told CBC News on Wednesday.

The party is informing the former voters via email.

"We want to thank you for your interest in the Liberal Party and this election. However, our records indicate that you do not support the aims and objectives of the Liberal Party of NL. As a result, you have been found ineligible to vote," reads an emailwritten byLewis Stoyles, chief returning officer of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador leadership election.

The upcoming party vote will elect its nextleader and the province's next premier on Aug. 3 ahead of a provincialgeneral election which will be called within the next year.

LeGrow took to Twitter Wednesday morning with her concerns, with many people commenting that they, too, have received rejection notices.

Emails being sent to rejected voters include an opt-inreview process by the party.

"If our records are incorrect or you wish to have this decision reviewed, please respond to this email by9:00 PM (NST) on July 8, 2020," the email from Stoyles reads.

That leavesmany, includingLeGrow, with less than 12 hours before the deadline for appeal closes.

An appeals process will continue throughout the rest of the week, according to Judy Morrow, a member of the leadership election committee and past president of the Liberal Party in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The first part of the appeals involvesasking Stoylesto review thedecisionthat rendered the voterineligible. If the voter is not satisfied,then they have an opportunity to make an appeal to the party's appeals committee, which wasput in place in February.

The party plans to have a finalized list of voters by July 14, with voting starting onJuly 28.

LeGrowistaking the party up on its appeals offer, and says she has notified them she'll be pursuing it.

"My concern is that communications all along haven't been consistent," she said.

"It seems to me that they are creating the rules as they go, making decisions and then responding to them based on feedback from people who are on the other end of those decisions."

On Wednesday afternoon, the Liberal Party held a virtual news conference for anupdate on the election process.

Since voter registration closed on June 25, the election committee has been going through what its calling a "multi-faceted vetting process." Thatincludedcalls and email blasts to verify and authenticate registered voters, and waspartnered with a research company.

As of Wednesday roughly 33,500 voters have been designated eligible, according to Morrow, who took questions from reporters.

When asked if the vetting process included the research company combing through social media accounts of registered voters to find past comments which could find them in the ineligible category, Morrow said no.

"They were just given pure lists from our Liberal list database," she said.

Morrow saidanyone who signed up with the party to vote for itsleadership, and in a follow up robocallsaid they would vote for any other party, were automatically disqualified from voting.

Anyone who said they didn't support the aims of objectives of the Liberal Party were also disqualified. Those categories addedup to about 300 people.

There were about 1,000 ineligible voters total, Morrow said.

"They were for various reasons. That could be because their date of birth was missing, or they didn't have an email or telephone number, or they were no longer a resident of the province," she said.

"We found some individuals who had been deceased. There were different reasons for knockouts."

Read more articles from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

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Liberals rejected 1,000 voters in its leadership race. One of them is questioning why - CBC.ca