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I interrupt an hours’ worth of back-n-forth on Peter Beinart’s piece about the decline of American liberal Zionism to highlight something I suspect all sides of the debate will agree with: granting Israel American statehood is an idea so bad it’s goofy. The guy who penned this impressively interminable proposal swears in his comments that he’s being sincere. I hope I don’t have to make an energetic argument here, but if so: Israelis won’t appreciate having their sovereignty submerged within another country halfway around the world; Americans won’t appreciate owning the Muslim world’s antipathy to Israel; this does nothing for Palestinians except get U.S. troops going after them in the name of territorial defense.
To Dan Kervick, the proposal’s author: I want to shake your hand for having the undeterred gumption to make such a bad argument so forcefully. Your heart is clearly in the right place and I respect your effort.
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I always think it is better when people just put their real crazy out on display, instead of trying to find other arguments to cloak it. It makes things easier and is slightly refreshing at times.
I love this idea. But Spencer, I think you’re seriously missing the boat:
“Americans won’t appreciate owning the Muslim world’s antipathy to Israel”
Of course we’ll also offer statehood to Iraq and Afghanistan! Come ON!
(And legalize heroin, tax the poppy crop and balance the budget. Not to mention solving our petro-dependency problems. Two dangerous addictions gone in one fell swoop.)
“this does nothing for Palestinians except get U.S. troops going after them in the name of territorial defense.”
We gotta en-state-ify the West Bank and Gaza too, we gotta. Then the state of Israel has to afford Hamas guys the same “protections” as those covering Faisal Shahzad. I mean, this is a serious proposition that deserves serious consideration.
(After we gain a little momentum with this plan… China! And the current accounts deficit disappears with the renminbi.)