For Israel, I don't think we should remove all support, they would still be a key ally in the region that largely shares Western Values, but I like the idea of a hard pull back on support and intense pressure to do the right thing in the West Bank.
Netanyahu's actions in the West Bank are a shame and a blight on Israel. Gaza is complicated, a lot of gray - not black and white - and Hamas is truly the greater of the two evils by a lot. The West Banks is simple, Israel is acting badly.
"An ally that refuses to help you with your biggest challenges, but which goads you into engaging in risky, ill-advised conflicts on its behalf, all while committing large-scale human rights abuses with impunity, is simply not a very good ally."
Sure, but they can be checked. And they're still a helluva lot better ally than any other middle eastern country. Still agree with Noah's overall sentiment of US withdrawal from the middle east.
I do not think they largely share Western Values anymore. They are in the process of morphing into just another brutal authoritarian sectarian Middle Eastern regime.
The trend is terrible, but Israel is the country with the most Western Values by a significant margin vs others in the Middle East. I'm hoping they turn things around in future elections.
Itamar Ben-Gvir has nothing to do with Western Values.
That man is a fascist and while his party is tiny, he managed to get a position of outsized influence. He is overseeing and actively undermining law enforcement in the West Bank.
Without commenting on the rest of this, I find it kind of ironic that the settlers in the west bank are trying to do to the Palestinians there what the rest of the Arab world has been trying to do to Israel for almost 80 years now, harass them so much they leave.
No one seems to notice that.
I do think Israel should maintain their higher standards and arrest and stop the abuses by the settlers however.
The "rest of the Arab world" stopped trying to do really anything to Israel since at latest the 1980s and certainly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. American ideas seem to be frozen in 1975... lip service at best to Palestians since the mid 80s. Israel's not been under real threat in that sense in decades.
"lip service" means Jew hating which is at a high at the moment. They support it by constantly blaming Israel and Jews and teaching their kids to hate Jews, even if they are not openly attacking militarily. That supports the ones that do like Iran.
It isn't just Bibi. Thirty years ago someone I worked with was moving to Israel because housing in the occupied territories was so incredibly cheap, as you'd expect from someone reselling stolen goods.
I'd argue that to be taken seriously, the US would have to start with removing all support, and threaten to escalate to import bans before any Israeli government would consider stopping settlement construction, much withdrawing any existing settlements.
I think it's important, in the current environment, to at least consider the possibility that Israel will not change its attitude if all we do is sanction them. We may have passed the point where anything we do will not change the situation.
What is the right thing in the West Bank? When Israel tried to leave the Palestinians alone to govern themselves they elected Hamas and then did October 7. When Japan did much less than that to us we nuked 2 of their cities off the map and carpet bombed many more.
I have no idea what the solution is for the West Bank. I don’t think any US politician has a good idea. And even if they have, there is no mechanism to implement these ideas. So I agree with Noah - we need to simply disengage and leave them to it. One way or the other things will work out, and US efforts are best focused in restoring our own democracy and being a decent example of what government by all the people could be, and right now we are nowhere close to that.
That makes sense to me. The "not my problem" approach is the correct one in my book. We don't need to be subsidizing them or going over there and constantly trying to broker peace. It's not our problem. We don't need to be giving them weapons. When they want to buy the new Turbo Death Missile 6000 the response should be "why are you talking to us? Make a deal with Lockheed Martin."
There simply isn't a good reason for running the West Bank as a military dictatorship for Palestinians and a democracy for settlers, and for letting settler go onto Palestinian land an beat the shit out of people and burn down their houses and murder them. Israel could just...stop letting settlers do that.
Gaza and Hamas are a separate issue and no one should be nuking anyone anymore. Hopefully Hiroshima and Nagasaki are first and last time anyone does something like that.
In the West Bank specifically. Stop the settlements. Work with the locals to improve things, try to transition them to full independence. I don't think the present situation is long-term tenable, and I don't think they should be managed by Israel long term.
I’ll just observe that this post does the common tactic of talking about Israel’s actions to its enemies as if it’s just a one-sided decision to be mean. As if its enemies aren’t currently motivated by a mission and exercising agency to further that mission, which then leaves Israel with no good options for a future where sovereign Jewish Israel still exists.
I don't think unilaterally annexing the West Bank, throwing out families, and attacking Palestinians there are actually necessary for a Jewish Israel to exist.
Hard to know since none of that applies nor applied in Gaza and Netanyahu actively promoted Hamas as a means to undercut the Palestinian Authority in West Bank. Divide and Conquer blowback.
Israel did not support Hamas in the 2006 election. They actively warned the US not to let Hamas participate since they refused to recognize Israel. This is well documented, though previous divide and conquer support from decades past leads people to believe otherwise https://archive.ph/3aVXv
Let me be more precise. There is an alliance of about 100 million Muslim Jihadists trying to wipe sovereign Jewish Israel off the map, including the vast majority of the Arabs living within single digit miles of its border. These enemies have agency and a steadfast commitment to their cause, which deserves to be included in any account of how the conflict is being fought.
And this, Noah, is why Middle Eastern immigration in Europe is so unwelcome. Multiply everything by 20 and add some push for Shari'a principles in schools and offices, like "no pork, gender segregation, only whores don't wear a headscarf"...
It is a deeply dysfunctional region and countries like Sweden or Switzerland were never even colonial powers there; them importing such problems is pure self-harm.
This sounds more like a conservative problem than an identity problem. There are plenty of Muslims and immigrants and Muslim immigrants who do not subscribe to the ideals you speak of.
But if you’re in favour of restricting immigration based on conservatism, then I’m all in favour. I’d rather have a progressive Muslim as my neighbour than a conservative Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or Pastafarian.
I agree in principle, though I noticed that you reframed religious fundamentalism as conservatism; those two don't overlap that much in Europe, where a lot of right-wingers are secular. But we don't really have an influx of conservative Christians here. The Christians that come from Africa are half-Animists, everyone else is lukewarm.
In practice, and in our part of the world, the only religion that has both enough fundamentalism AND the necessary numbers to change characters of entire cities is Islam and nobody else.
And yes, due to this fact we will have to re-fight all the fights we once had against the Church, only in somewhat more exotic settings. It is very predictable, but some people seem to be oblivious to this, or maybe even happy in the name of some weird form of equity.
Fortunately Islam is not immune to modernity either, and the process of collapse is already seen in places like Turkey, Iran or Saudi Arabia, where the younger generations DGAF about religion anymore. But that does not mean that they become "progressive Muslims". Rather "progressive atheists" or "progressive agnostics".
There is an enormous demand on the Left for some progressive Muslims, which results in them being exploited by duplicitous types who, five years later, suddenly emerge somewhere in northern Syria wielding bloodied knives.
A German journalist named Constantin Schreiber, who speaks fluent Arabic, but does not look the part, performed a long investigative work visiting various mosques and documenting the vast difference between what is said officially in German and what is said (and printed, and passed around) in Arabic when the same imams think that the naive blond infidel cannot understand them.
Finn should better apply some strict scrutiny to anybody who presents himself as a progressive Muslim fitting his demand. The real test is what the same person does and preaches within their own community, not what it presents to Westerners who yearn for connection and, coming from a high-trust society, aren't very suspicious about other people. Middle Eastern societies are very much NOT high-trust and deception is part of everyday life there. It was often necessary for survival.
"A German journalist named Constantin Schreiber, who speaks fluent Arabic, but does not look the part, performed a long investigative work visiting various mosques and documenting the vast difference between what is said officially in German and what is said (and printed, and passed around) in Arabic when the same imams think that the naive blond infidel cannot understand them."
And I'm sure that investigation was totally unbiased and didn't have issues with cherry picking. It would sell more books that way. 🙃
IMO many progressive Muslims genuinely don't realize stuff like "kill apostates", "cut off thieves' hands" and "stone adulterers" are part of traditional orthodox Islam. They either don't know those hadiths exist, think it's fake news made up by Islamophobes or they're completely taken out of context.
Don't think I'm sympathetic to Islam - I'm not - but I have talked with liberal Muslims and this is the impression I got. One of them did not even know the Rightly Guided Caliphs which are a major part of Islamic history - secular and religious.
This isn't totally unprecedented. When Turkic tribes first converted to Islam they retained a lot of more liberal Pagan customs and didn't seclude or veil their women. It was only later when they became more educated about Islam that they got stricter - which shows that more education doesn't necessarily mean more liberal, at least when it comes to theology!
Surprisingly most of Islam's most infamous verses are not even in the Quran - they are in the Hadith, the words and deeds of Mohammed. Even the 5 daily prayers are a hadith - the Quran only mentions 3 prayers in a day.
Some Muslims have tried to square the circle by identifying as "Quran only" Muslims but that's literally less than 1% of global Muslims and it contradicts 1000+ years of Muslim theology.
Go back to the 80s and 90s and ask how many Irish Catholics support the IRA. Some were actively fundraising and sending money and material support to a terror organisation. At no point was their American identity questioned, nor was there a huge call to restrict the emigration of Irish Catholics into the US.
Hamas is an evil organisation that needs to be destroyed, but I suspect most people responding to that poll you cited see them as the "lesser of two evils", much like how the IRA was viewed.
I agree with you to some extent. Another failure of US failed foreign policy and the killings of millions of people, was that a lot of people left their homelands for Europe and we are now seeing the downstream issues of that. Like someone else said though, not every Muslim person supports Sharia law.
Not every, but the cohort is worrisomely large. A recent study in Lower Saxony showed that 65 percent of young Muslims put the Quran higher than secular law of Germany, 35 percent condone violence against those who insult Islam, and 45 percent consider a theocracy the best form of government:
I agree with the worrisome part. But living in the US a lot of Christians also put "the Bible" ahead of the laws and US constitution, even when they don't even follow all the rules. Over time those numbers go down, but I also don't believe that we should have to accept people as immigrants who have a history of holding intolerant views or want to impose violence when they don't like freedom of expression. If those people every act on their beliefs then I hope they go to jail or deported then.
I think this post did try to make that point, but I wish it had done so without all the weird prose about the NYC mayor. Mamdani has a 56% approval rating and 69% favorability in NYC, where he governs. While there was some Israel stuff in the campaign, I don’t think the NYC election was primarily decided based on New York’s Israel policy, and I don’t think starting the piece off with paragraphs on it made the rest of it more digestible.
Mamdani actively avoided the issue in the campaign. It was not why he won. Noah cites an anti-Israel advocacy org arguing that Mamdani won because he's anti-Israel, but they're making a factually shaky self-interested argument.
Yeah. It really poisoned the piece for me because it seemed so divorced from the reality on the ground. If you have to make a bunch of tendentious arguments on peripheral topics, what level of trust can I have for your core argument? Why do people do this.
PS I’ve since seen multiple right wing accounts reiterating exactly the same irrelevant national statistics. Which makes me think that this is more of a coordinated effort, and Noah just got co-opted. Which is in some ways worse. I don’t want to pay for original opinions and get right wing PR slop.
I think we are living through the last oil crisis. 20 mbbl/d transits the strait of Hormuz. Bypass pipelines can carry 9 mbbl/d, and it will be 11 by the end of next year. About 46 million bbl/d of oil is used for road transportation. Replace 9 mbbl/d of demand, or 20% of vehicles with EVs and a strait closure becomes a complete non issue.
How soon will this happen? Estimated percent of new car sales in the world are 30% EVs in 2026. If you assume that all the cars that are replaced are gas/deisel powered then this is removing almost 1 mbbl/d demand each year. So at the current rate a strait closure will be half as bad in 5 years and completely irrelevant in 10. In 20 years the strait could close, and all regional pipelines could be destroyed and the world would shrug. And this is extremely pessimistic because it assumes the rate of EV vs ICE car sales will not change.
Great piece. I think the main thing to takeaway from the Israel section is that we *simply need to treat Israel as a normal country*, rather than the beneficiary of some kind of Special Relationship grounded in a winking sort of tacit understanding. We should value that relationship proportionate to the extent they embody our values and/or advance our interests. If they do neither, why remain pot committed?
The West Bank is a tough problem. Hamas is ahead in polls there, pre and post October 7. And Hamas is committed to ending Israel. The Palestinian Authority itself is not willing to give up the “right of return”, which would in essence end the State of Israel. Indeed, after the rejected compromise by the PA to establish a Palestinian State we had the deadly intifadas. And Israeli population centers are so close to the West Bank. So Israel has great reason to fear a “free Palestine” over there under current conditions.
On the other hand there has been a repressive Israeli presence in the West Bank. And it needs to stop. But Noah’s description of the facts over there seems to overstate Israeli actions and understate its legitimate fears and miss much of the pressure on Israel.
I don’t want to dip into the question of what role the US should play in this, I simply want to strongly contest Noah’s picture of the situation over there. In fact, I’d suggest Noah vist over there and see the situation for himself.
The rise of Hamas influence in the West Bank has been tied to the post-October 7 campaign in Gaza, Mr. Attermann. As many have pointed out, one cost of the Netanyahu regime's policy of pursuing the Gaza campaign to the point of extinguishing Hamas has been to elevate Hamas in the West Bank far beyond its support in Gaza. Many Gaza Palestinians turned against Hamas early in the campaign because of the destruction it brought to their lives. Israel's insistence on total victory drove it past an optimal response and towards a balance equivalent or worse than the status quo ante.
I'm curious how you would feel if someone started harassing you to the point that you appealed to the local authority (like, invading your home, stealing your things, occupying your home while you're away, assaulting you, killing you, etc.) and the local authority turned out to not care?
Palestinians face this, and have faced this, consistently since the beginning of the occupation. They faced similar acts during the Nakba. Many of them, including all of the male members of my wife's paternal line, left and came to the United States.
There are just so many unsubstantiated claims in this article that it’s hard to call this analysis. This feels like an opinion piece. Nothing more.
I don’t know if there is a single serious individual who would honestly publicly claim that the primary reason Zoran Moni won his New York mayor candidacy is because of his support for Palestinians. He repeatedly publicly confirmed his support for both Israeli and Palestinian population in New York. And had to repeatedly bring the focus of his actual policies into view as they were constantly made opaque by islamphobic insults.
Also the failure of the article to correctly state the obsession that our mainstream media has with our politicians, giving unending support to Israel is incredibly disingenuous.
There’s a presumption that because a politician is of Middle Eastern descent that their presence leads to the injection of Middle Eastern policies into their platform. This is untrue. Sayed’s tag line is “money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare for all.”
Not “let’s inject sharia law into schools”.
Sayed even stated that he would be in favor of less support to his own home country of Egypt because this takes away support from US priorities - education, housing and social services.
I wanted to finish reading the article, but I literally can’t. Given the typical quality of this Substack newsletter. This just feels academically disingenuous
Noah didn't make the claim as fact... He made the claim that some left leaning people and groups accept it as fact. If you spend anytime reading opinion articles, tweets, Reddit posts, or seen general commentary. Some people did try to treat or explain his win in those terms.
He’s using their agenda and incorrect framing as to the reason why Zohran won as part of the basis for the injection of Middle East politik into our mainstream.
It feels dishonest.
Yes many on the left were waiting for a candidate to acknowledge what all could see - Israeli demolition of Palestine, ethnic cleansing via starvation and attempted genocide by the overwhelming might of Israel.
But remember Zohran was asked by our media, “if you win your mayorship will you go to Israel on day 1.” What does that have to do with NYC?
So then who’s injecting Middle East issues into our politics?
To paraphrase Trotsky, we may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in us.
I like Noah's analysis about economics of oil don't matter as much as they used to and love the idea of pulling back some from the Middle East. And I agree Israel's policies on the West Bank are intolerable and we need to pressure them to round up the few hundred trouble makers and to be more civil to the Palestinians and acknowledge the rights of the Palestinians to live on their land.
However, this post is naive to think we can pull back from the Middle East. Iran and radical Islam (and Qatar and increasingly Turkey) are political forces that have extremely toxic and anti-Western values and a messianic compulsion to push against us violently. Iran with its proxies and death to America government, it's funding of assassination attempts in the West, it's brutal suppression of its peoples (and those in Lebanon, formerly Syria etc), its funding of division in the US and the West, their anti-liberal values and methodologies, is in my opinion, a potential existential threat to liberal democracies, particularly if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.
Israel, the only truly liberal and democratic country in the Middle East , has suffered a trauma. One of the problems with democracy is that currently the Israeli population has given up hope for a two state solution with the Palestinian population refusing to accept their right to exist.
I believe the right prescription is to pressure Israel to moderate and view them as an outpost of Western liberalis. Under a more moderate government, Israel could be a moderating force for positive change in the region (witness the Abraham Accords and increasing trade with the associated Arab countries). Israel will moderate If we can ever get the Arab governments to put pressure on the Palestinians to accept Israel's existence and to end the Palestinian corruption and mafia type governments
Good article but I do take issue with your opening statement that 9/11 didn’t have to do with blowback. Bin Laden said it was because of U.S. and involvement in Saudi Arabia and U.S. support for regimes in the region he opposed. I’m curious what you think the reason was?
I came here to ask this question, because it deeply bothers me that the US media response to al Qaeda's own statement of intent (one that partially mirrored the intent of the 1993 bombing of the WTC) was to pretend it was meaningless lies. It bothers me further that Noah, or anyone with such a platform, considers the actual facts here to be a leftist conspiracy.
It’s primary, and sadly successful objective was to put the minor Al Qaida on the map: “look we can strike the big dog and in their World Trade Center” (not realizing it was just n ordinary office complex).
As a result they did recruit extensively and did manage to achieve some of bin Laden’s personal issues, aided greatly by the US’s response.
That is Renown, which is one of the three R’s for terrorism along with provoking a Response, which you also mention. But I think the necessary Revenge is also there.
Some people in the comments referred to Japan and the unrestricted nature of the final allied push to force surrender.
Fire bombing, atomic bombing, and mining the ports to starve the country were all enacted. They ask, how can Israel's actions against the Palestinian population be considered genocide when the US push on Japan is not.
And one of the key difference there is intent.
In the Potsdam Declaration in July 1945, the Allies said.
10. We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners. The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established.
11. Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain her economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in kind, but not those which would enable her to re-arm for war. To this end, access to, as distinguished from control of, raw materials shall be permitted. Eventual Japanese participation in world trade relations shall be permitted.
12. The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government.
This is the Allies saying, "Look, we are going to be incredibly brutal until surrender, but we want to assure you that Japan will survive, we are not intending to kill all Japanese people, we want you to have your own self government, and we will not permanently take territory."
The current Israeli government will never make such a statement. Netanyahu cut his teeth arguing that Palestinians are a false nation, just confused Jordanians propped up by anti semitic Arab states as a way to hurt Israel. Across the Israeli political spectrum, no one will say that the Palestinians have a right to any land, whether in the West Bank or Gaza.
This is the key issue. People like Ben Gvir keep saying they want all Palestinians removed or eliminated (Classic ethnic cleansing/genocide) and the rest of the Israeli establishment doesn't go that far, but they also don't give an affirmative vision of Palestine that they could live with.
committed to destroying the Palestinians as a "nation" and taking all of the Palestinian territory.
The Japan (or Germany) post war comparison often comes up as an analogous situation but I dont think the analysis ever gets serious enough to make it useful.
So I disagree with your framing as it's too modern (regarding Israel) and doesnt take into account the many decades preceding this war. Most critically the peace processes and rejected proposals. Japan and Germany were, as far as i know which will have gaps, not in negotiation with the US and turning down offers. The US said jump, and they said how high. I don't think Israel ever wanted, or was in position, to mandate education and other core parts of Palestinian society in an analogous way. And at the same time there was immense negative sentiment from the entire surrounding region to Israel and the occupied territories that kept fanning the flames of conflict for both idealogical and internal political reasons.
So going back to your point on intent being key. There is a ton of evidence of intention of Israel towards Palestine changing depending on current events and perception of the possibility of peace. The 90s were, as a result of the 1st Intifada, a time of immense pressure to negotiate and make 2 states happen as a moral imperative. The 2000's post 2nd Intifada had multiple right wing governments winning on the platform of separation (first Gaza and Lebanon, then West Bank!) due to perception of no counter party to reasonably negotiate with so we'll withdraw unilaterally and let them do whatever they want internally. We're approaching two decades of neither rational negotiation or unilateral withdrawal seems plausible. Idk what to do, I'd say a Japan style occupation by a non-Israeli force (but more friendly than someone like Turkey) is the best hope, but I dont see any country willing to absorb a single casualty for this to happen.
Did you notice that, like other clueless progressives, you’re blaming the war launched by the IRGC and its Palestinian, Lebanese, Yemeni proxies against Israel in 2023 _on_ Israel? You need to cut back on your NYT diet, and in general legacy media infested by Free Palestine cult members and their progressive enablers. What looks weak is the progressives turning into the IRGC wing, and voting to stop any assistance to US allies, all mutual enemies of the IRGC. Sucking up to Islamist terrorists Iran and Qatar isn’t a strong US foreign policy, and the Democrats turning into the Antizionist Socialist Party with antisemitism as its only big tent idea isn’t much of a solution either.
Islamism hasn’t receded, it’s changed into a propaganda war, and it owns US academia, news media, and the staff of Democrats in Congress. Remember that progressive staffers are the ones who worked to appease Iran, stop Saudi and UAE from fighting the Houthi takeover of Yemen. The choking of international shipping was delivered by Obama and Biden’s genius national security advisors into the hands of the IRGC.
This post makes too much sense Noah... Which means you'll probably get flamed on Twitter for it 😂
I always make sure I get flamed for an idea on Twitter before I write it up here... ;-)
For Israel, I don't think we should remove all support, they would still be a key ally in the region that largely shares Western Values, but I like the idea of a hard pull back on support and intense pressure to do the right thing in the West Bank.
Netanyahu's actions in the West Bank are a shame and a blight on Israel. Gaza is complicated, a lot of gray - not black and white - and Hamas is truly the greater of the two evils by a lot. The West Banks is simple, Israel is acting badly.
"An ally that refuses to help you with your biggest challenges, but which goads you into engaging in risky, ill-advised conflicts on its behalf, all while committing large-scale human rights abuses with impunity, is simply not a very good ally."
Sure, but they can be checked. And they're still a helluva lot better ally than any other middle eastern country. Still agree with Noah's overall sentiment of US withdrawal from the middle east.
I think his point isn't about which is better or worse, but rather about stepping back from ALL of them. It's not about choosing which one to support.
Yeah, and I'm on board with that. I'm just saying not full withdrawal from Israel, just pull back.
I do not think they largely share Western Values anymore. They are in the process of morphing into just another brutal authoritarian sectarian Middle Eastern regime.
The trend is terrible, but Israel is the country with the most Western Values by a significant margin vs others in the Middle East. I'm hoping they turn things around in future elections.
Itamar Ben-Gvir has nothing to do with Western Values.
That man is a fascist and while his party is tiny, he managed to get a position of outsized influence. He is overseeing and actively undermining law enforcement in the West Bank.
That Hamas is even worse cannot change that fact.
Without commenting on the rest of this, I find it kind of ironic that the settlers in the west bank are trying to do to the Palestinians there what the rest of the Arab world has been trying to do to Israel for almost 80 years now, harass them so much they leave.
No one seems to notice that.
I do think Israel should maintain their higher standards and arrest and stop the abuses by the settlers however.
The "rest of the Arab world" stopped trying to do really anything to Israel since at latest the 1980s and certainly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. American ideas seem to be frozen in 1975... lip service at best to Palestians since the mid 80s. Israel's not been under real threat in that sense in decades.
"lip service" means Jew hating which is at a high at the moment. They support it by constantly blaming Israel and Jews and teaching their kids to hate Jews, even if they are not openly attacking militarily. That supports the ones that do like Iran.
It isn't just Bibi. Thirty years ago someone I worked with was moving to Israel because housing in the occupied territories was so incredibly cheap, as you'd expect from someone reselling stolen goods.
This page -- https://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements-watch/settlements-data/population -- contains a graph of the settler population since 1967. By eye, it looks like it's been going up every year by about the same proportion. These settlements are all illegal under international law.
I'd argue that to be taken seriously, the US would have to start with removing all support, and threaten to escalate to import bans before any Israeli government would consider stopping settlement construction, much withdrawing any existing settlements.
Israel would simply rather have the West Bank than peace. And that won't change until we sanction them.
I think it's important, in the current environment, to at least consider the possibility that Israel will not change its attitude if all we do is sanction them. We may have passed the point where anything we do will not change the situation.
"Western Values"? That's a good one.
What is the right thing in the West Bank? When Israel tried to leave the Palestinians alone to govern themselves they elected Hamas and then did October 7. When Japan did much less than that to us we nuked 2 of their cities off the map and carpet bombed many more.
I have no idea what the solution is for the West Bank. I don’t think any US politician has a good idea. And even if they have, there is no mechanism to implement these ideas. So I agree with Noah - we need to simply disengage and leave them to it. One way or the other things will work out, and US efforts are best focused in restoring our own democracy and being a decent example of what government by all the people could be, and right now we are nowhere close to that.
That makes sense to me. The "not my problem" approach is the correct one in my book. We don't need to be subsidizing them or going over there and constantly trying to broker peace. It's not our problem. We don't need to be giving them weapons. When they want to buy the new Turbo Death Missile 6000 the response should be "why are you talking to us? Make a deal with Lockheed Martin."
There simply isn't a good reason for running the West Bank as a military dictatorship for Palestinians and a democracy for settlers, and for letting settler go onto Palestinian land an beat the shit out of people and burn down their houses and murder them. Israel could just...stop letting settlers do that.
Palestinians in West Bank did not elect Hamas and in Gaza it occured once and then they kept power through terror.
Smearing Palestians over Hamas as If Hamas were clear rep of all P is essentially lying.
Gaza and Hamas are a separate issue and no one should be nuking anyone anymore. Hopefully Hiroshima and Nagasaki are first and last time anyone does something like that.
In the West Bank specifically. Stop the settlements. Work with the locals to improve things, try to transition them to full independence. I don't think the present situation is long-term tenable, and I don't think they should be managed by Israel long term.
Western values of murdering Palestinians? No thank you
It’s over.
I’ll just observe that this post does the common tactic of talking about Israel’s actions to its enemies as if it’s just a one-sided decision to be mean. As if its enemies aren’t currently motivated by a mission and exercising agency to further that mission, which then leaves Israel with no good options for a future where sovereign Jewish Israel still exists.
I don't think unilaterally annexing the West Bank, throwing out families, and attacking Palestinians there are actually necessary for a Jewish Israel to exist.
What happened when they didn't do that in Gaza?
Hard to know since none of that applies nor applied in Gaza and Netanyahu actively promoted Hamas as a means to undercut the Palestinian Authority in West Bank. Divide and Conquer blowback.
Israel did not support Hamas in the 2006 election. They actively warned the US not to let Hamas participate since they refused to recognize Israel. This is well documented, though previous divide and conquer support from decades past leads people to believe otherwise https://archive.ph/3aVXv
Your comment has the same property. Muslims in their own mind are on a Jihad.
"Muslims in their own mind are on a Jihad."
That's a broad brush statement about a large, heterogeneous group of people.
Religious bigotry - just changes its brand name, operationally it's always the same.
rathe like the ironic rise of fascism
Let me be more precise. There is an alliance of about 100 million Muslim Jihadists trying to wipe sovereign Jewish Israel off the map, including the vast majority of the Arabs living within single digit miles of its border. These enemies have agency and a steadfast commitment to their cause, which deserves to be included in any account of how the conflict is being fought.
And this, Noah, is why Middle Eastern immigration in Europe is so unwelcome. Multiply everything by 20 and add some push for Shari'a principles in schools and offices, like "no pork, gender segregation, only whores don't wear a headscarf"...
It is a deeply dysfunctional region and countries like Sweden or Switzerland were never even colonial powers there; them importing such problems is pure self-harm.
This sounds more like a conservative problem than an identity problem. There are plenty of Muslims and immigrants and Muslim immigrants who do not subscribe to the ideals you speak of.
But if you’re in favour of restricting immigration based on conservatism, then I’m all in favour. I’d rather have a progressive Muslim as my neighbour than a conservative Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or Pastafarian.
I agree in principle, though I noticed that you reframed religious fundamentalism as conservatism; those two don't overlap that much in Europe, where a lot of right-wingers are secular. But we don't really have an influx of conservative Christians here. The Christians that come from Africa are half-Animists, everyone else is lukewarm.
In practice, and in our part of the world, the only religion that has both enough fundamentalism AND the necessary numbers to change characters of entire cities is Islam and nobody else.
And yes, due to this fact we will have to re-fight all the fights we once had against the Church, only in somewhat more exotic settings. It is very predictable, but some people seem to be oblivious to this, or maybe even happy in the name of some weird form of equity.
Fortunately Islam is not immune to modernity either, and the process of collapse is already seen in places like Turkey, Iran or Saudi Arabia, where the younger generations DGAF about religion anymore. But that does not mean that they become "progressive Muslims". Rather "progressive atheists" or "progressive agnostics".
A progressive muslim is one who thinks you should not be killed for leaving the faith
There is an enormous demand on the Left for some progressive Muslims, which results in them being exploited by duplicitous types who, five years later, suddenly emerge somewhere in northern Syria wielding bloodied knives.
A German journalist named Constantin Schreiber, who speaks fluent Arabic, but does not look the part, performed a long investigative work visiting various mosques and documenting the vast difference between what is said officially in German and what is said (and printed, and passed around) in Arabic when the same imams think that the naive blond infidel cannot understand them.
Finn should better apply some strict scrutiny to anybody who presents himself as a progressive Muslim fitting his demand. The real test is what the same person does and preaches within their own community, not what it presents to Westerners who yearn for connection and, coming from a high-trust society, aren't very suspicious about other people. Middle Eastern societies are very much NOT high-trust and deception is part of everyday life there. It was often necessary for survival.
And the issue isn't even just extremism. As Noah's chart shows, support for terrorism is hitting new lows among American Muslims (though it is at all time highs among white progressives), but look what they did when they took over an American town: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned
"A German journalist named Constantin Schreiber, who speaks fluent Arabic, but does not look the part, performed a long investigative work visiting various mosques and documenting the vast difference between what is said officially in German and what is said (and printed, and passed around) in Arabic when the same imams think that the naive blond infidel cannot understand them."
And I'm sure that investigation was totally unbiased and didn't have issues with cherry picking. It would sell more books that way. 🙃
How many Muslims have you actually met in and talked to in person?
Let's use actual data. If you think someone shouldn't be killed for leaving Islam you are more progressive than 7 out of 8 Egyptian Musilms https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/02/egypts-restrictions-on-religion-coincide-with-lack-of-religious-tolerance/
IMO many progressive Muslims genuinely don't realize stuff like "kill apostates", "cut off thieves' hands" and "stone adulterers" are part of traditional orthodox Islam. They either don't know those hadiths exist, think it's fake news made up by Islamophobes or they're completely taken out of context.
Don't think I'm sympathetic to Islam - I'm not - but I have talked with liberal Muslims and this is the impression I got. One of them did not even know the Rightly Guided Caliphs which are a major part of Islamic history - secular and religious.
This isn't totally unprecedented. When Turkic tribes first converted to Islam they retained a lot of more liberal Pagan customs and didn't seclude or veil their women. It was only later when they became more educated about Islam that they got stricter - which shows that more education doesn't necessarily mean more liberal, at least when it comes to theology!
Surprisingly most of Islam's most infamous verses are not even in the Quran - they are in the Hadith, the words and deeds of Mohammed. Even the 5 daily prayers are a hadith - the Quran only mentions 3 prayers in a day.
Some Muslims have tried to square the circle by identifying as "Quran only" Muslims but that's literally less than 1% of global Muslims and it contradicts 1000+ years of Muslim theology.
I agree that there are muslim immigrants that don't have those problems.
On the other hand around forty percent of united states muslims say they support hamas.
That's a huge imported problem.
And i'm sure the percentage in europe is even higher
Go back to the 80s and 90s and ask how many Irish Catholics support the IRA. Some were actively fundraising and sending money and material support to a terror organisation. At no point was their American identity questioned, nor was there a huge call to restrict the emigration of Irish Catholics into the US.
Hamas is an evil organisation that needs to be destroyed, but I suspect most people responding to that poll you cited see them as the "lesser of two evils", much like how the IRA was viewed.
What are the options on that poll?
I agree with you to some extent. Another failure of US failed foreign policy and the killings of millions of people, was that a lot of people left their homelands for Europe and we are now seeing the downstream issues of that. Like someone else said though, not every Muslim person supports Sharia law.
Not every, but the cohort is worrisomely large. A recent study in Lower Saxony showed that 65 percent of young Muslims put the Quran higher than secular law of Germany, 35 percent condone violence against those who insult Islam, and 45 percent consider a theocracy the best form of government:
https://www.focus.de/experts/islamismus-bei-jugendlichen-studie-enthuellt-45-8-prozent-der-jungen-muslime-wollen-islamischen-gottesstaat_id_259877168.html
I agree with the worrisome part. But living in the US a lot of Christians also put "the Bible" ahead of the laws and US constitution, even when they don't even follow all the rules. Over time those numbers go down, but I also don't believe that we should have to accept people as immigrants who have a history of holding intolerant views or want to impose violence when they don't like freedom of expression. If those people every act on their beliefs then I hope they go to jail or deported then.
This seems eminently sensible. I long for the day when US domestic politics isn’t tied to random Middle Eastern events.
I think this post did try to make that point, but I wish it had done so without all the weird prose about the NYC mayor. Mamdani has a 56% approval rating and 69% favorability in NYC, where he governs. While there was some Israel stuff in the campaign, I don’t think the NYC election was primarily decided based on New York’s Israel policy, and I don’t think starting the piece off with paragraphs on it made the rest of it more digestible.
Mamdani actively avoided the issue in the campaign. It was not why he won. Noah cites an anti-Israel advocacy org arguing that Mamdani won because he's anti-Israel, but they're making a factually shaky self-interested argument.
Yeah. It really poisoned the piece for me because it seemed so divorced from the reality on the ground. If you have to make a bunch of tendentious arguments on peripheral topics, what level of trust can I have for your core argument? Why do people do this.
PS I’ve since seen multiple right wing accounts reiterating exactly the same irrelevant national statistics. Which makes me think that this is more of a coordinated effort, and Noah just got co-opted. Which is in some ways worse. I don’t want to pay for original opinions and get right wing PR slop.
Ideologues on both sides have their (bad) reasons for wanting to make everything about Israel.
Sure, until iran gets a nuke and uses a proxy to detonate it over the united states as an EMP
Should had kept Obama’s treaty
I think we are living through the last oil crisis. 20 mbbl/d transits the strait of Hormuz. Bypass pipelines can carry 9 mbbl/d, and it will be 11 by the end of next year. About 46 million bbl/d of oil is used for road transportation. Replace 9 mbbl/d of demand, or 20% of vehicles with EVs and a strait closure becomes a complete non issue.
How soon will this happen? Estimated percent of new car sales in the world are 30% EVs in 2026. If you assume that all the cars that are replaced are gas/deisel powered then this is removing almost 1 mbbl/d demand each year. So at the current rate a strait closure will be half as bad in 5 years and completely irrelevant in 10. In 20 years the strait could close, and all regional pipelines could be destroyed and the world would shrug. And this is extremely pessimistic because it assumes the rate of EV vs ICE car sales will not change.
Great piece. I think the main thing to takeaway from the Israel section is that we *simply need to treat Israel as a normal country*, rather than the beneficiary of some kind of Special Relationship grounded in a winking sort of tacit understanding. We should value that relationship proportionate to the extent they embody our values and/or advance our interests. If they do neither, why remain pot committed?
The West Bank is a tough problem. Hamas is ahead in polls there, pre and post October 7. And Hamas is committed to ending Israel. The Palestinian Authority itself is not willing to give up the “right of return”, which would in essence end the State of Israel. Indeed, after the rejected compromise by the PA to establish a Palestinian State we had the deadly intifadas. And Israeli population centers are so close to the West Bank. So Israel has great reason to fear a “free Palestine” over there under current conditions.
On the other hand there has been a repressive Israeli presence in the West Bank. And it needs to stop. But Noah’s description of the facts over there seems to overstate Israeli actions and understate its legitimate fears and miss much of the pressure on Israel.
I don’t want to dip into the question of what role the US should play in this, I simply want to strongly contest Noah’s picture of the situation over there. In fact, I’d suggest Noah vist over there and see the situation for himself.
The rise of Hamas influence in the West Bank has been tied to the post-October 7 campaign in Gaza, Mr. Attermann. As many have pointed out, one cost of the Netanyahu regime's policy of pursuing the Gaza campaign to the point of extinguishing Hamas has been to elevate Hamas in the West Bank far beyond its support in Gaza. Many Gaza Palestinians turned against Hamas early in the campaign because of the destruction it brought to their lives. Israel's insistence on total victory drove it past an optimal response and towards a balance equivalent or worse than the status quo ante.
I'm curious how you would feel if someone started harassing you to the point that you appealed to the local authority (like, invading your home, stealing your things, occupying your home while you're away, assaulting you, killing you, etc.) and the local authority turned out to not care?
Palestinians face this, and have faced this, consistently since the beginning of the occupation. They faced similar acts during the Nakba. Many of them, including all of the male members of my wife's paternal line, left and came to the United States.
There are just so many unsubstantiated claims in this article that it’s hard to call this analysis. This feels like an opinion piece. Nothing more.
I don’t know if there is a single serious individual who would honestly publicly claim that the primary reason Zoran Moni won his New York mayor candidacy is because of his support for Palestinians. He repeatedly publicly confirmed his support for both Israeli and Palestinian population in New York. And had to repeatedly bring the focus of his actual policies into view as they were constantly made opaque by islamphobic insults.
Also the failure of the article to correctly state the obsession that our mainstream media has with our politicians, giving unending support to Israel is incredibly disingenuous.
There’s a presumption that because a politician is of Middle Eastern descent that their presence leads to the injection of Middle Eastern policies into their platform. This is untrue. Sayed’s tag line is “money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare for all.”
Not “let’s inject sharia law into schools”.
Sayed even stated that he would be in favor of less support to his own home country of Egypt because this takes away support from US priorities - education, housing and social services.
I wanted to finish reading the article, but I literally can’t. Given the typical quality of this Substack newsletter. This just feels academically disingenuous
Noah didn't make the claim as fact... He made the claim that some left leaning people and groups accept it as fact. If you spend anytime reading opinion articles, tweets, Reddit posts, or seen general commentary. Some people did try to treat or explain his win in those terms.
Everyone has an agenda.
He’s using their agenda and incorrect framing as to the reason why Zohran won as part of the basis for the injection of Middle East politik into our mainstream.
It feels dishonest.
Yes many on the left were waiting for a candidate to acknowledge what all could see - Israeli demolition of Palestine, ethnic cleansing via starvation and attempted genocide by the overwhelming might of Israel.
But remember Zohran was asked by our media, “if you win your mayorship will you go to Israel on day 1.” What does that have to do with NYC?
So then who’s injecting Middle East issues into our politics?
This framing belies reality.
Really? That's funny. I don't remember him ever disavowing from the river to the sea
I can clearly hear that dog whistle
"...we should be nominating them based on their stances on issues of direct relevance to Americans, and on their ability to oppose Donald Trump."
100% this, pretty please with a cherry on top.
To paraphrase Trotsky, we may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in us.
I like Noah's analysis about economics of oil don't matter as much as they used to and love the idea of pulling back some from the Middle East. And I agree Israel's policies on the West Bank are intolerable and we need to pressure them to round up the few hundred trouble makers and to be more civil to the Palestinians and acknowledge the rights of the Palestinians to live on their land.
However, this post is naive to think we can pull back from the Middle East. Iran and radical Islam (and Qatar and increasingly Turkey) are political forces that have extremely toxic and anti-Western values and a messianic compulsion to push against us violently. Iran with its proxies and death to America government, it's funding of assassination attempts in the West, it's brutal suppression of its peoples (and those in Lebanon, formerly Syria etc), its funding of division in the US and the West, their anti-liberal values and methodologies, is in my opinion, a potential existential threat to liberal democracies, particularly if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.
Israel, the only truly liberal and democratic country in the Middle East , has suffered a trauma. One of the problems with democracy is that currently the Israeli population has given up hope for a two state solution with the Palestinian population refusing to accept their right to exist.
I believe the right prescription is to pressure Israel to moderate and view them as an outpost of Western liberalis. Under a more moderate government, Israel could be a moderating force for positive change in the region (witness the Abraham Accords and increasing trade with the associated Arab countries). Israel will moderate If we can ever get the Arab governments to put pressure on the Palestinians to accept Israel's existence and to end the Palestinian corruption and mafia type governments
Noah, would you mind if Isreal replaced the US with China as its benefactor and shared technology with them?
Good article but I do take issue with your opening statement that 9/11 didn’t have to do with blowback. Bin Laden said it was because of U.S. and involvement in Saudi Arabia and U.S. support for regimes in the region he opposed. I’m curious what you think the reason was?
I came here to ask this question, because it deeply bothers me that the US media response to al Qaeda's own statement of intent (one that partially mirrored the intent of the 1993 bombing of the WTC) was to pretend it was meaningless lies. It bothers me further that Noah, or anyone with such a platform, considers the actual facts here to be a leftist conspiracy.
It’s primary, and sadly successful objective was to put the minor Al Qaida on the map: “look we can strike the big dog and in their World Trade Center” (not realizing it was just n ordinary office complex).
As a result they did recruit extensively and did manage to achieve some of bin Laden’s personal issues, aided greatly by the US’s response.
That is Renown, which is one of the three R’s for terrorism along with provoking a Response, which you also mention. But I think the necessary Revenge is also there.
Great discussion. I hope your rabbit is OK.
Some people in the comments referred to Japan and the unrestricted nature of the final allied push to force surrender.
Fire bombing, atomic bombing, and mining the ports to starve the country were all enacted. They ask, how can Israel's actions against the Palestinian population be considered genocide when the US push on Japan is not.
And one of the key difference there is intent.
In the Potsdam Declaration in July 1945, the Allies said.
10. We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners. The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established.
11. Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain her economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in kind, but not those which would enable her to re-arm for war. To this end, access to, as distinguished from control of, raw materials shall be permitted. Eventual Japanese participation in world trade relations shall be permitted.
12. The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government.
This is the Allies saying, "Look, we are going to be incredibly brutal until surrender, but we want to assure you that Japan will survive, we are not intending to kill all Japanese people, we want you to have your own self government, and we will not permanently take territory."
The current Israeli government will never make such a statement. Netanyahu cut his teeth arguing that Palestinians are a false nation, just confused Jordanians propped up by anti semitic Arab states as a way to hurt Israel. Across the Israeli political spectrum, no one will say that the Palestinians have a right to any land, whether in the West Bank or Gaza.
This is the key issue. People like Ben Gvir keep saying they want all Palestinians removed or eliminated (Classic ethnic cleansing/genocide) and the rest of the Israeli establishment doesn't go that far, but they also don't give an affirmative vision of Palestine that they could live with.
committed to destroying the Palestinians as a "nation" and taking all of the Palestinian territory.
The Japan (or Germany) post war comparison often comes up as an analogous situation but I dont think the analysis ever gets serious enough to make it useful.
So I disagree with your framing as it's too modern (regarding Israel) and doesnt take into account the many decades preceding this war. Most critically the peace processes and rejected proposals. Japan and Germany were, as far as i know which will have gaps, not in negotiation with the US and turning down offers. The US said jump, and they said how high. I don't think Israel ever wanted, or was in position, to mandate education and other core parts of Palestinian society in an analogous way. And at the same time there was immense negative sentiment from the entire surrounding region to Israel and the occupied territories that kept fanning the flames of conflict for both idealogical and internal political reasons.
So going back to your point on intent being key. There is a ton of evidence of intention of Israel towards Palestine changing depending on current events and perception of the possibility of peace. The 90s were, as a result of the 1st Intifada, a time of immense pressure to negotiate and make 2 states happen as a moral imperative. The 2000's post 2nd Intifada had multiple right wing governments winning on the platform of separation (first Gaza and Lebanon, then West Bank!) due to perception of no counter party to reasonably negotiate with so we'll withdraw unilaterally and let them do whatever they want internally. We're approaching two decades of neither rational negotiation or unilateral withdrawal seems plausible. Idk what to do, I'd say a Japan style occupation by a non-Israeli force (but more friendly than someone like Turkey) is the best hope, but I dont see any country willing to absorb a single casualty for this to happen.
Did you notice that, like other clueless progressives, you’re blaming the war launched by the IRGC and its Palestinian, Lebanese, Yemeni proxies against Israel in 2023 _on_ Israel? You need to cut back on your NYT diet, and in general legacy media infested by Free Palestine cult members and their progressive enablers. What looks weak is the progressives turning into the IRGC wing, and voting to stop any assistance to US allies, all mutual enemies of the IRGC. Sucking up to Islamist terrorists Iran and Qatar isn’t a strong US foreign policy, and the Democrats turning into the Antizionist Socialist Party with antisemitism as its only big tent idea isn’t much of a solution either.
Islamism hasn’t receded, it’s changed into a propaganda war, and it owns US academia, news media, and the staff of Democrats in Congress. Remember that progressive staffers are the ones who worked to appease Iran, stop Saudi and UAE from fighting the Houthi takeover of Yemen. The choking of international shipping was delivered by Obama and Biden’s genius national security advisors into the hands of the IRGC.