Some disturbing Bernie Sanders tweets have surfaced in my newsfeed:
The reason working people are struggling is not because of immigrants, like Trump wants people to believe.
It is because Trump and his billionaire friends have rigged our economy to ensure the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. https://t.co/oSv2PO9arh
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 15, 2019
Blaming Donald Trump for this is like blaming Trump for Adam Smith. The economy isn’t “rigged” in this way. It is a capitalist economy and capitalism inherently operates in this way.[1]
Then there’s this:
If Israel doesn’t want members of the United States Congress to visit their country, maybe they can respectfully decline the billions of dollars that we give to Israel. pic.twitter.com/T7ILagf6Ib
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 16, 2019
Bernie Sanders sounds clever here. But,
So when y’all done praising Sanders on his call to cut aid to Israel if they don’t allow congresswomen in— will y’all address that Israel’s apartheid didn’t begin with Netanyahu & the *actual* viability of a “two-state solution,” or…? #Bernie2020
— Tamanisha J John (@TamanishaJohn) August 17, 2019
Tamanisha John has it largely right.[2] The main difficulty is when we declare the end of “the actual viability of a ‘two-state solution’”[3] Binyamin Netanyahu has been prime minister since 2009; as late as 2013, Ben Birnbaum argued that a two-state solution was still possible, but becoming less rather than more likely.[4]
Fig. 1. U.S. State Department map of the occupied territories, with areas available to Palestinians in white, apparently dating to the Obama administration, via the New Yorker, fair use.[5]
I suspect John’s argument depends on a rather distressing map like the one John Kerry showed Barack Obama (figure 1), that shows how much land has been taken away from the Palestinians:[6] Taken as “facts on the ground,” Israeli settlements and other land expropriations indeed present a formidable obstacle to a “two-state solution.” It hardly matters now as Netanyahu’s government seemingly rules out such a solution.[7]
While perhaps not so prominent, the Israeli hypocrisy we see now[8] is longstanding and raises questions about the idea that a peace could ever have been politically possible given the political constraints on both sides. Birnbaum’s argument depends largely on that counterfactual.[9] That’s something we can never know. And in this case, Netanyahu’s government renders the counterfactual irrelevant and Sanders’ tweet myopic.
I have to think that Sanders is attempting to appear less “too far to the left.” But he really can’t help himself by making incoherent and largely indefensible claims.
- [1]Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party,” in Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2010), 119-129.↩
- [2]Mohamed Mohamed, “Right of return is the heart of Palestine’s struggle,” Electronic Intifada, September 6, 2016, https://electronicintifada.net/content/right-return-heart-palestines-struggle/17856↩
- [3]Tamanisha J. John, [micropost], Twitter, August 17, 2019, https://twitter.com/TamanishaJohn/status/1162856254018117638↩
- [4]Ben Birnbaum, “The End of the Two-State Solution,” New Republic, March 11, 2013, https://newrepublic.com/article/112617/israel-palestine-and-end-two-state-solution↩
- [5]Adam Entous, “The Maps of Israeli Settlements That Shocked Barack Obama,” New Yorker, July 9, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-map-of-israeli-settlements-that-shocked-barack-obama↩
- [6]Adam Entous, “The Maps of Israeli Settlements That Shocked Barack Obama,” New Yorker, July 9, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-map-of-israeli-settlements-that-shocked-barack-obama↩
- [7]Michael Arria, “Israeli lawmakers to Congress: two-state solution far more dangerous to Israel than BDS,” Mondoweiss, August 13, 2019, https://mondoweiss.net/2019/08/lawmakers-congress-dangerous/; Gil Hoffman, “Israeli MKs to Congress: Thanks, but BDS bill ‘dangerous for
Israel,’” Jerusalem Post, August 12, 2019, https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Israeli-MKs-to-Congress-Thanks-but-BDS-bill-dangerous-for-Israel-598392↩ - [8]i24 News, “Israeli lawmakers to demand official recognition of non-Orthodox movements,” November 5, 2018, https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/187989-181105-israeli-lawmakers-to-demand-official-recognition-of-non-orthodox-movements; Oren Liebermann, “An off-duty police officer shot dead an unarmed black teen, sparking riots. But it didn’t happen where you think,” CNN, July 4, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/04/middleeast/ethiopia-israel-protests-analysis-oren-intl/index.html; Mohamed Mohamed, “Right of return is the heart of Palestine’s struggle,” Electronic Intifada, September 6, 2016, https://electronicintifada.net/content/right-return-heart-palestines-struggle/17856↩
- [9]Ben Birnbaum, “The End of the Two-State Solution,” New Republic, March 11, 2013, https://newrepublic.com/article/112617/israel-palestine-and-end-two-state-solution↩