{"id":13761,"date":"2023-11-02T20:26:32","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T09:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=13761"},"modified":"2023-12-07T15:02:42","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T04:02:42","slug":"israel-conflict-pursuing-a-fair-political-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/02\/israel-conflict-pursuing-a-fair-political-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel conflict: The need for a fair political solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mp_wrapper\">\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-excerpt\">\n    <p>Editor\u2019s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our\u00a0Publishing Guidelines.\nDear Editor,\nGeoff Bloch\u2019s piece, 'How secular humanism at our universities fuels antisemitism' (The Spectator, 19 October 2023), is mistaken on so many levels.\nBloch has a completely ahistorical view of the status of Israel. Any debate on Palestine has to be predicated on the understanding that Israel is a settler colony that was established on someone else\u2019s land on the basis of a 3000-year-old religious belief. It was only able to establish itself there because: (1) it was massively supported by Jewish people around the world; (2) most of the rest of the world were either supportive or willing to turn a blind eye, at least partly due to guilt about the Holocaust; (3) the local inhabitants were not a discrete organised entity, having suffered under a long succession of foreign empires, so that resistance was disorganised, and it was relatively easy to impose Israel upon them, after a struggle.\nAnd Israelis seem to have conveniently forgotten that a key tactic in their own fight for a nation state was in fact terrorism, directed against both the British and the indigenous Palestinians. The Palestinians were no-one\u2019s chosen people.\nHaving said that, Israel is now a fait accompli, with the United Nations granting it nation status, and a few million people living there. There can be no question of it ceasing to exist. So thos...<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-message\">\n    <hr style=\"width: 100%;max-width: 1000px !important;height: 5px;border-width: 0;color: red;background-color: red\" \/>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">\n<h3><em>You're part way through this article. Want to keep reading?<\/em><\/h3>\n<h4><em>Only members of the Rationalist Society of Australia can read our Premium articles.\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n<h3 style=\"height: 20px\"><span style=\"color: #c83200\"><em><a style=\"color: #c83200\" href=\"https:\/\/rationalist.com.au\/membership\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Become a member today.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<h4><em>Already a member? 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See our\u00a0Publishing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":444,"featured_media":13764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[553,614,635,637,75,615],"coauthors":[114],"class_list":["post-13761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","tag-circumcision","tag-constitution","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-premium","tag-voice-referendum"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13761"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13876,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13761\/revisions\/13876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13761"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}