That Proves The Rule

Most Iraq war supporters issued fake mea culpas which were mostly about how the real tragedy was that their big brains led them astray - they were just TOO smart, you see - but Beinart is the one that actually learned a few things from his stupid years.

There’s a chilling historical backdrop to all this. Palestinians in Gaza know that if they leave, Israel is unlikely to let them to return. They know this because most of them are descendants of the expulsion and flight that occurred around Israel’s founding in 1948, which Palestinians call the nakba. They live in Gaza because Israel didn’t let their families return to the places that then became part of Israel. Hundreds of thousands more Palestinians were displaced when Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. It didn’t let many of those refugees return either.

Israel’s leaders rarely express regret for these mass displacements. Sometimes, they even invoke them as precedent. Addressing Palestinians on Facebook after three Israelis were murdered in the West Bank in 2017, Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s current national security adviser, warned, “This is how a ‘nakba’ begins. Just like this. Remember ’48. Remember ’67.”

He ended his post with the words, “You’ve been warned!”

The world has been warned too.