What Ben Gurion said largely represents the course of action they pursued. Benny Morris, who I again think is a reasonable and fair historian, doesn't deny that. He asserts that the expulsion of the Arabs was a necessary alternative to a similar fate befalling the Jews. It's not an invention of progressives with an agenda, and it was a real tragedy to the Arabs. The prominence of al-Husseini in the Palestinian nationalist discourse is a very real reason to consider what Morris suggests seriously. I nevertheless don't think one should be lead to legitimize ethnic cleansing as a fair measure against a perceived fifth column. It doesn't have a place in the world the Geneva Conventions have aimed to build; WWII should have served as a warning to avoid the mass deportation of civilians that the UN partition brought about and Ben Gurion embraced unabashedly. As it concerns al-Husseini more directly, he was a virulent person who played a minimal role in the conflict after '48. His role in the Holocaust is downplayed by Yad Vasham itself.
Yes, I think there is every reason to respect Israeli civil society and prefer its government over the authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, for example. I am more than happy to grant you that it is a liberal democracy surrounded by illiberal states. The picture is not so rosy when you consider the West Bank. Israel has no problem claiming that it legally falls under Israeli sovereignty: "Judea and Samaria" is unequivocally Israeli when it comes to the matter of, "Whose land is it?" Yet when it comes to the question of, "Are human rights equally respected in Israel?", the West Bank and its Arabs magically disappear from what is considered relevant to describing Israel. Israeli settlers in the West Bank receive the protections afforded to them by Israeli civilian law. Palestinians in the West Bank get hauled before Israeli military courts. Two different legal systems for two different groups of people under the authority of the same government. No bueno. Israeli military law permits the "adminstrative detention" of individuals who intend to break the law but have not yet done so. The accused doesn't receive a trial or access to the evidence held against him. Thousands of Palestinians have been held and are by Israel under that authority, which is sparingly applied against Israeli settlers (not for lack of reason). Are those the actions of a liberal democracy? The good intention of the Oslo Accords, where the PLO did indeed recognize Israel without the Palestinians receiving a state of their own, has been utterly lost. Israel does what it wants in the West Bank, and the Palestinians are told to deal with it without recourse. Don't like Israel expanding its settlements in the West Bank and building new ones? Tough luck, the US State Department and international community will largely agree with you, but the issue should be arbitrated with your occupier. Want a state? Just make peace with Netanyahu and Israel, never mind the fact that he's caterogically opposed to the idea. Barak gave you an offer you had to accept despite legitimate reservations, and now you're destined to remain under indefinite occupation. The Palestinians could drop every gun, every knife, every ounce of militancy they have, and Israel wouldn't resolve the whole problem by granting the Palestinians citizenship. It can't. There's an inherent limit to the extent that Israel can remain a Jewish state and one committed to democracy.
To a offer a defense of Israel, many of its actions are justified by security concerns to one degree or another. Does the IDF have a moral license to shoot American journalists or Palestinian civilians, stand around idly while Israeli settlers harass Palestinian farmers and destroy their property, or abuse Palestinian detainees? It does not. It has every right on the other hand to make sure that someone can get on a bus in Tel Aviv without fear of a suicide bombing. In that regard I understand the construction of the security barrier even if the exact route it takes leaves some room for complaint. It can't allow Askhelon to be terrorized by rockets. It couldn't allow Hamas to slaughter a thousand civilians unchecked. I understand a forceful military response to that which must still abide by international law. Israel will say that it does, but in the off chance it doesn't, international law shouldn't constrain its actions anyway. They won't be lectured to, so to speak. Did anyone lecture America after 9/11, for example? If someone did, we probably should have listened more closely. We suffered a tragedy, and we started a war in Iraq (Israeli intelligence certainly didn't discourage us) that left hundreds of thousands of people dead without securing any long term gain. We now want to express selective concern about civilian life. I think Israel is going down the same path.
So why does Israel merit the scrutiny and criticism it does from me? After all, there are absolutely worse countries, and they don't get the heat. Firstly, I don't shy away from criticism of those countries either. Saudi Arabia is a theocratic hellscape lead by a sociopath where you can get executed for a tweet. The Egyptian government is secular but dominated by a military dictatorship with a dubious human rights record. The Gulf States are modern-day slavers that along with Saudi Arabia have exported Wahhabism. Iran is another theocratic hellscape that wants nuclear weapons (rational for them, bad for us). I don't want US foreign policy to be dictated by placating those scumbags, and I similarly don't want US foreign policy to be religiously attached to the defense of Israel. It can't be the case that no matter what Israel does, the money and guns keep flowing. But you see it time and time again. American support of Israel is "unconditional," "steadfast," etc. Secondly, even if we're going to operate purely out of concern for realpolitik, i.e. we support Israel because they give us something in return, that has its limits as well. We can't have Biden say in regard to Russia's actions in Ukraine, "Yes, I called it genocide. It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being — being able to be Ukrainian" and cover our ears when the Israeli right makes a concerted effort to label Palestine and its nationhood as an invention. We can't have John Kirby cry at a press conference when Ukrainian kids die only to have him shrug off civilian deaths in Gaza as part of war. We can't lecture the Chinese about Xinjiang and support Israel's actions in the West Bank. Our hypocrisy on Israel-Palestine hurts our image and gradually our influence elsewhere. There's no American interest to be had in being seen as a party to genocide or apartheid. If we want the situation to change, our pressure has to be on Israel. That's the only party here we have a direct influence on, and it's indeed the party that has the most control over situation in the West Bank and Gaza.
