Left Flank

Gershom Gorenberg engages in a delightful thought experiment that, unfortunately, does not inspire hope: If Lincoln and Douglas debated the Occupation.

So if Douglas and Lincoln were to be transposed to Israel today, if they were to debate in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ashdod and Modi’in about the future of the occupation? Douglas would argue that no land could be given up without a national referendum - a referendum in which Israelis would vote, of course, not the actual residents of the occupied land. If a majority of Israelis voted to keep the West Bank, with Israelis enjoying full rights there and Palestinians denied those rights - well, then, Douglas would say, democracy had decided.

Lincoln would argue from Jewish experience of oppression that people should be denied rights simply on the basis of what group they’d been born into. What Jews should learn from their history was not to become the overclass, but to create a polity free of such oppression. He would insist that no democratic vote could right the wrong of permanent occupation. He might well avoid mentioning that an Israeli vote on Palestinians’ future was undemocratic by definition. But he would insist that Israel could not be a democracy, or be true to Jewish history, while maintaining permanent rule over another people.

As I said, there are no precise parallels in history. Before any comments on this post, I could list 20 ways in which the situation here today is different from then, there. Nonetheless, a distant debate can shed light on one near at hand.

Lincoln, a moderate in the context of antebellum American politics, supported recolonization of the African-American slaves after liberation. Lincoln also did not face the practical politics of how two peoples could interact. That a solution was reached after the bloodiest war in the hemisphere is also uninspiring. What really is uninspiring about Lincoln (or, is most laudable) is how as a leader he learned and adapted to circumstances. Where is such a personality today in either Israeli or Palestinian circles?