Will This be the Last Anti-Israel Generation? [View all]

For the past several decades discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been driven by full-time anti-Israel researchers and writers. This coterie of academics and authors, from Noam Chomsky to Peter Beinart, constantly popped up on panels and had their ideas amplified. Today's Middle East realities, with new peace agreements and concerns about China's emerging role, has less time to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Consequently we are likely seeing the last generation of professional Israel critics.

Anyone who grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, the period of the Oslo Accords and Second Intifada, got used to the idea that Israel's existence was up for debate. It was taken for granted that there was something called "opposition to Israel" and no shortage of ink was spilled on the question of Israel's "right to exist." Only those stuck in the era of the Oslo Accords and earlier, when harsh conflict between Israel and the Arab states was the norm, could suggest that the whole country of Israel might not exist one day. Now, with 70 years' hindsight, it is clear that Israel does exist like some 200 other countries and it isn't going to be fundamentally changed.

Nevertheless, in the U.S. and some other Western countries there are still academic and activist panel discussions about the "one-state solution," usually involving only non-Palestinians who sit and discuss whether Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can be shoehorned into some kind of Frankenstein-like state that combines Israel with the autonomous Palestinian Authority and Hamas-run Gaza. Why do people even discuss this? They don't discuss turning India, Pakistan and Bangladesh into "one state" or combining Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo back into "one state." Only with Israel is one-state solution activism given credence, though primarily in Western academic and far-left journalistic circles.

https://www.newsweek.com/will-this-last-anti-israel-generation-opinion-1581642