Ongoing injustices as a national vulnerablity

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When the British colony of Georgia (now the state of Georgia, here in the U.S.A.) was first founded, it prohibited slavery during its first 15 years, from 1735 to 1750.

Historians generally agree that the main reason for this prohibition wasn't a moral objection to slavery per se, but rather the recognition that large-scale slavery would make Georgia militarily vulnerable to the Spanish in neighboring Florida, who could conquer Georgia by recruiting its slaves, offering them freedom in exchange for military service, against the British colonists.

(See, for example, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.)

Over a hundred years later, during the American Civil War, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation specifically mentioned that the freeing of slaves was "a fit and necessary war measure" for suppressing the rebellion of the Confederate states. In other words, the very fact that the Confederacy was defending large-scale slavery was, in and of itself, a big military vulnerability.

The same principle applies not just to slavery, but to other large-scale injustices too. Whenever any country blatantly and systematically oppresses some large fraction of its inhabitants, in whatever way, that fact creates a situation that the country's enemies can take advantage of.

In the 1950's and 1960's, the Soviet Union tried to take advantage of American racism to shame us and, if possible, to foment a Black revolution here. Luckily for us, it didn't work. Luckily for us, we ended legally-mandated segregation instead. Luckily for us, we eventually listened to Dr. Martin Luther King instead of just dismissing him as a Communist agent.

Racism is still a big problem here, a problem we still need to work to overcome. But we did make enough progress here to head off the kinds of trouble that the Soviet Union could have made for us had we not done so.

IMO, the above is a lesson Israel needs to learn.

Israel can blame Iran all it wants. But as long as Israel refuses to deal equitably with the Palestinians, that very fact creates a vulnerability to any and all external enemies.

As for my thoughts on how Israel can begin to deal equitably with Palestinians, here are my suggestions as to the first steps:

1) An absolute moratorium on evictions of Palestinians to make way for Israeli Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

2) If this has not been done so already, ask Jordan to beef up the police force of the "Jerusalem Waqf" on the Temple Mount, enough so that the Israeli government will no longer have any need (or excuse) to get involved when anyone makes trouble in the Al Aqsa compound.

Whatever the ultimate solution, be it a two-state solution, a binational one-state solution, or something in between, the first step is for Israel to stop doing the things that have been provoking terrorism.

Israel can still punish the terrorists, but, at the same time, stop doing the things that impel people to become terrorists in the first place.