I. The Fact of Israel
Israel at 60 is an intractable historical fact. It has one of the world’s strongest armies, without peer in the Middle East, and its 200 or so nuclear warheads give it the last word in any military showdown with any of its neighbors. Don’t believe the hype about an Iranian threat – Israel certainly fears Iran attaining strategic nuclear capability, but not because it expects Iran to launch a suicidal nuclear exchange. That’s the sort of scare-story that gets trotted out for public consumption in Israel and the U.S. Behind closed doors, Israeli leaders admit that even a nuclear-armed Iran does not threaten Israel’s existence. (Israel’s security doctrine, however, is based on maintaining an overwhelming strategic advantage over all challengers, so the notion of parity along the lines of Cold War “Mutually Assured Destruction” with Iran is a major challenge, because without a nuclear monopoly, Israel loses a trump card in the regional power battle.)
Palestinian militants may be able to make life in certain parts of Israel exceedingly unpleasant at times, but they are unable to reverse the Nakbah of 1948 through military means. (Hamas knows this as well as Fatah does, which is why it is ready to talk about a long-term hudna and coexistence – although it won’t roll over and accept Israel’s terms as relayed by Washington in the way that the current Fatah leadership might.)
Israel, in other words, is here to stay – and its citizens know this, which may be why they appear to more indifferent to the search for peace with the Palestinians than at any time in the past three decades. So confident are the Israelis in being able to withstand whatever the Palestinians throw at them that they are able to turn away from the hellish life they have created for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Sure, let Olmert – a weak and skittish leader whose domestic political standing is comparable to that of President Bush, except that the Israeli prime minister can’t seem to shake off the whiff of corruption – engage in the charade of negotiating a hypothetical peace (let’s be very clear about this: the current talks between Abbas and Olmert are aimed only at designing a “shelf” agreement, the elaboration of an “horizon” not unlike the Geneva exercise by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed-Rabbo a couple of years ago – not a series of steps or deadlines that anyone plans to implement — this is its most optimistic outcome; even that seems doomed to fail, though…) with a hypothetical Palestinian leader. (To paraphrase Stalin on the pope, how many divisions does Mahmoud Abbas command?) Who cares? It’s not as if Olmert is going to confront the settlers or even dismantle most of the 600 or so roadblocks that choke life in the West Bank. So let him and Abbas perform their endless duet of the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”…
The fact of Israel’s survival until now, and for the foreseeable future, is a grim reality for its 1 million Palestinian citizens, whose citizenship is at best, second-class – and more so for the 4 million Palestinians over which it maintains sovereign power in the West Bank and Gaza, without granting them citizenship – for whom Israel means living under an apartheid regime. And that, in turn, means that the trappings of globalized modernity enjoyed by Israel’s secular middle class – the American lifestyle, the high-tech economy and the European football – all come at the price of perennial uncertainty under a cloud of potential violence.
Just as there’s little chance of Israel being eliminated in the foreseeable future, so is there little chance of it militarily eliminating Palestinian resistance. There’s no serious peace process in the works, right now, and the geography created by Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since their capture in 1967 has made the prospect of a Palestinian state largely hypothetical, too – it takes an optimistic imagination to conceive of a viable independent state comprising of Gaza and those West Bank cantonments that lie between the major Israeli settlement blocs and the roads that connect them.
So, while Israel has prevailed in the conflict over its creation that has raged since 1948, it has been unable to end that conflict on its own terms. The Palestinians driven out during the Nakbah have not simply disappeared or been absorbed into surrounding Arab populations, as Israel’s founders had hoped. And without justice for the Palestinians, Israel is no closer now than it was 60 years ago to being able to live in a genuine peace with its neighbors.
At this point, however, the Israelis don’t seem to care.
The curious irony of history, though, is that while the Zionist movement managed to successfully create a nation state in the Middle East against considerable odds, that movement is dead — the majority of Jews quite simply don’t want to be part of a Jewish nation-state in the Middle East. And so the very purpose of Israel has come into question. It’s certainly not the “national home of the Jews,” as much as the Zionists huff and puff about this being the case (frankly, anyone who tells me my “national home” as a Jew is somewhere other than where I was born or chose to live, is an anti-Semite in my book, but let’s not go there for now) — the simple fact is that almost two thirds of us have chosen freely to live elsewhere, and have no intention of ever settling in Israel. Jewish immigration to Israel is at an all-time low, and that’s unlikely to change. In a world where persecution of Jews is increasingly marginal, the majority of Jews prefer to live scattered among the peoples, rather than in an ethnic enclave of our own. That’s what we’ve chosen.
Curiously enough, the very “normality” achieved by Israel in an era of globalization has prompted three quarters of a million Israeli Jews to move abroad. “You have wonderful children,” Ehud Olmert told a gathering of French Jewish leaders two years ago. “I wish they would come home.” Not only are the bulk of French Jews not planning to move to Israel, the supreme irony is that Olmert’s own sons have joined the quiet exodus of Israeli-born Jews leaving Israel to live abroad. Today, it has become the norm for any Israeli who can to acquire a foreign passport.
Israel may be an intractable historical fact, but the Zionist ideology that spurred its creation and shaped its identity and sense of national purpose has collapsed – not under pressure from without, but having rotted from within. It is Jews, not Jihadists, that have consigned Zionism to the dustbin of history.
So what, exactly, is Israel, now? Avram Burg, former Knesset Speaker, appeared to sense the writing on the wall in his plaintive op ed in 2003:
We live in a thunderously failed reality. Yes, we have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvellous theatre and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed.
It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents’ shock, that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun.
What Burg seemed to recognize is the absurdity of seeing the modern State of Israel as some kind of prophetic fulfillment of the Jewish story. If we were to imagine that this, indeed, was what God had intended, we’re imagining a deity with a very, very twisted sense of humor. Three years later, Burg concluded that he could no longer think of himself as Zionist, and recognized that Zionism itself had become an obstacle to Israelis finding peace — and to his own pursuit of his Jewish values.
II. Israel is a Monument to Anti-Semitism…
I visited Israel the year I finished high school, which was the 30th anniversary of its founding. My officially-organized itinerary (I was there as part of a Habonim contingent for intensive ideological training) started the same way as those of any visiting head of state today: At the Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem.
It is impossible to complete this vivid encounter with the industrial-age savagery meted out by the Nazis on the Jews of Europe without being profoundly moved and angered. It certainly added a jet of gasoline to the Zionist flame that burned in my teenage heart, and I can only assume that it’s the shaming effect of the exhibits that has the likes of President George W. Bush mumbling about how the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz. Oy, who puts these ideas in your head, Mr. President? (I can guess, actually, but we won’t go there.) Speaking selfishly, perhaps, I’m rather glad the U.S. didn’t kill Primo Levi. And actually, Mr. President, if you want to be atoning for failing the Jews of Europe in the 1940s, a better place to start might be the fact that anti-Semitic U.S. immigration policy prevented two thirds of the survivors of Auschwitz from actually settling here. Not that the Zionist movement of the time was at all upset by this — as Morris Ernst recalls of his efforts to lobby his friend President Roosevelt to admit more Jewish immigrants at the end of the war, they were furiously denounced by Zionist leaders. The fate of the Jews of Europe had never been a foremost concern for Israel’s founders. As Ben Gurion put it in 1938 in his diary, “If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter – because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People.”
Still, by the 1960s, the Israeli leadership began to recognize the utility of making the Holocaust the centerpiece of its national story, overcoming its own reluctance to engage with the survivors and their story. By representing itself as the state of the survivors, bringing Eichmann to trial in Jerusalem as a way of educating its next generation in the horrors of the Holocaust in order to offer them a unifying perspective on their common national identity, Israel could establish a narrative frame for rationalizing its behavior in respect of the Palestinians, too. So deep has been the penetration of this particular construct that when Jimmy Carter challenged the apartheid policies Israel has adopted on the West Bank, he was quite seriously accused of giving aid and comfort to Holocaust-deniers! (The demented logic here held that by failing to give adequate attention to the Holocaust when discussing the West Bank, he was effectively denying the former!)
Still, I think Yad Vashem is an appropriate starting point for any visit to Israel, because I believe that the Holocaust really was the key to Israel’s creation. The modern nation-state of Israel did not emerge from the spiritual yearning for a “return to Zion” that had long been an essential part of the Jewish liturgical tradition — that “return” had always been clearly tied to the arrival of the Messiah; that was never understood as a recipe for the creation of a nation state in Palestine before the Zionists arrive on the scene, in concert with the rise of nationalism in Western and Central Europe in the late 19th century. The Zionist movement, which called for the creation of a Jewish nation-state, emerged as a response to the political crisis facing Western European Jews at the turn of the 19th century, as the breakdown of empires stirred nationalist passions that threatened the status of Jews in many European countries. And also the ongoing oppression of the Jews of the Russian empire. Still, even then, it was hardly the dominant response to that crisis: The Zionist movement had been a minority trend in mainstream Jewish politics in Europe before World War II (and it hardly existed at all among Jews of the Islamic world).
But the Holocaust destroyed most of the Jewish leadership of Europe, and it shamed the world into granting Jews a nation-state in Palestine — settling there became a matter of survival for two thirds of the survivors of the Holocaust, who despite the ordeal they had suffered, were mostly denied any alternative.
Israel, then, rather than some kind of Jewish achievement or prophetic triumph, looks to me more like a huge monument to Western anti-Semitism. Zionism had demanded that the Jews have a nation-state of their own, claming that for Jews to live among others was simply unnatural and untenable, and that anti-Semitism was a natural and inevitable consequence of gentiles having Jews in their midst. Apparently vindicated by the Holocaust, they set about building a sovereign nation state that would serve as a “national home” to the Jewish people. Israel was never intended to simply be a state of the Israelis, Arab and Jewish. It was a state for the Jews of the World, and it dedicated itself to “ingathering” them as it “redeemed” the Biblical land of Israel. It’s precisely for that reason that I, who was born in Cape Town South Africa, can automatically assume the rights of citizenship and land ownership in the place where my friend, Jamil, was born, but was driven out of at age 4, and to which he is forbidden from returning simply because he is not Jewish.
It’s also this logic that rationalized the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and the calamitous policy of settling Israelis in the territories occupied in 1967.
III. …But anti-Semitism is on the Wane
The founder of the modern Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl, framed the movement’s attitude to anti-Semitism in his diary comments while covering the notorious Dreyfus trial in France in the late 19th century: “In Paris, then, I gained a freer attitude toward antisemitism which I now began to understand historically and make allowances for,” wrote Herzl. “Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of efforts to “combat antisemitsm”.
The premise of Zionism has been that anti-Semitism is inevitable and immutable when Jews live among gentiles, allowing Jews only a truncated and perennially threatened existence in “exile.” This was the very basis of their case for creating a separate Jewish nation-state, in order to achieve “normality” alongside other nations and nationalisms.
This premise, of course, was never accepted by a majority of Jews, although the Holocaust had made Israel an historic imperative for hundreds of thousands of Jews who found themselves with nowhere else to go.
Still, today the political crisis of European Jewry that produced the Zionist movement has passed. Anti-Semitism has become a marginal threat to Jewish life in much of the world, and the majority of Jews have voted with their feet to live in a wider world, rather than in an ethnic ghetto. Today, the preferrred destination of Jews leaving former Soviet territories is Germany; and tens of thousands of the Russian Jews who emigrated to Israel during the Russian economic collapse of the Yeltsin years have since returned to Russia. The head of the Russian Jewish Congress estimates the number at up to 120,000, while the Israeli embassy in Moscow says that 90,000 Israeli citizens are currently living in Russia. And Russia is hardly the most philo-Semitic option. The Zionist authorities in Israel have long ago accepted that they’re unlikely to see signficant immigration from the Jewish communities of North America and Western Europe, where there is little significant pressure on Jews to vacate.
So, it turns out, we’re able to live quite comfortably among others, which is where the majority of us choose to spend our lives. Israel has emerged as one of the world’s largest Jewish communities, but it seems a little wishful to imagine it the sine qua non of Jewish life on the planet — we managed without it for 2,000 years, after all. And do we really believe that the reason Jews today feel safe and secure living in the United States or Canada, for example, is the existence of a well-armed Israeli Defense Force?
IV. Be Careful of What You Wish For
The greatest impulse driving the early Zionists was the idea that by separating themselves into an independent state of their own, Jews could achieve the “normality” that eluded them in Europe. They could right what the Marxist-Zionist Ber Borochov called the “inverted triangle” of the Jewish class structure, building a society founded on Jewish agrarian and industrial labor. Jewish farmers, Jewish worker, Jewish soldiers, marching together singing the Internationale. For those of more liberal persuasion, Zionism offered the opportunity for nationalist nationhood with all the trappings of romantic illusion, just like the German nationalists, or the Italian nationalists or the Hungarian nationalists.
This nationalist “normality” has longsince been achieved, of course. Despite its ongoing conflict with its neighbors, Israel has Jewish farmers and Jewish soldiers and Jewish cab drivers and gangsters and prostitutes — along with the more familiar crop of doctors, scientists, mathematicians, violinists and chess players. And, in keeping with the “normality” of the age of globalization, its Jewish entrepreneurs create companies in Silicon Valley, its Jewish footballers play in Europe, its Jewish live in lofts in New York, its Jewish club kids wander the pyschotropic beaches of Goa… I could go on, but you get the picture. We’re a wandering people (even before the Romans ostensibly exiled us from the Holy Land, there were thousands of Jews living all over the Mediterranean basin…), and many young Israeli Jews, like young Jews — and young people of whatever background — everywhere, want to be part of a global conversation, a global economy, a global playground. Globalization mocks national sovereignty and its boundaries, and its patterns of integration today may be a greater threat to the Zionist project than any Jihadism.
Even when I was first there in ’78, giddily lapping up the ideology, I was warned that one of the biggest crises Israel faced was that its own young people didn’t give a toss about Zionism. Why would they be any more likely to embrace nationalist kitsch than would kids raised in East Germany or Franco’s Spain?
The very “normality” created by Israel over the past 60 years undermines the nationalist mission of the state’s founders — if the wider world is sufficiently comfortable for Jews to make their homes all across it, then why not Israeli Jews, too? As we noted earlier, 750,000 — 15% of Israel’s Jewish population — already live abroad. The likelihood of the world’s Jews moving to Israel to bolster its Jewish population to keep pace with the Palestinian birthrate is increasingly remote. More likely is a net loss of Jewish population as Israel’s best and brightest see no obstacles, and plenty of allure to going forth into a wider world.
V. Israel Without Zionism
On Yom Kippur in 1979, instead of going to shul — a pointless exercise for an atheist who no longer felt the need to pretend for the sake of communal bonds, now that I was forging my own community — I stayed home and read Uri Avnery’s seminal book, “Israel Without Zionism.” His work was a revelation that had a major part in my “deprogramming” as a Zionist. Here was a soldier of the Haganah speaking bluntly about the crimes committed against the Palestinians in 1948, laying bare the brutal truth beneath the national mythology I’d been spoonfed. Avnery recognized that for Israelis to be able to live in peace in their neighborhood, their starting point had to be relinquishing the ideology that rationalized their conquest and displacement of others, and instead to forge a common commitment to justice.
Zionism rationalizes conquest and colonization as “redemption” of Jewish territory on behalf of the world’s Jews. It treats the Palestinians only as an obstacle and threat to its own purposes, not as people with the same rights as Jews and with legitimate claim to the land on which they were born. And yet, there’s a guilty conscience that sometimes emerges in flashes — a rare moment of Jewish ethical recognition, that is quite at odds with Zionism. My favorite came from Ehud Barak, world class chump though he may be in the annals of statesmanship, when he was on the campaign trail in 1999, and was asked by a TV talkshow host what he’d have done if he’d been born Palestinian. “Join a fighting organization,” he said in a flash of honesty he’d later regretted.
But if the roles had been reversed, and it had been the Israeli Jews who’d been first driven out of their homes in 1948, and then occupied in 1967, you can bet that Barak and Rabin and all before them would have been leaders of the PLO. Ariel Sharon would have been in Islamic Jihad!
The end of the Zionist moment leaves Israeli Jews facing — although in many cases not necessarily facing up to — the reality that the people with whom they’re going to share the Holy Land are not the rest of us Jews, who have no intention of moving there, but the Palestinians, who they found there and displaced and dispossessed, and continue to rule over — supposedly in our name, but without our consent.
Zionism — contemporary Jewish nationalism — is unlikely to bring Israel peace, because of its failure, or inability, to accord full equality to the claims of others.
As Rami Khouri noted in 2006 during the Lebanon war, in one of my all-time favorite columns on Israel and its neighbors,
Deuteronomy, a pivotal book of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), is supremely relevant here because it blends the three issues that I believe Israeli, Arab and international journalists must affirm in order to honour their professional dictates along with their own humanity. These are: good governance anchored in the rule of law; a moral foundation for human relations anchored in the dictate to treat others as you want others to treat you; and the towering divine commands to ‘choose life’ and ‘pursue justice’.
Deuteronomy is an appropriate balm because it emphasises – in both human society and the divine plan – the central value of justice that is anchored in a system of codified laws that are administered fairly by compassionate and competent judges. The most beautiful and powerful part of Deuteronomy is verses 18-20, ending with: ‘Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue.’
…The single biggest reason that Israel has found itself locked in ever more vicious wars with assorted Arab neighbours is its refusal to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians and other Arabs on the basis of the rule of law, and to resolve disputes on the basis of both parties enjoying equal rights.
On the two occasions that it has made resolutions on the basis of law and equal rights – the peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt – Israel has found calm, official acceptance and some normal contacts with citizens in those Arab lands. But in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, where Israel has acted unilaterally and in a predatory and violent way, it has reaped only resistance, ever more fierce and proficient with the years.
The common Israeli view … sees the Arabs and Iran as pits of Islamic terror and anti-Semitic savagery that want only to kill Jews and annihilate Israel. They are free to live in this imaginary world if they wish to, but the consequences are grim, as we see today. Subjugated and savaged Arabs will fight back, generation after generation, just as the Jews did historically, inspired as they were by the moral force of the ‘Deuteronomistic’ way. If the world does not offer you justice, you fight for your rights.
The missing element in Israeli behaviour is to ask if Israel’s own policies have had any impact on reciprocal Arab behaviour. If this is a war between two sides – which I believe it is – then both need to examine their policies, and make concessions to resolve their disputes. Peace-making and conflict resolution must be anchored in law that dispenses justice equally to all protagonists. The law we have to deal with here comprises UN resolutions and bodies of international conventions and legal precedents.
We cannot pick one UN resolution we want implemented – say, 1559 – and forget the others, such as, say, 242 and 338. This is what has happened since 1967 and even before. The rights of Israel have been given priority over the rights of Arabs, and this skewed perception has been backed by US might.
I wish Israeli journalists would apply to their writing and analysis the moral dictates and divine exhortations that their Jewish forefathers passed down from generation to generation: obey the law, treat others equally, pursue justice, choose life. Journalists should identify the legitimate rights, grievances and needs of both sides by providing facts rather than propaganda.
Israel and the US have ploughed ahead for decades with a predatory Israeli policy that savages Arab rights, land and dignity. In return, public opinion in the Arab world has become violently anti-Israeli, and resistance movements have emerged in Palestine and Lebanon. If current policies continue, similar movements will emerge elsewhere, just as Hamas and Hizbollah were born in the early 1980s in response to the Israeli occupation of their lands.
Moses had it right, perhaps because he accumulated much wisdom during his 120 years of life. Meet the legitimate demands of both parties to a dispute, he said, and a fair, lasting resolution will emerge. Ignore the centrality of justice and equal rights for both parties, and you will be smitten by divine fire – or fated to fight your adversaries forever, as Israel seems to have opted to do.
Tony wrote:
“frankly, anyone who tells me my “national home” as a Jew is somewhere other than where I was born or chose to live, is an anti-Semite in my book,…”
This was the point Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of the British cabinet that issued the Balfour Declaration, made in his famous memorandum regarding this declaration:
“Memorandum of Edwin Montagu on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government – Submitted to the British Cabinet, August 1917
I have chosen the above title for this memorandum, not in any hostile sense, not by any means as quarrelling with an anti-Semitic view which may be held by my colleagues, not with a desire to deny that anti-Semitism can be held by rational men, not even with a view to suggesting that the Government is deliberately anti-Semitic; but I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic in result (and) will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world.”
It has also become so in a manner Montagu could not foresee then – in that the outrages of the ‘Jewish State’ would provide fuel for this.
Most of Tony’s essay confuses the results of Arab hostility with the cause of Arab hostility. The small and simple migrations that happened before WWII were enough to trigger Arab violence and the conversion of the Mufti of Jerusalem to Nazism.
By the time the State of Israel was founded in 1948 the Jews had enough experience to know that peaceful co-existence was impossible.
The idea that the Arab-Israeli conflict results from a lack of justice for the Palestinians is naive and propagandistic. The root cause of the conflict is the refusal of the Arabs to accept Jews as their neighbors.
For the last 60 to 70 years, the Arab leadership has mostly been of the opinion that Israel and the Jewish settlements must be destroyed. The Palestinians could have peace, prosperity and sovereignty if they were not bent on the destruction of the State of Israel.
There is and was plenty of room for both groups, the Jews established their own separate city in Tel Aviv, there could have been peaceful accommodation with no killing and no evictions and much increased prosperity for the Arabs. But the Arabs insisted on war, which made living together impossible, and showed the Israelis the need for larger amounts of land.
The Arabs presented the Jews with a stark choice, give up on the idea of Israel or fight the Arabs. This is still the choice that the Arabs present.
Against all history, Tony believes antisemitism will never come back to power, and wants to give up on Israel. Daily, Ahmadinejad proves Tony wrong.
Mesozionism is dead, agreed. Neozionism, however, is alive, kicking and set to take its historical role.
“Israel, in other words, is here to stay”
But is it? Is Israel as a Jewish state really a sustainable option in the long-term? As you’ve said, Israel is faced with the almost inevitable decline in Jewish population vis a vis the Palestinians, who will, in the space of a few decades, form a majority in Israel and the OPT. Since Israel has no intention whatsoever of making any meaningful concessions in the West Bank – and clearly has every intention of holding on to the major ‘settlement blocs’ forever – the ‘demographic dilemma’ seems unresolvable from their point of view. Sure, Israel can have its cake and eat it right now – but the circumstances which have allowed this will not last forever, or anything close. Current events in Lebanon are a vivid demonstration of the fading of the old American order in the region. Sooner or later, at least one of the ‘moderate Arab governments’ will fall and be replaced by something – if not less objectionable than the current incumbents, certainly less servile to the US and Israel. Israel has survived so long, not because the Arab people in any way, shape or form accept the existence of a Zionist state on Palestinian land, but because their puppet governments have decided to throw in their lot with the US. As American power wanes, so too will Israel’s status as undisputed ME superpower. And all the time, Israel continues to make itself ever more hated in the region, with consequences which cannot be held off forever. More astute Israelis know this. The are only interested in their next beach barbeque.
Tony, you always end up contradicting yourself. You say that:
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The curious irony of history, though, is that while the Zionist movement managed to successfully create a nation state in the Middle East against considerable odds, that movement is dead — the majority of Jews quite simply don’t want to be part of a Jewish nation-state in the Middle East.
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That, of course, is totally false. Even though we don’t see the Jews of the diaspora (or to be more exact, THE EXILE), the large majority of Jews around the world do care about Israel and take part in various degrees with activities involved with Israel. You yourself talked about “alter kakker Zionists” you knew in good old South Africa. You and your fellow “progressives” are always moaning about the “Jewish Lobby” in the US and how it is too powerful.
You mention that aliyah is at an “all-time low”. Aliyah has always had its ups and downs. I made aliyah in the year of its all-time low, 1986. That years there were some 10,000 olim. However, in the following years there was an explosion of aliyah, with 200,000 arriving in 1990. I think there have been 1 million olim since then. Aliyah is slowly but steadily increasing even from “golden” North America. Aliyah is running strong from France.
The Birthright program, which gives a free trip to North American youth to Israel and which increases the conciousness of almost all participants about Zionism and Judaism (whether or not they make aliyah) has an all-time high number of participants with a long waiting list.
Your constant quoting of Uri Avneri and Avrum Burg as some kind of “experts” (I would call both Jewish antisemites-the fact Burg wears a kippa doesn’t change anything, so do the Neturei Karta friends of Ahmedinejad and they are Jewish antisemites as well) doesn’t carry any weight in Israel or among world Jewry, they are marginal figures who have no real political influence or following. Both play fast and loose with the truth.
You are say “antisemitism is a marginal phenomenon”. I presume that you are among those who dismiss the genocidal antisemitism expressed in much of the Arab/Muslim world as “not really meant seriously”. And of course you can guarantee that even if antisemitism is “marginal” in the West, it will remain that way for ever, right Tony? I know you consider yourself a prophet but I don’t know how many other people think you are. After all, in 1920 the antisemitic Czarist regime had been ousted and the German Weimar Republic had officially ended all restrictions on Jews there. How long did this happy state of affairs last in Central and Eastern Europe?
I know you get all thrilled saying that 100,000 Israeli citizens are living in Russia, but of course, something like 1.2 million former Russians are living in Israel and doing well, so what is your point? A large number of ex-New Zealanders left New Zealand over the years (Ernest Rutherford and RAF Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park come to mind) but does this prove that New Zealand is some kind of failure?
I realize you, like Phil Weiss, MJ Rosenberg and others are carrying on a desparate struggle to prove to your “progressive” friends that you are not one of the those “primitive, parochial, nationalist Zionist Jews” which is why you write article after article quoting distorted views of Jewish history and denigrating the accomplishments of Israel. On the one hand you try to distance yourself from the rest of us, yet you keep writing about it, as if the amount of verbiage you expend on it will somehow draw the skin back out, just like the Hellenists painfully attempted.
“However, in the following years there was an explosion of aliyah, with 200,000 arriving in 1990. I think there have been 1 million olim since then.”
You say you live in Israel. Granted, that very fact involves closing your eyes to a LOT of things you don’t want to see, but surely it can’t have passed you by that there was a very good reason for the ‘explosion in aliyah’ in the 90s? Namely, the arrival of up to a million Jews (and non-Jews) from the former Soviet Union. However, that ‘miracle’ is extrememly unlikely to be repeated, and there is little prospect of large-scale immigration to Israel in the foreseeable future.
“the large majority of Jews around the world do care about Israel and take part in various degrees with activities involved with Israel.”
Aside from the fact that most surveys show that, at least in the US, interest in Israel is rapidly waning among young Jews, taking part “in various degrees with activities involved with Israel” – whatever that may be – is in no way going to solve Israel’s ‘demographic dilemma’. Shouting through the GIYUS loudspeaker is one thing – uping sticks and moving to Israel quite another.
“You are say “antisemitism is a marginal phenomenon”. I presume that you are among those who dismiss the genocidal antisemitism expressed in much of the Arab/Muslim world as “not really meant seriously”.
Let me see if I’ve got this right. According to you, anti-semitism is (for now) marginal in the West, but rampant and ‘genocidal’ in the “Arab/Muslim” world. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Jews living comfortably in the “West” would run for succor to….. the “Arab/Muslim world”.
OK.
Hopefully your post is seminal. The dictionary defines as: ?containing or contributing the seeds of later development.?
Suggesting in the future, amongst the jews there could be a common ground with a positive view.
Now there is an ever widening schism. You have been brave to write this post.
Zionism can be reinvented.
It seems to be a small but ruthless minority pulling all the strings, from the media to the wars to the million who have left Israel.
C?mon all ye powerful, make the peace.
How do the religious reconcile with the secular? Can?t spirituality be a private matter?
Israeli policy is ironically pushing the jews away from Zionism.
Is it not the 11th hour?
Avnery?s last piece mentioned when ?We were young and self-confident, and did not doubt for a moment that we would win.?
This captures the Israeli/Zionist mentality so well. There was a blip of reflection after the last Lebanon war. Now I think it is back to ?business as usual?.
And all these voices of reason on the net, on the blogs. To what avail.
Combine religion with money and we have an industrial military complex.
And the generated enemies have to match that.
Maybe the nation state is in reality separate to religion.
This is the core issue, it is the biggest secret of all. The religious run Israel, its foriegn policy and its mafias. There are no jury trials, it is a hidden political world, enshrined in the Israeli constitution.
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To Fred–
I agree that the Palestinian reaction to Zionist settlement was brutal and immoral, but it’s also not very sensible (or moral) to come to an already inhabited land with the notion that your people have a superior claim to it–the ethnic cleansing of 1948 was an inevitability given that attitude.
Tony has written a beautiful essay which expresses much of what I have been feeling for many years. I’m not sure I agree with his assessment that Zionism is dead or dying. While it is true that Jews have generally voted with their feet to remain outside Israel, I have found American Jewish support for the state to be very strong and almost universal. Engaging most other Jews in coversation about Israel is usually quite unpleasant.
What I find remarkable is that US Jews rarely if ever weigh the question raised by Tony’s comparison of himself with his friend Jamil. We Jews rightfully demand full equality in the land of our birth and country of our citizenship. Anything less would be utterly intolerable. Yet most of us have no problem with the idea that we can pick up and move halfway around the world and exercise superiour rights and status over those born there who happen to be “ethnically challenged.” Even Israeli Arab citizens, who are far better off than Arabs in the territories and Palestinians in the diaspora, like Jamil, are not equals to Jews from Brooklyn. How is it that we Jews never even consider if we are entitled to such privileges, and to many, even raising the question is a sign of anti-Semitism. I would think that even pro-Apartheid whites in S. Africa at least thought about whether racial preferences were right or wrong.
Another consideration: Anyone who doubts Tony’s musings over the use of the Holocaust to galvanize support for Israel should recall the story of Count Bernadotte. Here was a man who risked his life to save tens of thousands from Nazi camps and bring them to safety in Sweden. Interestingly, he was the first choice for the mission undertaken by Wallenberg, and one cannot reasonably doubt that he would have acted similarly had he been able to go. Yet unlike his countryman, who is justly held up as a model of selflessness and humanity, Bernadotte is all but forgotten. Don’t try to find out about him at any Holocaust museum, and Yad Vashem itself, which honors over 20,000 “Righteous Among the Nations,” doesn’t honor him at all. Why? Because he had the indecency to be murdered by uber-Zionists. The Holocaust remembrance crowd does not want to celebrate the life of a hero who reminds us all of the questionable moral history of Zionism.
Finally, Tony explores the rather perverse mutual dependence between Israel and worldwide anti-Zionism. It is in Israel’s interest to promote anti-Semitism or at least the perception thereof to encourage Jewish emigration to the supposedly only place on Earth that Jews are trul safe. An excellent illustration of this is the angry 2004 exchange between Sharon, who encouraged French Jews to run for their lives from the increasing French Muslim population, and Chirac, who was outraged by the suggestion that the French are incapable of protecting their Jewish citizens. This is just par for the course.
I had noticed that Tony had posted no column for an unusual period of time. This was well worth waiting for.
“I agree that the Palestinian reaction to Zionist settlement was brutal and immoral …”
“Brutal and immoral” huh. Ha, that makes me think of that ironical French saying which I will translate for your benefit: “This animal is quite vicious. It bites when it is attacked.”
It didn’t take the Arabs long to figure out what these intruders had come for – to steal their land. And they reacted accordingly.
Moreover, many of these early Zionist settlers treated them like shit. Jacob Israel de Haan, the Dutch-Jewish poet who was murdered, on his way back from evening prayers in the synagogue, by the Haganah in 1924, has testified to this.
About that murder: the murderer,Avraham Tehomi,who never got apprehended, declared later in life that nothing was done “without the order of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi” (who later became the second president of Israel).
Did anyone say “brutal and immoral”?
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Tony you are spot on.
Let us intensify the efforts for the LOVE of Palestine. Do your part and perform your responsibility toward the Palestinian human rights. Silence is complicity, no actions means approval.
Mark you calendar for May 23-25 where we assert the Palestinian National rights. We will say it loud that we will never forget. Palestinians are the Key holders of peace. Join the thousands and strengthen the network of the thousands of activists. Express your opinion and let the many panelists know of where Palestine should go. Support our efforts to empower our community and assert the Palestinians right of return. Join the many Palestinian Americans and their supporters in Chicago commemorating the 60th year of the forced exile of the Palestinian people. Be pro active, ask questions to the Panelists and discuss the current event. We must empower ourselves and make a strong network for Justice, Peace and Freedom. Be pro active. Enough talks, Register on line.
Yosef Grodzinsky’s “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” is worth looking at in reference to this discussion.
Grodzinsky documents the collaboration of the Zionist movements with the anti-semitic policies of the western governments in particular that of the US.
Neither Zionists nor American anti-semites wanted holocaust survivors going anywhere but Israel.
The Israeli journalists do not speak out because of fear.
There are many many liberal Israelis.
But punishment comes through the family. Currently Israel and Zionism are about biblical values. And any unembracing will be punished.
@Falastini, apart from the possibility of you spamming, the issue is not about Palestinians rights so much as about Jewish behaviour.
@Ernie, This is the obvious worry!
I know how much you love the Barak quote. It’s probably the best-ever Kinsley gaffe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsley_gaffe
Tony – you are, of course, right that Israel is an intractable historical fact, and it is kept that way not just by its army and airforce and 200 nukes, but, for the moment, by its 5 percent growth rate. But I suspect that if we look into the not-too-distant, globally warmed future, all sorts of unanticipated challenges to its current state of being and even existence will arise. First, there is the politics of water, already a major issue between Israel, the Palestinians and their neighbours (with Israel sucking it dry to feed its farmlands and pumping out its sewerage at the same time). But if current projections of climate change are borne out (and the tendency with the science is towards ever-more dire projections – towards saying that ‘we underestimated the impact of this or that’), then we can expect that the water shortage in the Middle East will become ever-more drastic, threatening agriculture, forcing emigration, prompting death and so on. Second, there is the oil shortage – and according to some projections we are already reaching the peak oil moment. What is clear is that as it becomes harder to extract, and as demand for it increases, the price will rise, and as the price rises, so will the relative power of the nations which have the stuff (including, obviously, the Arab states) – until it runs out altogether, when their power will implode. But in the medium term that means that their bargaining power relative to Israel’s will grow. Third, there is the shift in global economic and political power – away from the United States and in the directions of China, Russia and India. Ultimately, this will be reflected in military and diplomatic power, which could mean that Israel’s current levels of international protection diminish. There are several other spin-off considerations, mainly relating to global warming, that also need to be taken into account, of which human migration is probably the most significant. The direction of this migration, by and large, will be from south to north, and from hotter climates to cooler ones – in other words, away from Israel. Precisely how these factors will affect Israel is, of course, difficult to predict, but they are unlikely to aid its longevity. I might just turn out that what appears an intractable historical fact today will be up for grabs in decades to come.
Ben-David wrote:
“… Uri Avneri and Avrum Burg … they are marginal figures who have no real political influence or following. Both play fast and loose with the truth.”
“Marzel to cabinet: Kill left-wing leader
In speech to supporters far-rightist says Kadima party of traitors, calls on government to carry out targeted killing against leftist figure Uri Avneri
Efrat Weiss Published: 03.20.06, 19:52 / Israel News ”
Avnery is so marginal that his enemies want him out of the way.
Did anyone say “brutal and immoral”?
Ernie Haberkern wrote:
“Grodzinsky documents the collaboration of the Zionist movements with the anti-semitic policies of the western governments in particular that of the US.”
Lenny Brenner went a bit further afield and picked out the collaboration with Nazi Germany (“Zionism in the Age of the Dictators”).
Yes, Arie, I said brutal and immoral. During the 1920’s, Arabs rioted against Jews and killed dozens of them, most of them innocent. I realize that in your nice black and white world there can only be “good people who belong to the victims” and “bad people who are oppressors”, and they divide neatly, so that one side has all the villains and the other all the victims, but meanwhile, in the real world, when conflicts occur you frequently have grown men slaughtering children in vicious ugly atrocities and both sides do it, Arie. Or didn’t you know that? Or do you think that the Hebron massacre, for instance, was justifiable?
Now if you managed to get through that paragraph without having an apoplectic attack, let me add that I think the Zionists had no right whatsoever to come to Palestine with the intent of turning it into a Jewish state. Zero, nada, zilch. They had the right to come and live side-by-side with the Arabs in complete equality. Period. And furthermore, when you add them all up, the Zionist side has committed far more murders than their Arab opponents.
I have just about zero respect for people on either side of this controversy who make excuses for the cold-blooded murder of children. Sorry if that offends you Arie. No, actually, I’m not.
Donald wrote:
“I have just about zero respect for people on either side of this controversy who make excuses for the cold-blooded murder of children.”
Nobody here made excuses for the ‘cold-blooded murder of children’. You are making that up.
But if the killing of children is your main concern I wonder why you reserved your opprobrium for the Arab side. The Zionists have and had the absolute record for that.
Let us look at last year. Gideon Levy wrote then, at the 28th of September, in Haaretz:
“It was a pretty quiet year, relatively speaking. Only 457 Palestinians and 10 Israelis were killed, according to the B’Tselem human rights organization, including the victims of Qassam rockets. Fewer casualties than in many previous years. However, it was still a terrible year: 92 Palestinian children were killed (fortunately, not a single Israeli child was killed by Palestinians, despite the Qassams). One-fifth of the Palestinians killed were children and teens – a disproportionate, almost unprecedented number. The Jewish year of 5767. Almost 100 children, who were alive and playing last New Year, didn’t survive to see this one.”
And I wonder too why, under your guise of impartiality, you now single out Hebron among the long list of atrocities Jews and Arabs committed against each other during the Mandate years.
As far as Hebron is concerned you might be interested in the following bit in a review of Tom Segev’s “The Mandate Years”:
. “Most of Hebron’s Jews were saved because Arabs hid them in their houses,” Segev writes, adding that Zionist archives list 435 Jews who escaped death in this way…. When the violence that followed the Hebron massacre subsided, 55 Arabs were convicted of murder and 25 sentenced to death. Two of the 70 Jews tried for murder were convicted and sentenced to death. Their sentences, unlike those passed on most of the Arabs, were commuted.”
Strange but I have never read of Jews saving Palestinians by hiding them in their homes – they are more adept at destroying those of their adversaries.
Read this editorial in Le Monde Diplomatique:
http://mondediplo.com/2008/05/17judaism
I singled out Hebron because you flipped out, Arie, when I mentioned the brutal and immoral behavior of the Palestinian reaction to Zionism. The first large scale massacres were the Palestinian attacks on Jews. I also said that the Zionist side has killed far more. And you’re still imagining that I favor the Zionist side, though anyone looking at my first post would have noticed that I mentioned the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and how it was a near inevitability given an ideology that said they had the right to take the land. No person capable of minimal reading comprehension could have seen that as friendly to Zionism, but you went ballistic over the words “brutal and immoral” applied to the wrong side, and so here we are. It’s sort of funny to me–I read Norman Finkelstein, mostly agreeing with him, and Edward Said (same reaction) and Robert Fisk (again with agreement) and several other authors along with websites like this and B’Tselem, generally agreeing with their points, and yet you with your keen sense of what a person should or shouldn’t say thinks I’m secretly a Zionist because I try to reach someone on the other side with an argument. It really doesn’t help to lie about history or to act as though atrocities in this conflict are limited to one side.
As for my accusation against you, it was not fair–I should have just accused you of hysteria. I wonder if you react that way if someone consistently talks about the atrocities of the Zionists and never mentions the atrocities of the Palestinians unless pushed into doing it.
I’ve read Tom Segev’s book and know that some Arabs saved Jews. One thing I got out of that book was that there were people of good will on both sides, but the leaders (on both sides) were not among their number. Your last sentence is just stupid –I’ve never read of Jews saving Palestinians by bringing them into their homes, but I’ve read of plenty of Jews who have devoted much energy to the Palestinian cause, fighting for their rights against the Israeli government.
Anyway, your ego is fully engaged, so I expect you’ll continue to find evidence of a dastardly pro-Zionist orientation in my praise of Edward Said and Norman Finkelstein, but maybe you’ll surprise me.
Speaking of ego, though, I am probably boring people to death with this argument Arie and I are having. Sorry about that–I’ll stop.
I was talking about that particular post of yours not your collected works. If your attitude towards the conflict as a whole didn’t fully come out there that was hardly my fault. Neither could I gather from what you said there which books you had read with approval.
The reason USi in 1947-8 disallowed Jews settling was our government wanted them to settle in Palestine. All the Jewish politicians voted for it.
See this and be shocked!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKMOmDaptzA
Tony,
Spanish Jews were doing just peachy in the years before 1492. Same with Jews in the Weinmar Republic, who considered themselves to be living at the apex of a “globalized” civilization.
Then came the stock market crash. So much for civilization.
By the way, how is the housing market doing today?
I will not draw this parallel too far, I don’t think the U.S. is about to go fascist. But the fact is, things can change in an instant. It may be that Jews like to live in a variety of locations in this globalized world. However, if they ever have to flee their homelands en masse and very quickly, Israel is the only place that will take them. All those other enlightened states like Germany and the United States have proven they will not rally to defend victimized populations. They will defend Jews within their borders, but Jews outside will be left to die, just like their brothers and sisters in Burma and Sudan.
Jewish self-determination remains necessary. Oppression of Palestinians comes from greed and perverseness, and Zionism can indeed be altered, but Jews need self-determination. Period.
I hope I misunderstood you in some way, because otherwise I think your post is a real shame. It is one thing to oppose the oppressive aspects of Zionism. But I can tell you from experience, an insensitivity to these issues is exactly why anti-Zionism sends AIPAC Jews into “siege” mode.
Shlomo: I don’t want to argue with your premise (which some might call paranoid) but with your logic. You still need to explain why Jews would be safer in Israel. If you want to argue for self-determination solely on security grounds, then you must explain why Jerusalem will be safer for Jews when the ghost of Isabella comes back.
As you know, in this pre-ghost period, Jlem is probably the most dangerous city for a Jew today, with Sderot a close second. Just curious to hear how Isabella’s reincarnation will turn Jerusalem into a safe haven for Jews.
Will Ahmadinejad move to North Korea, a place from which it’s much tougher to hit Israel? When the stock market crashes, maybe Assad will decide it’s lovey dovey time again with the Jewish State. Where’s the logic that says Israel is safe for Jews, when the last 60 years have seen more Jews killed in Israel than anywhere else on earth?
1938- “Jews to Palestine”
2008- “Jews out of Palestine”
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Shlomo,
On a superficial, emotional level, the idea that Jews need their own state because one never knows when Jews could again be the victims of persecution, seems to make sense. However, it does not stand up to a more logical analysis. Here’s a few reasons.
“However, if they ever have to flee their homelands en masse and very quickly, Israel is the only place that will take them. ”
Apart from the fact that there is no prospect of Jews having ‘to flee their homelands en masse” (I know, that does not mean it can’t happen), having a place to run to may not be the issue. The Jews of Europe perished, not because there was nowhere for them to go (Palestine was accepting Jewish immigrants) but because they could not get out of German occupied lands. Those who did manage to slip away survived – even if they only got as far as Switzerland. So the existence of a Jewish state is really neigher here nor there.
Secondly, the notion that Jews, among all the peoples of the world who have suffered persecution, have a right to their own nation-state smacks of the distasteful “jewish uniqueness’ train of thought. Roma have suffered horrid persection in many lands for centuries – and are the subjects of such persecution right now – but I’ve not heard anyone seriousy campaign for a Roma state in, say, the heart of Hungary. Similarly, the Kurds have suffered persecution for centuries and have no state of their own. The examples could be multiplied, but the point is that the possibility of widescale persecution of Jews at some unkwnown place and point in the future, hardly seems sufficient to say tha Jews – and only Jews – must have their own nation state built on another people’s land.
Thirdly, and to echo Bernard, Israel is now the most dangerous place for a Jew to live. Besides, if an anti-semitic maniac were to get power (and weapons) a concentrated population would make a far more tempting target than a scattered diaspora.
Finally, while anti-semitism is indeed marginal in Europe and the “West”, if it could be said to be a common phenonemon anywhere in the world it would be in… the Middle East. It seems absurd to urge Jews to emigrate to the very place where anti-semitism is at its most intense, and then claim that in so doing, they are seeking a refuge from that very thing.
“They will defend Jews within their borders, but Jews outside will be left to die, just like their brothers and sisters in Burma and Sudan.”
And Palestine? BTW the Burmese and the Sudanese have their own states, do they not?
YBD: Last year, 14K immigrants moved into Israel; 20K left.
Bernard,
Here is where I differ from many of my Zionist counterparts. I’m actually not so worried about the random kooky dictators who don’t believe in deterrence theory, the dumb luck terrorists, or the isolated knife attacks. That’s just right-wing noise used to justify the strangulation of Gaza.
What I am worried about is that for two thousand years, Jews have lived at the mercies of others, who were either indifferent our outright hostile toward us. Of course, more Jews have died in Israel than anywhere else, just as more Americans have died in America. If terrorists want to kill a handful of Jews or Americans, they know where to go. That’s not the issue. The issue is that for the first time in history, if Isabella 2.0 wants to massacre a majority of world Jewry, she’ll have to take out the IDF first.
Murphy,
During the Holocaust, thousands of Jews tried to escape Europe for the United States, only to be turned away at the border and sent back to their deaths. But during the past sixty years, endangered Jewish populations from Yemen to Ethiopia have been evacuated to Israel before the knife fell. Those Jews might be dead today if it were not for Israel.
Kurds are fighting furiously for a homeland now–and rightfully so. Roma also deserve their own state, or some form of special protection. Personally, I think it would be best if this came from the international community and applied to everyone. But given how pathetic the international response to the Darfur Genocide is even today, and given that Jews were Hitler’s primary target, could you understand why Zionists did not wait? Better everyone has these rights, but failing that, better Jews than no one. Especially since Jews in the late 1940’s had no way of knowing that the slaughter was through. 20/20 only in hindsight.
As I said to Bernard, I tend not to favor the “maniac with nukes” argument. It is really not specific to Jews. A maniac who wants to kill Americans/Westerners also knows all the big targets. On the other hand, a systematic pattern of domestic persecution across 2000 years is. Rulers would assume that their Jewish populations were “traitors”, even when Jews simply minded their bussiness and could not have threatened the state anyways. With a Jewish state, the risk of that reoccurring is much diminished.
Palestinians also deserve self-determination. The world should be in uproar over the situation in Gaza. Burmese are dying because their ruler cares only for power (and is probably mentally unstable to boot). They are not being killed for being Burmese. Jews were killed for being Jews. Sudanese have a state, but Black Darfuris are not being killed for being Sudanese; they are being killed because they are Black. I’m sorry that the offensive in Khartoum failed, and hope they succeed next time.
CONCLUSION (Don’t ask me why)
The issue for Jews (and for all other targeted peoples) is not random killings. It is when a head of state decides he wants to systematically slaughter all Jews (or Kurds/Darfuris/etc) under his administration. That is when there is a threat for destruction of a people. If Jews (or others) administer themselves in any real fashion, this threat is almost entirely eliminated. Ideally the UN would do this, but until they are able, you can not blame targeted populations for seeking their own means. For me, these are universal principles, and these are the main lessons of the Holocaust that most of the world still has not learned.
Does Israel even have a future?
No matter how I try to come up with plausible scenarios for Israel’s future, I can only come up with five realistic scenarios:
(1) Two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine share the 30,000 sq km of land approximately equally. This is now impossible since Israel has ~500,000 settlers on the land that would be needed for Palestine. Some gullible idealists insist that once a peace treaty is in place the settlers will just move back to Israel. Fat chance, since the settlers have clearly documented that is NOT going to happen, in fact many will fight to the death against leaving the WB. I give this scenario zero chance of happening.
(2) one-state solution, where one secular state encompasses the entire 30,000 sq km of land, with every person equal under the law. Jews and Arabs have the same rights and can live anywhere in the land. This would be a land title nightmare with virtually the entire country tied up in legal disputes forever. Again the settlers would violently fight this because they would either have to give up most of the land or pay compensation. Jews would also become a minority in the country, A significant minority, but a minority. The country would not be a Jewish state. I think this has about a 30% chance of happening, particularly as the current situation deteriorates.
(3) Dump the problem on Egypt and Jordan solution, where Gaza is transferred to Egypt and what ever is left over in the WB after the Israelis get done carving it up, goes to Jordan. Even with huge “incentives” from the US, I do not see this happening, since it would severely destabilize both countries and probably lead to new, very unfriendly governments. I give this scenario zero chance of happening.
(4) Ethnic cleansing solution, where Israel “resettles” all the non-Jews outside “greater Israel” (the 30,000 sq km of land). While there are many in Israel that want this, it has some practical limits, in that there is no place to ship the unwilling people to and if Israel tries this, it will very likely trigger a violent war that it will very probably lose. I give this scenario zero chance of happening.
(5) Ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Palestine. Given the current flow of history, this is the most likely scenario. Although many discount it, massive internal problems in the US will very likely force it to back away from Israel. Once the US has neutered itself and the Arabs build up their armies, it will only be a matter of time before Israel fights and loses its last war. I give this a 70% chance of happening because of the extreme hubris of the Israelis. They think that their past victories mean that future victories are always going to happen. That, of course, is NOT the lesson of 10,000 years of human history, but groups persist in believing the myth of permanent invisibility.
I would like to see scenario (2), but fear scenario (5) is the most likely over the next few years. It is a shame, because there is no need for millions to die for the failure of the Zionist myths.
Those that don’t like these scenarios, I challenge you to come up with a scenario, BASED ON REALITY, acknowledging known human nature and showing the well known dynamics of power that has a chance of happening. Some people have taken up the challenge, but have chosen to ignore significant realities that made their scenarios totally implausible.
Until one of the scenarios plays out, expect continuing low-grade war with less than 500 people total (both sides combined) getting killed per month. As Tony noted, this will slowly cause more and more Israelis to leave for safer and more economically viable places.
Shlomo:
>> Of course, more Jews have died in Israel than anywhere else, just as more Americans have died in America.
That’s not what I meant. I believe you know that.
Anyway, I am not as impressed by the IDF as you are. If Israel had been living right next to Germany in 1939, it would have been wiped out, IDF or no IDF. The Wehrmacht was by far the world’s strongest army.
So I just don’t see your point. In a few decades, Israel will be surrounded by armies collectively stronger than the IDF. That’s a fact. Not a fantasy like the roundup of Jews in New York City. Just today, the IDF is proving incapable of protecting Haifa residents from Nasrallah. The picture of Israel as a fortress where Jews of the world can take shelter is dangerously quaint, I’m afraid.
William Kristol’s editorial in today’s NYTs would beg to differ with any of the truths
which Tony has set straight with courage. Sadly the majority of the non-Jewish readers who take the trouble to do Mr. Kristol the honor of finishing his Monday contribution to the Times will nod their heads approvingly having believed the whole drivel of a publicity piece as God’s honest truth. The discerning Jewish readership will not be taken in so easily and for that we can be thankful. It’s just that not enough of the Jewish Times audience are doing much to discredit Bush’s wishful thinking and the Peace Process /Two State Solution lie.
“The issue is that for the first time in history, if Isabella 2.0 wants to massacre a majority of world Jewry, she’ll have to take out the IDF first.”
To echo Bernard, your idea of Israel as some sort of haven is quaint and unrealistic. The IDF – probably the world’s most overrated army (and that’s not my opinion alone) are unable to obtain security for people living in Israel’s own border towns – and this is where their enemy has nothing more than homemade rockets at its disposal. A genuine worldclass army – which the Wehrmacht was and the IDF may once have been but certainly is not now – wouldn’t be too bothered by Israel’s conscript army.
“During the Holocaust, thousands of Jews tried to escape Europe for the United States, only to be turned away at the border and sent back to their deaths.”
Then blame the US who – much to the delight of the Zionists – refused Jewish entry to the US. But my point still stands – these Jews could still have gone to Palestine. It was getting out of occupied Europe, not getting into Palestine, that was the problem.
“But during the past sixty years, endangered Jewish populations from Yemen to Ethiopia have been evacuated to Israel before the knife fell.”
Even taking the offical Israeli story that these Jews were in danger of their lives and not just making up the numbers in Israel, you are neglecting the fact that most Jews in the ME and elsewhere leaved in relative (yes, I know it was only relative) peace with their neighbours until the creation of Israel.
“Rulers would assume that their Jewish populations were “traitors”, even when Jews simply minded their bussiness and could not have threatened the state anyways. With a Jewish state, the risk of that reoccurring is much diminished.”
Actually, I would say the opposite is true. The existance of a Jewish state could, in theory, provide an excuse for anti-semites to say “You’ve got your own country, why don’t you go home?” in the same way that BNP types tell Brits of Pakistani origin to ‘go home’. And while Jews encounter almost no discrimination in the US now, some fear that, if America’s economic and international political situation continue to decline, Israel may well be blamed for it, and with it the US Jews who – supposedly – connived with Israel against America’s interests. I’m not anticipating this to happen soon, nor would there be any pogroms, but they are not a danger anywhere.
“given that Jews were Hitler’s primary target, could you understand why Zionists did not wait?”
Zionists did not wait??? Zionism really kicked off in 1882, a full 60 years before the Holocaust. Plus, as I’m sure you’re well aware, the plight of European Jews was of no great concern to the Zionists – quite the contrary.
Anyway, to again echo Bernard, hypothetical fantasies about pogroms against Jews in Florida might be the stuff of Zionist dreams (remember that anti-semitism and Zionism have always gone hand in hand) but they have little to do with reality. Reality is that Israel, like all other countries, is not an island cut off from the world, however high the walls it chooses to build. Like all other nations, it cannot thrive without the goodwill of others, specifically those to whom it is close. Since Israel has managed to provoke only the most extreme disgust in just about every single person for hundreds of miles around, and the balance of power is inexorably moving away from the US and its Middle EAstern clients, Israel needs to ‘get real’ instead of indulging in paranoid fantasies.
Spyguy,
I agree with you. I really do not see any way out for Israel.
“continuing low-grade war with less than 500 people total (both sides combined) getting killed per month.”
So, about 498 Palestinians, and two broken windows in Sderot?
It is a very thought provoking article.
Some of the things which I think are always ignored or blacked out by the media need to be noted.
1) We always talk about pluralism as good thing, a humane thing. How then, a country which discriminates against human beings with a different ethnicity or religion be called good or desirable? The emphasis on the ‘Jewish Character of Israel’ is nothing but institutional approval of discrimination and ethnic cleansing. If the world is moving towards a more humane and just society, there is no future for countries like Israel.
2) Judaism was the first Semitic religion. Then came Christianity and Islam. It is logical, therefore, to infer that many Palestinian Jews must have embraced the newer faiths over the centuries. Even with the perverted logic justifying Israel, is it right to drive out their descendants because they belong to another faith?
3)When we are denouncing Palestinian Resistance for terror, we conveniently black out the big terrorist acts which facilitated the creation of Israel. You can still read about them in the Pre-1948 -archives of respected British and American newspapers. Are we trying to hoodwink and brainwash the new generation? Please refer to “20th Century Day by Day” either on CD or book form to confirm this. And the most amazing thing is some of the hard-core terrorists became top leaders of Israel and shook hands with the American Presidents!
4) The best thing to do is to say good bye to ‘Two State Solution’ and ‘Jewish Character of Israel’. Create one state which is an epitome of justice where everybody staying there is equal, and all live in peace and prosperity.
I forgot to include another point which I intended to in my previous comment.
Arab and Muslim world never were known for Anti-Semitism prior to the creation of Israel. There were significant Jewish minorities living peacefully in many Arab Countries, even in Iran for centuries, and in some countries still are. Moorish Spain, as noted by prominent Western Historians, had many Jews in important position in the government. There was never anything remotely comparable to the persecution of Jews in Europe in the Muslim world.
Islam recognized the Prophets of Judaism and Christianity and called Jews and Christians “People With The Scriptures”
Islam forbids the conversion of Jewish or Christian woman against her will if a Muslim gets married to her and orders that she be allowed to practice her faith even after marriage.
One of the sayings of the Prophet of Islam “Offer your shoulder, in case you encounter a funeral of a Christian or a Jew, which is passing by.”
Spyguy
Convince the Rabbis, Convince the religious Jews, to see the beauty in Islam.
And you will have peace, the universe will take care of it.
I am not suggesting for a second that Jews should convert to Islam.
After the Black riots in the US,(in the 60’s and 70’s I think) the TV was full of programs about the Blacks. In fact it was the time of the introduction of the word ‘Black’ into common usage.
Flood the Israelis with the positive sides to Islam and the Arabs.
Even Haaretz won’t publish a comment of mine. Which shows how controlled the media is in shaping the public opinion.
Start with Rumi.
This is the best chance for the Jews and for Israel.
And as a byproduct we will lose ‘the war on terror’.
I think most of the postings assume a continuing flow of aid and advanced weaponry from the US. You should be aware that there is a growing discontentment among Americans on the Left with America’s role as enabler of an Apartheid system. Controlled media keeps this discontemment from public airing but it is there. Israel needs to clean up its act and its acceptance of the criminality of the “settler” movement may cause it to lose its indispensable guardian.
Israel celebrates its 60 years of well-practiced terror and endless mendacity. Enforcing a sub-human status upon indigenous Palestinians is not enough for this miscreant state, it must keep the world poised at the brink of a nuclear abyss for the sake of its hegemonist ambitions.
There is nothing good to say about Israel. It has brought nothing good to the world. It is a pariah and has no moral conscience.
Yes. Israel exist and it is probably here to stay, but what a shame.
What do you mean zionism is dead. The USA is the NEW home of the zionist jews. These people and the neocon nazis in this country are the scum of the earth and are bleeding this country dry for THEIR own benefit.
These people have made the rest of the world despise ALL Americans and I for one hate them for that.
spyguy, no way scenario (5) can happen with the 200 Israeli nukes.
And you are forgetting a variant of scenario (1): Two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine share the 30,000 sq km of land as it is today (with the Jewish settlers staying where they are). I give that a 50 % chance.
And the other 50 % for scenario (2), forced mainly by the Arabs’ increasing bargaining power after Peak Oil, with Israelis having to choose between Jewish state and middle-ages life or multicultural state with fuel.
Mind that Cuba faced a similar situation when they were cut off from practically free Russian oil in 1991, and stood up until Chavez came to their rescue.
Nissar,
“We always talk about pluralism as good thing, a humane thing. How then, a country which discriminates against human beings with a different ethnicity or religion be called good or desirable?”
This contradiction has always struck me too. In the liberal, Western world Israel claims to be a part of (when it suits) right-thinking people are expected to give at least lip service to the values of pluralism and equality between people of all races and creeds. Yet, the Jewish state of Israel officially gives special privileges to members of one ‘ethnicity’ only, and members of that ‘ethnicity’ are automatically granted citizenship in Israel, even if they have no connection at all with the land. By contrast, hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians who were born there and whose family lived there for hundreds of years, have no right even to visit.
I think the reason this contradiction at the heart of ‘liberal’ Israel has evaded widespread censure for so long is due to a combination of circumstances, not least of which the sympathy for Jews and the belief, outlined by Shlomo, that they need their ‘own place’. However, as Israel finds it harder and harder to get uncritical acceptance of its official story, things will change. Carter’s book, “Peace not Apartheid”, though tame and unremarkable in and of itself, is one of the first major steps towards the breaking of the Israel taboo in mainstream US circles.
Tony: Who edits your magazine? According to a recent issue of Time, this was an accurate statement of the Founding of Israel: “The birth of Israel was a desperate affair; it arose from Holocaust ashes, and Arab countries vowed to carry on where the Nazis had left off.”
So now the Arabs were part of the Final Solution? George Orwell….please phone home!
Absolutely spot-on commentary, mate!
Tony, you have two posters going by the name “Matthew”. I only posted the message about Time Magazine.
Matthew, the Original
As richard vajs (#42 – May 13th, 2008 at 6:35 am) notes, the Israeli assumption of continuing US support is very probably a delusion.
The US is facing some very MAJOR internal problems that have NOT been planned for, even though all are reasonably well documented. These coming crisis include: Peak Oil (actually very expensive oil – the oil will not actually run out, there will just be much less than demand, causing very high prices), nearly $1,000 TRILLION in debt (most owed to China, Japan and Social Security retirement fund), Retirement funding (spare Social Security funds have been “loaned” to the US and the US has no way to pay them back), and Health Care funding (US has “universal care” but funds it terribly).
Any one of these crisis would sink a lesser nation, but all four will hit at about the same time, severely limiting the US ability to help Israel. These crisis will force the people of the US to turn inward and to care very little how many Israelis are endangered. Is it the humane thing to do? probably not, but the human animal has a long tradition of dealing with its own problems long before helping others.
The bottom line, as richard vajs notes, is the US will “throw Israel under the bus” in the near future.
PeakOilGuy (#45 – May 13th, 2008 at 9:32 am) says …
“spyguy, no way scenario (5) can happen with the 200 Israeli nukes.”
I think it is important to note that those nukes are worthless unless every Israeli wants to commit suicide. If Israel nukes anyone, it is very likely that someone will nuke Israel. Additionally, if Israel starts WW3, I suspect the backlash against all Jews around the world will be fierce. That isn’t fair, but is just the way humans tend to react in situations like that.
As for his …
“And you are forgetting a variant of scenario (1): Two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine share the 30,000 sq km of land as it is today (with the Jewish settlers staying where they are).”
This just turns into scenario #2 (the one state solution) after a period of time. The Palestinians and the world will not allow Israel to have a two class nation forever. The current situation is unstable and WILL morph into one of the five scenarios.