Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He was also assimilated and a journalist. It was his coverage of the Dreyfus trial in France which sparked him to want to deal with the Jewish question. Dreyfus was a French officer falsely accused of espionage and convicted because he was Jewish. Herzl addressed his piece, "The Jewish State," to "my dear Lord Rothschild." In that sense, he was writing a funding proposal.
Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (1896) in Arthur Hertzberg's The Zionist Idea
The idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is an ancient one: It is the restoration of the Jewish State.
The world resounds with clamor against the Jews, and this has revived the dormant idea.
....
The understand of economics among men actively engaged in business is often astonishly slight. This seems to be the only explanation for the fact that even Jews faithfully parrot the catchword of the anti-Semites: "We live off 'Host-nations'; and if we had no 'Host-nation' to sustain us we should starve to death." This is one case in point of the undermining of our self-respect through unjust accusations....
The Jewish question still exists. It would be foolish to deny it. It is a misplaced piece of medievalism which civilized nations do not even yet seem able to shake off, try as they will. They proved they had this high-minded desire when they emancipated us. The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilized countries--see, for instance, France--so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.
Anti-Semitism is a highly complex movement, which I think I understand. I approach this movement as a Jew, yet without fear or hatred. I believe that I can see in it the elements of cruel sport, of common commercial rivalry, of inherited prejudice, or religious intolerance--but also of a supposed need for self-defense. I consider the Jewish question neither a social nor a religious one, even though it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, and to solve it we must first of all establish it as an international political problem to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council.
We are a people--one people.
We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes superloyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose ancestors had not yet come at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in the country. The majority decide who the "alien" is; this, and all else in the relations between peoples, is a matter of power. I do not surrender any part of our prescriptive right when I make this statement merely in my own name,, as an individual. In the world as it now is and will probably remain, for an indefinite period, might takes precedence over right. It is without avail, therefore, for us to be loyal patriots, as were the Huguenots, who were forced to emigrate. If we were left in peace . . .
But I think we shall not be left in peace.
Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has endured such struggles and sufferings as we have. Jew-baiting has merely winnowed out our weakings; the strong among us defiantly return to their own whenever persecution breaks out. This was most clearly apparent in the period immediately following the emancipation of the Jews. Those Jews who rose highest intellectually and materially entirely lost the sense of unity with their people. Wherever we remain politically secure for any length of time, we assimilate. I think this is not praiseworthy. Hence, the statesman who would wish to see a Jewish strain added to his nation must see to it that we continue politically secure. But even a Bismarck could never achieve that.
....
No one can deny the gravity of the Jewish situation. Wherever they live in appreciable number, Jews are persecuted in greater or lesser measure. Their equality before the law, granted by statute, has become practically a dead letter. They are debarred from filling even moderate high offices in the army, or in any public or private institutions. And attempts are being made to thrust them out of business also: "Don't buy from Jews!"
Attacks in parliaments, in assemblies, in the press, in the pulpit, in the street, on journey--for example, their exclusion from certain hotels--even in places of recreation are increasing from day to day. The forms of persecution vary according to country and social circle. In Russia, special taxes are levied on Jewish villages; in Romania, a few persons are put to death; in Germany, they get a good beating occasionally; in Austria, anti-Semites exercise their terrorism over all public life; in Algeria, there are traveling agitators; in Paris, the Jews are shut out of the so-called best social circles and excluded from clubs. The varieties of anti-Jewish expression are innumerable. But this is not the occasion to attempt the sorry catalogue of Jewish hardships. We shall not dwell on particular cases, however painful.
....
The common people have not, and indeed cannot have, any comprehension of history. They do not know that the sins of the Middle Ages are now being visited on the nations of Europe. We are what the ghetto made us. We have without a doubt attained pre-eminence in finance because medieval conditions drove us to it. The same process is now being repeated. We are again being forced into moneylending--now named stock exchange--by being kept out of other occupations. But once on the stock exchange, we are again objects of contempt. At the same time we continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellectuals who find no outlet, and this endangers our social position as much as does our increasing wealth. Educated Jews without means are now rapidly becoming socialists. Hence we are certain to suffer acutely in the struggle between the classes, because we stand in the most exposed position in both the capitalist and socialist camps.
....
Palestine or Argentina?
Is Palestine or Argentina preferable? The Society will take whatever it is given and whatever Jewish public opinion favors. The Society will determine both these points.
[paragraph on the advantages of Argentina] ....
Palestine is our unforgettable historic homeland. The very name would be a marvelously effective rallying cry. If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake the complete management of the finances of Turkey. We should there form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism. We should as a neutral state remain in contactl with all of Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.
....
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Political Zionism: The Ideology of Jewish Self-Hatred--Part 1
It has always seemed ironic to me when Zionists refer to their Jewish opponents as "self-hating Jews" because Zionism is precisely an ideology founded on Jewish self hatred. I am going to begin by quoting some of the most prominent early political Zionists without comment. Then I will analyze them and explain their relevance to the contemporary Israeli state. At the end I will give some references. I urge you not to take my word for it but to read Zionist writers for yourself. Their ideas are much too bizarre for me to make them up. I'll write this in installments since it will be very long.
Leo Pinsker from Auto-Emancipation: An Appeal to His People by a Russian Jew (1882) in Arthur Hertzberg's The Zionist Idea (Atheneum 1972). Pinsker was an assimilated Russian Jew. I call this the vampire theory of anti-Semitism.
The eternal problem presented by the Jewish question stirs men today as it did ages ago. It remains unsolved, like the squaring of the circle, but unlike it, it is still a burning question. This is due to the fact that it is not merely a problem of theoretic interest, but one of practical interest, which renews its youth from day to day, as it were, and presses more and more urgently for a solution.
The essence of the problem, as we see it, lies in the fact that, in the midst of the nations among whom the Jews reside, they form a distinctive element which cannot be assimilated, which cannot be readily digested by any nation. Hence the problem is to find means of so adjusting the relations of this exclusive element to the . whole body of the nations that there shall never be any further basis for the Jewish question.
We cannot, of course, think of establishing perfect harmony. Such harmony has probably never existed, even among other nations. The millennium in which national differences will disappear, and the nations will merge into humanity, is still invisible in the distance. Until it is realized, the desires and ideals of the nations must be limited to establishing a tolerable modus vivendi.
....[The Jewish people] lacks most of those attributes which are the hallmark of a nation. It lacks that characteristic national life which is inconceivable without a common language, common customs, and a common land. The Jewish people has no fatherland of its own, though many motherlands; it has no rallying point, no center of gravity, no government of its own, no accredited representatives. It is everywhere a guest, and nowhere at home.
The nations never have to deal with a Jewish nation but always mere Jews. The Jews are not a nation because they lack a certain distinctive national character, possessed by every other nation, a character which is determined by living in one country, under one rule. ....
The strongest factor, however, operating to prevent the Jews from striving after an independent national existence is the fact that they do not feel the need for such an existence. Not only do they feel no need for it, but they go so far as to deny the reasonableness of such a need.
In a sick man, the absence of desire for food and drink is a very serious symptom.....
The Jews are in the unhappy condition of such a patient.... We must prove that the misfortunes of the Jews are due, above all, to their lack of desire for national independence; and that this desire must be aroused and maintained in them if they do not wish to exist forever in a disgraceful state--in a word, we must prove that they must become a nation.
This one one apparently insignificant fact, that the Jews are not considered a separate nation by the other nations, is, to a great extent the hidden cause of their anomalous position and of their endless misery. The mere fact of belonging to this people is a mark of Cain on one's forehead, an indelible stigma which repels non-Jews and is painful to the Jews themselves....
Among the living nations of the earth the Jews occupy the position of a nation long since dead. With the loss of their fatherland, the Jews lost their independence and fell into a state of decay which is incompatible with the existence of a whole and vital organism. The state was crushed by the Roman conquerors and vanished from the world's view. But after the Jewish people had yielded up its existence as an actual state, as a political entity, it could nevertheless not submit to total destruction--it did not cease to exist as a spiritual nation. Thus, the world saw in this people the frightening form of one of the dead walking among the living. This ghostlike apparition of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bond of union, no longer alive, and yet moving among the living--this eerie form scarcely paralleled in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, could not fail to make a strange and peculiar impression upon the imagination of the nations. And if the fear of ghosts is something inborn, and has a certain justification in the psychic life of humanity, is it any wonder that it asserted itself powerfully at the sight of this dead and yet living nation?
Fear of the Jewish ghost has been handed down and strengthened for generations and centuries. It led to a prejudice which, in its turn, in connection with other forces to be discussed later, paved the way for Judeophobia.
Along with a number of other subconscious and superstitious ideas, instincts, and idiosyncrasies, Judeophobia, too, has become rooted and naturalized among all the peoples of the earth with whom the Jews have had intercourse. Judeophobia is a form of demonopathy, with the distinction that the Jewish ghost has become known to the whole race of mankind, not merely to certain races, and that it is not disembodies, like other ghosts, but is a being of flesh and blood, and suffers the most excrutiating pain from the wounds inflicted upon it by the fearful mob who imagine it threatens them.
Judeophobia is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration, it is hereditary; as a disease transmitted for two thousand years, it is incurable.
[This is only the beginning of Pinsker's article. I can only type so much. Next, Theodor Herzl]
Leo Pinsker from Auto-Emancipation: An Appeal to His People by a Russian Jew (1882) in Arthur Hertzberg's The Zionist Idea (Atheneum 1972). Pinsker was an assimilated Russian Jew. I call this the vampire theory of anti-Semitism.
The eternal problem presented by the Jewish question stirs men today as it did ages ago. It remains unsolved, like the squaring of the circle, but unlike it, it is still a burning question. This is due to the fact that it is not merely a problem of theoretic interest, but one of practical interest, which renews its youth from day to day, as it were, and presses more and more urgently for a solution.
The essence of the problem, as we see it, lies in the fact that, in the midst of the nations among whom the Jews reside, they form a distinctive element which cannot be assimilated, which cannot be readily digested by any nation. Hence the problem is to find means of so adjusting the relations of this exclusive element to the . whole body of the nations that there shall never be any further basis for the Jewish question.
We cannot, of course, think of establishing perfect harmony. Such harmony has probably never existed, even among other nations. The millennium in which national differences will disappear, and the nations will merge into humanity, is still invisible in the distance. Until it is realized, the desires and ideals of the nations must be limited to establishing a tolerable modus vivendi.
....[The Jewish people] lacks most of those attributes which are the hallmark of a nation. It lacks that characteristic national life which is inconceivable without a common language, common customs, and a common land. The Jewish people has no fatherland of its own, though many motherlands; it has no rallying point, no center of gravity, no government of its own, no accredited representatives. It is everywhere a guest, and nowhere at home.
The nations never have to deal with a Jewish nation but always mere Jews. The Jews are not a nation because they lack a certain distinctive national character, possessed by every other nation, a character which is determined by living in one country, under one rule. ....
The strongest factor, however, operating to prevent the Jews from striving after an independent national existence is the fact that they do not feel the need for such an existence. Not only do they feel no need for it, but they go so far as to deny the reasonableness of such a need.
In a sick man, the absence of desire for food and drink is a very serious symptom.....
The Jews are in the unhappy condition of such a patient.... We must prove that the misfortunes of the Jews are due, above all, to their lack of desire for national independence; and that this desire must be aroused and maintained in them if they do not wish to exist forever in a disgraceful state--in a word, we must prove that they must become a nation.
This one one apparently insignificant fact, that the Jews are not considered a separate nation by the other nations, is, to a great extent the hidden cause of their anomalous position and of their endless misery. The mere fact of belonging to this people is a mark of Cain on one's forehead, an indelible stigma which repels non-Jews and is painful to the Jews themselves....
Among the living nations of the earth the Jews occupy the position of a nation long since dead. With the loss of their fatherland, the Jews lost their independence and fell into a state of decay which is incompatible with the existence of a whole and vital organism. The state was crushed by the Roman conquerors and vanished from the world's view. But after the Jewish people had yielded up its existence as an actual state, as a political entity, it could nevertheless not submit to total destruction--it did not cease to exist as a spiritual nation. Thus, the world saw in this people the frightening form of one of the dead walking among the living. This ghostlike apparition of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bond of union, no longer alive, and yet moving among the living--this eerie form scarcely paralleled in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, could not fail to make a strange and peculiar impression upon the imagination of the nations. And if the fear of ghosts is something inborn, and has a certain justification in the psychic life of humanity, is it any wonder that it asserted itself powerfully at the sight of this dead and yet living nation?
Fear of the Jewish ghost has been handed down and strengthened for generations and centuries. It led to a prejudice which, in its turn, in connection with other forces to be discussed later, paved the way for Judeophobia.
Along with a number of other subconscious and superstitious ideas, instincts, and idiosyncrasies, Judeophobia, too, has become rooted and naturalized among all the peoples of the earth with whom the Jews have had intercourse. Judeophobia is a form of demonopathy, with the distinction that the Jewish ghost has become known to the whole race of mankind, not merely to certain races, and that it is not disembodies, like other ghosts, but is a being of flesh and blood, and suffers the most excrutiating pain from the wounds inflicted upon it by the fearful mob who imagine it threatens them.
Judeophobia is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration, it is hereditary; as a disease transmitted for two thousand years, it is incurable.
[This is only the beginning of Pinsker's article. I can only type so much. Next, Theodor Herzl]
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Israel's Pirate Raid
As the news is trickling out, we find that all the ships were searched before they left and had no weapons. The Israeli spokesperson now says either there were weapons on board or activists seized weapons of the pirate stormtroopers and shot them. It doesn't seem to occur to him that Israeli soldiers might have shot other Israeli soldiers. Former US Ambassador Edward Peck put it all into perspective. 'The Israelis told me, 'You’ve broken Israeli law.' I said, ‘Which one?’ They said, 'You have entered the country illegally.' I said, 'I’m sorry.' But if I’m brought into the country under armed escort that is not entering the country illegally. Forcibly." Since when is it a crime to be kidnapped? The Israeli military has tried to embargo all information; they confiscated phones, cameras, etc. But their version of what happened is so completely ridiculous that it will not gain them much except in the servile US media. Today, though, I even saw a television commentator saying that Obama really needs to make a statement. Unfortunately, he has no spine on this or any other important issue. His real slogan is "No, we can't." More and more, Israel is revealed as the apartheid pariah state that it is. But, if we could force Reagan to break with South Africa, we can force Obama to break with Israel. Without US support, Israel and its brutal, inhuman, and dishonorable actions cannot stand. In 1983, I represented an NGO in Geneva at the United Nations International Conference on the Question of Palestine. I had the opportunity to address the governments there. I told them that the only way to make peace was to end US support for Israel. That is still the bottom line today.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Israeli: the Pirate State
The president of Turkey today accused Israel of state terrorism for its totally illegal, immoral, and unjustified assault and massacre on the Free Palestine Movement's flotilla of ships trying to bring material aid to Gaza despite the Israeli blockade. State terrorism is an appropriate term, but, given the circumstances, I prefer the term piracy. This is by no means Israel's first act of piracy. The Israeli nuclear weapons program obtained its first supply of uranium by hijacking a ship at sea with a cargo of uranium. Then they signed their1976 agreement with apartheid South Africa to help them with counterinsurgency, to harden their military vehicles, and to jointly develop nuclear weapons in exchange for a supply of yellowcake uranium from South Africa. Secret details of that agreement have just been published in the UK. Israel also conducted the first airplane hijacking, the first car bombing, and the kidnapping of antinuclear whistleblower Morcechai Vanunu from Rome. The state of Israel has no respect for the laws of nations. Its army has no honor or respect for human rights. This has been true since 1947. Israeli spokesmen announce that their soldiers were "attacked" when they landed on the Free Palestine Movement's ships in uncontested international waters. Even if that is true (and Israeli accounts of such affairs are routinely proven to be falsified), since when is there something wrong with the use of force to repel pirates on the high seas. Israeli propaganda exists in a netherworld of illogical and unrealistic fantasy which nobody believes in with the exception of a few diehard supporters of Israel in the United States (which unfortnately always includes the US government executive and legislative branches). The use of piracy, defiance of international law, state terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and the other tools of out-of-control rogue states is no accident. It derives from the essential nature of the Israeli state, which is to defend at all costs the spoils of colonial conquest and to extend them as far as they can possibly go.
For five decades, Israel with the reprehensible support of foreign governments, most notoably that of the United States, has ruled its region t itwith naked force and repression. Now, that is finally beginning to reverse. The feeble forces of Hamas resisted Israel's brutal attack on Gaza. Hezbolleh in Lebanon threw back an Israeli invasion and now promises to respond to any future attack with a fullscale attack against Israel. Everyone takes that seriously, including Israel's government, which knows that Hezbolleh's leader does not make false promises and that he has the force to back it up. Secondly, American public opinion is finally waking up to Israel's reality. What has begun with student governments is spreading further. Of course, the American public is alienated with its government over many, many issues: health care, bank bailouts, pointless wars, etc. Let us hope that increasing hostility to Israeli policies will find a way to express itself in this mix.
For five decades, Israel with the reprehensible support of foreign governments, most notoably that of the United States, has ruled its region t itwith naked force and repression. Now, that is finally beginning to reverse. The feeble forces of Hamas resisted Israel's brutal attack on Gaza. Hezbolleh in Lebanon threw back an Israeli invasion and now promises to respond to any future attack with a fullscale attack against Israel. Everyone takes that seriously, including Israel's government, which knows that Hezbolleh's leader does not make false promises and that he has the force to back it up. Secondly, American public opinion is finally waking up to Israel's reality. What has begun with student governments is spreading further. Of course, the American public is alienated with its government over many, many issues: health care, bank bailouts, pointless wars, etc. Let us hope that increasing hostility to Israeli policies will find a way to express itself in this mix.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Israel: The Anti-Jewish State
I have covered this theme before, but now I am looking at it from a slightly different angle and a profoundly Jewish angle. Israel claims to be the state of the Jews, the state of the "Jewish people." But how could such a state, even if there were such an entity as the Jewish people, be founded on an ideology which is profoundly racist against Jews. A state for Jews would have used its resources to help Jews in Argentina. Israel armed the anti-Jewish regime. A pro-Jewish movement would have used its resources to help European Jews to escape from fascism during World War II. The Zionist movement refused to do so. Let us remember that Zionism was born in Europe in the 19th century amidst a swirl of political movements ranging from socialism to the most perverted forms of racist nationalism. The Zionists had nothing in common with the socialists. To be sure, they represented a range of views, from the unapologetic fascists of Jabotinsky to the pro-Imperialists like Weizmann and Ben Gurion. But what they agreed on was that Jews did not belong in Europe, should leave, and create their own state. In other words, they internalized the program of the European anti-Semites, made it their own, and called it Jewish. But that is a profoundly anti-Jewish program, an assault on Jewish self-respect and integrity. It is hardly surprising that such a movement did not draw many supporters, especially in the United States, where most Jews saw Zionists as crazy. A history of the Zionist movement in the United States praised Justice Brandeis for keeping the movement going when nobody would support it. The Zionists fought to establish a foothold in the rabbinical seminaries of the 1930s and 1940s, but they did not even manage to garner significant Jewish support in 1948. Ironically, it was Israel's war of aggression in 1967 which engendered the first significant support from American Jews and, much more importantly, from the US government. There are many signs that American Jewish support for Israel is in steep decline. I doubt that this results from a full or conscious understanding of the deeply anti-Jewish basis of the Israeli state, but I would not be surprised if there is a subtle psychological rejection of Israel's blatant identification with everything Jews learned to despise during centuries of persecution in Europe. The psychosis of 1967 has begun to heal, and let us hope that an awakening about the anti-Jewish nature of Israel will occur.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
The Cancer of Zionism
I had a discussion recently with a friend which made clear to me that most people still don't understand the essential nature of the state of Israel. I commented that the only workable solution was a democratic one as in South Africa. My friend thought that would mean the death of the Jews living in Israel. I think that is far-fetched, no more likely than that the black Africans of South Africa would slaughter the whites of European descent there, which, of course, they did not. More importantly, it perpetuates the myth that Israel exists to protect Jews from something. To understand this conflict, you need to take that myth and put it through the mirror. Israel exists to expel Palestinians from Palestine. That is its fundamental organizing principle since 1947 and still today. Palestinians can have no security as long as a state exists which is designed to remove them from their homes. In that sense, the State of Israel is like a cancer. If you let a cancer grow, it takes over the body and kills it. If the State of Israel continues to exist, it will metastasize throughout the West Bank until Palestinian life there is even more untenable than it is now. Israeli leaders have been clear about that since 1947. The only thing stopping or slowing them is limited resources and international opposition. When a cancer is growing in your body you either have it cut out or you kill it with radiation. Let us hope that nobody tries radiation treatment. The racist, expansionist strategy of ethnic cleansing which is inherent in the present State of Israel must be cut out of it for any just peace to be possible. If the State of Israel were to become the democratic state of its citizens, it would not matter if there were one or two states in Palestine. So long as it is a state determined by political Zionism, it will be a major obstacle to peace.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Logic of Zionism
Many years ago, I wrote about what I called the "Logic of Occupation." When you occupy someone else's country and view the inhabitants as your enemies, you inexorably follow certain policies which lead to arbitrary arrests, torture, execution of civilians, land and property seizure, etc. These are not particular to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza but are characteristic of all such occupations: think of the American/European occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Israeli case, where they settle their civilians on occupied land (in violation of the 1949 Geneva accords which outlawed that practice, so common by the Nazis), there are additional measures taken.
In the case of Israel, however, that way of viewing what is going on needs to be modified and extended. I have been reading what I consider to be the best by far book on this subject, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. Pappe focuses on what happened in 1947 and 1948 using all available sources, and his book towers over other such efforts, such as that of Benny Morris, who used only Israeli military sources. What Pappe documents is that David Ben-Gurion and his cohorts came to the conclusion that they could only get the state they wanted if they drove most Palestinians out of it. They kept that decision fairly secret, even from most of their own followers and they made many public statements which contradicted it, but in their internal discussions and in the orders they gave to their military forces, they followed it. They used military terror, mass executions primarily of men but sometimes of women and children, too, systematic rape of women, looting, physical destruction of villages, and many more practices detailed by Pappe. Rarely was anyone punished for these acts. When they were, the punishment was very mild and, more often, those who committed atrocities advanced to high positions in the Israeli army and state.
Is that just the sordid history of the creation of Israel or is it relevant to today's policies? Pappe contends, and I agree, that the logic of Zionism continues today along pretty much the same lines as in the late 1940s. Israeli leaders are still pursuing every possible avenue to remove Palestinians from Palestine and to extend the areas they own and control.
What does this fact tell us about the possible solution? It clearly means that the so-called two-state solution is a mirage. So long as the Israeli state pursues this logic, there will be no peace and security for the Palestinians and thus for the rest of us in the world. Israel must not only be stopped from expansion; its expansion must be reversed and the nature of its state must be fundamentally changed. It has to abandon the logic of Zionism. The forests which cover destroyed Palestinian villages must be bulldozed, and the descendants of those who lived in those villages need to be allowed to return and rebuild if they wish to do so. Israel must become the state of its inhabitants, i.e., a secular, democratic state, and there would be no reason why such a state could not merge into a larger state of Palestine.
Will it be easy to achieve such a solution? No, of course it won't. But it is the only solution which can work. The key to achieving it is to remove the billions of dollars per year that the USA gives to Israel. The other key, though, is to understand that this is the solution, the only way to go.
In the case of Israel, however, that way of viewing what is going on needs to be modified and extended. I have been reading what I consider to be the best by far book on this subject, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. Pappe focuses on what happened in 1947 and 1948 using all available sources, and his book towers over other such efforts, such as that of Benny Morris, who used only Israeli military sources. What Pappe documents is that David Ben-Gurion and his cohorts came to the conclusion that they could only get the state they wanted if they drove most Palestinians out of it. They kept that decision fairly secret, even from most of their own followers and they made many public statements which contradicted it, but in their internal discussions and in the orders they gave to their military forces, they followed it. They used military terror, mass executions primarily of men but sometimes of women and children, too, systematic rape of women, looting, physical destruction of villages, and many more practices detailed by Pappe. Rarely was anyone punished for these acts. When they were, the punishment was very mild and, more often, those who committed atrocities advanced to high positions in the Israeli army and state.
Is that just the sordid history of the creation of Israel or is it relevant to today's policies? Pappe contends, and I agree, that the logic of Zionism continues today along pretty much the same lines as in the late 1940s. Israeli leaders are still pursuing every possible avenue to remove Palestinians from Palestine and to extend the areas they own and control.
What does this fact tell us about the possible solution? It clearly means that the so-called two-state solution is a mirage. So long as the Israeli state pursues this logic, there will be no peace and security for the Palestinians and thus for the rest of us in the world. Israel must not only be stopped from expansion; its expansion must be reversed and the nature of its state must be fundamentally changed. It has to abandon the logic of Zionism. The forests which cover destroyed Palestinian villages must be bulldozed, and the descendants of those who lived in those villages need to be allowed to return and rebuild if they wish to do so. Israel must become the state of its inhabitants, i.e., a secular, democratic state, and there would be no reason why such a state could not merge into a larger state of Palestine.
Will it be easy to achieve such a solution? No, of course it won't. But it is the only solution which can work. The key to achieving it is to remove the billions of dollars per year that the USA gives to Israel. The other key, though, is to understand that this is the solution, the only way to go.
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