A SINGLE STATE SOLUTION
Thursday, July 27, 2006
The state of Israel, its Zionist ideology and its impact on world Jewry has got to be one of the most important issues facing Jews everywhere. Jews love to discuss and dispute anything and everything. Yet, I have not heard a single report of a balanced public discussion in a synagogue in the United States or Canada concerning Israeli policy. It seems that nothing but cheerleading for Israel is Kosher in North America's Jewish communities.
Not withstanding the Jewish establishment's curtain of silence, the unbelievable suffering of the people of Lebanon and Gaza has got lots of us -- Jews and non-Jews -- talking on the Internet. For the past few days I have been involved in one of those discussions with former political colleagues from my Berkeley days. Many different points of view have been expressed.
Where I parted company with my Zionist friends is that I believe a Zionist state that was established by and is being governed by people of European ancestry in a part of the world where Arabs have been the overwhelming majority for millennia is doomed to failure. A country in which white European Jews hold virtually all the power and have all the rights and privileges, while those who are native to the region are treated at best as non-entities, is an anachronism and, as history has shown, it can never be at peace.
The dispute between the Arabs and the Israelis didn't start with the capture of a few soldiers or the lobbing of missiles into Haifa. If I remember my history correctly, during the first world war the British promised the Arabs independence if they would support the European allies (the British and the French) in their fight against the Ottoman Empire (the Turks, who were allied with the Germans). The Arabs were betrayed. The British, instead of permitting the Arabs to govern the territory in which they lived and helped to liberate, divided it up with the French and became their new overlords. At the same time, over the objections of many prominent British Jews -- not to mention the Arabs in the region -- the British government offered the Zionists, who made up only a small fraction of the Jewish population, a piece of the Ottoman empire as well.
That's when the dispute between the Zionists and the Arabs started. It isn't particularly complicated or difficult to understand. The British imperialist establishment, which never had any love for Jews, simply took over the Arabs' land and, for their own political reasons, promised a part of it to the Zionists as a "Jewish national home." The people living in what used to be known as Palestine have been objecting to that land grab since the end of the first world war -- thirty years before the state of Israel was created.
Imperialism, like slavery, was inhumane and unethical in the nineteenth century and it still is. Back then it might have been workable for those who were benefiting from the arrangement. Today, in an age of hijackable airliners, missiles, nerve gas, biological weapons and suit-case sized atomic bombs, it isn't. Evidently, the events of 9-11 and the ensuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan haven't been convincing enough. Now, Israel and the Fundamentalist led US, with a nod from Canada and Europe, are colluding in the destruction of Gaza and Lebanon. Unless we are able to open our hearts and minds the carnage will spread. And none of us is safe from it.
His excellent website, Canadians, Arabs and Jews for a Just Peace, is at http://forjustpeace.org/ . It has an extensive listing of useful links.