Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl's father, is extremely upset about the talk of the one-state solution. This piece in Haaretz is so emotional it seems unstrung, he keeps comparing the one-staters to genocide-planners, Nazis:
images. Once the mind is jolted to envision deviant imagery it
automatically constructs a belief structure that supports its
feasibility and desirability. The first phase of Hitler's strategy was
to get people to envision, just envision, a world without Jews — the
rest is history.
Today we are witnessing a concerted effort by enemies of
co-existence to get people to envision, just envision, a world without
Israel – the rest, they hope, will become history….
In fairness to the editors of some newspapers, articles calling
for the elimination of Israel are often balanced by articles
discussing the prospects for a peaceful settlement of the dispute. But,
ironically, this "balance" is precisely where the imbalance cries out
loudest, for it gives equal moral weight to a provocation that every
Jew in Israel considers a genocidal death threat, most Jews view as an
assault on their identity as people…
We do not rush to "balance" each
celebration of Martin Luther King Day with articles by white
supremacists, and we do not "balance" a hate speech with a lecture on
breathing technique; a hate speech is balanced with a lecture on the
evils of hate.
..
This does not mean that the two-state solution is dead – after all,
it is the only proposal worthy of the word "solution" – but it means
that the current efforts to reach a peaceful settlement should begin to
address one key obstacle: the ideological landscape as revealed to us
by our Arab brethren on Yom Haatzmaut.
That last phrase refers to pieces published on May 15, Israel's birthday. Dripping with irony toward "our Arab brethren." The reason people are for a single state is that the peace process has been a joke, and a cover for expansion and the destruction of people's dreams and homes. I was reminded of a note Noam Chomsky sent me a couple years back when I asked him about David Mamet's charge in his hysterical book that Chomsky doesn't believe in Israel's right to exist.
No state demands a 'right to
exist,' nor is any such right accorded to any state, nor should it be.
Mexico recognizes the US, but not its 'right to exist' sitting on half of
Mexico, acquired by aggression. The same generalizes.
propaganda in the 1970s, when the Arab states (with the support of the PLO)
formally recognized Israel's right to exist within secure and recognized borders
(citing the wording of UN 242). It was therefore necessary to raise the
bars to prevent the negotiations that the US and Israel alone (among
significant actors) were blocking, as they still are. They understood, of
course, that there is no reason why Palestinians should recognize the
legitimacy of their dispossession — and the point generalizes, as
noted, to just about every state; maybe not Andorra.
I've often reread Chomsky's note, to try to understand it. He is saying that this existential stuff is manipulative. That it would be a different matter if Israel abided by UN 242 and didn't oppress Palestinians. And when "the point generalizes," he is talking about the degree of autonomy accorded the modern sovereign state: that Iraq lost its legitimacy internationally when it invaded Kuwait, that Sudan has put itself at risk with its murderous policies in the south and in Darfur, that China delegitimizes itself in Tibet. Pearl's statements on the same theme remind me of the pathetic fallacy in poetry, when inanimate objects are given human feelings. People who support a one-state solution aren't calling for the murder of anyone, they are trying to see an end to murder, yes under a different political structure. Because the current structure has proved to be the enemy of co-existence, as Pearl styles it. And anyway, Pearl, born in Israel, lives in California. What does Zionism mean to him, is it just a poetic metaphor?
