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?
This is an excellent post, Mr. Weiss.
Chomsky's point is very important. No state has an intrinsic "right to exist."
States exist because they are defended (with force if necessary) by their people, and because their legitimacy is recognized by other states. Israel gained international legitimacy both from the UN partition and her people's extraordinary determination in the 1948 war. Even if one didn't like Israel at that point, Israel existed by her own will and international consensus.
No nonsense about "right to exist" was necessary until Israel began violating the same principles of international law that she had relied upon for recognition in '48.
If the region's other inhabitants are not to be trusted with co-existence within the state and therefore need to be subjugated based on that bigoted assessment, then who are the real Nazis in this case?
~
"Pearl, born in Israel, lives in California."
Oi vey. Another vicarious Zionist.
'This piece in Haaretz is so emotional it seems unstrung'
That's what happens when the ideology your sense of self depends upon is (or appears to be) under threat. Especially if it's an ethno-religious nationalism you were suckled on.
'we are witnessing a concerted effort by enemies of co-existence…'
Talk about projection.
'articles calling for the elimination of Israel'…
You can't make this stuff up. Find one, just one such article in the American mainstream from anytime, any place in the last 30 years.
It's unbelievable how Zionist hypocrisy and paranoia can go from first gear straight to fifth without pausing to draw breath. This bloke makes even Dershowitz look sane.
Poor Mr. Pearl just doesn't have an argument, does he?
And still Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and a dozen sympathizing countries have never recognized Israel and established diplomatic relations.
Chomsky is right ONLY when he speaks of the equality of status. Israel doesn't have a right to exist in the same manner that the US doesn't have a right to exist.
If the US does have a right to exist, ie to establish its sovereignty and jurisdiction, then Israel has a parallel right to.
Although an neo-anarchist, Chomsky somehow determines that sovereignty is empowered by others, rather than asserted by self-definition and voluntary association.
By that definition, Israel very much is a real nation.
Pearl's argument is the same one as describing the emperor's nakedness when fascists describe themselves as "democratic". Nazis, fascists each came to power by election and then immediately dismantled all of the institutions of democratic homeostasis.
While Saif, or Phil in his flirtatious moods, may describe themselves as just or kind or open-minded or committed to democracy, others with the guns and the anger (Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs, Islamic Jihad) are the beneficiaries of the one-state choice of jurisdiction in an environment of unlimited right of Palestinian return. (Also, Likud and Israel Beitanyu, should more rabid Zionists control the 51% in the first election.)
Lots of fascist real-politik hides behind nice sounding phrases.
If Jews are a people and have earned a nation (good judgement or bad), then the one-state proposal is at best dangerous.
Can you honestly see Hamas and Israeli Beitanu in a parliament together?
"link to haaretz.com
Forward to the past
By Jonathan Spyer
Tags: Palestinians, Fatah, Israel
In recent weeks, a number of prominent Fatah figures have suggested that their movement might abandon its commitment to a "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and return to the pre-1988 demand for Israel's replacement by a single state in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
Richard Witty: Nazis, fascists each came to power by election and then immediately dismantled all of the institutions of democratic homeostasis.
Their 33% didn't suffice to give them the power to do what they did. It needed more than that. Since the Nazis are so much used for comparisons nowadays we should be a little more precise with their story.
Nazi – rise to power
Chancellor Franz von Papen called another Reichstag election in November, hoping to find a way out of this impasse. The result was the same, with the Nazis and the KPD winning 50% of the vote between them and more than half the seats, rendering this Reichstag no more workable than its predecessor. But support for the Nazis fell to 33.1%, suggesting that the Nazi surge had passed its peak – possibly because the worst of the Depression had passed, possibly because some middle-class voters had supported Hitler in July as a protest but had now drawn back from the prospect of actually putting him into power. The Nazis interpreted the result as a warning that they must seize power before their moment passed. Had the other parties united, this could have been prevented, but their shortsightedness made a united front impossible. Papen, his successor Kurt von Schleicher and the nationalist press magnate Alfred Hugenberg spent December and January in political intrigues which eventually persuaded President Hindenburg that it was safe to appoint Hitler Reich Chancellor at the head of a cabinet which included only a minority of Nazi ministers, which he did on 30 January 1933.
I don't know why he would be upset. After Moslems cut his sons head off. Because he was Jewish. No big deal right.
"And anyway, Pearl, born in Israel, lives in California."
And son Daniel, born in the US, turned out to be holding Israeli citizenship when he was murdered (a fact that his father tried to conceal from the American public).
Oh what tangled webs we weave.
"Right to exist as a jewish state" = "right to ethnically cleanse and subjugate Palestinians in order to maintain the dominance of a minority over a majority" … but it sounds better.
The comments here seem to overlook the fundamental dishonesty about Pearl's article (and even more the Speyer article that Richard cited). They take two truths: (a) that the PLO/Fatah at its foundation in the 1960s sought a one-state solution; and (b) that a good number of Fatah-linked people and others are again arguing for a one-state solution. They conclude from this that the Palestinians were never sincere about seeking a two-state solution, as they officially did from the late 1980s onwards.
The reason that this is dishonest is that it ignores the compelling evidence, including much polling data, that most Palestinians did genuinely accept the two-state solution, certainly from Oslo onwards, but that many of them have now ceased to do so. And the reason they have ceased to do so is that it no longer appears a practical possibility, for reasons that are entirely the result of Israel's actions – the settlements have expanded so rapidly since Oslo, and are now so populous and so entrenched and so widespread, that Israel is manifestly never going to be able or willing to evacuate enough people to create an acceptable Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.
I desperately wish this were not the case, because I share Pearl's and Speyer's fear that such a state would be disastrous for Jews in Israel. But it is not the consequence of the nefarious designs of the Palestinians: it is the consequence of Israel's own actions over the last 15 years. The Palestinian return to a one-state solution is the inevitable consequence of the "facts on the ground" that Israel has decided to create.
I think the failure to achieve peace includes negligences by both Israel and Fatah, and out and out opportunistic disruption by Hamas.
I agree, Richard, but I wasn't talking about the failure to achieve peace. I was talking about the specific things that have made the two-state solution impossible. And that has little or nothing to do with Fatah, and little or nothing to do with Hamas. Their violence has been horrific and immoral, and certainly had a great deal to do with the collapse of the Oslo peace process. But such violence, however horrific and immoral, did not change the basic demographics, and so did not remove the possibility that, were the violence to subside and a new peace process to begin, a two-state solution could still emerge.
The ONLY thing that has removed the two-state solution from the realm of practical possibility is Israel's deliberate entrenchment of the settlements to an extent that makes it impossible (for me, at least, and apparently for various Arabs as well) to see how a two-state solution is any longer viable. This will ultimately lead to Israel's destruction as a Jewish state. It is no comfort to me at all to say that it has been entirely her own doing – but that is the cold, hard reality.
Its solely a movement to disrupt the peace process for a two-state solution is Pearl's thesis, and that is likely true.
It rests on the non-compromising position that the land is Palestinian, even though the societies are now equally divided (vehemently divided) and in relatively clear pluralities, suggesting that the two-state solution is the ONLY plausible one.
That the left flirts with the one-state solution rather than COMMITS to work for the two-state solution is a tragedy.
Its a tragedy that Phil flirts with it. It compounds his odd mix of advocacy and "objectivity".
Richard:
I'm not sure whether or not you are wilfully missing my point. My basic premise is NOT that a one-state solution is the most desirable option (chas v'shalom – I dread the prospect), but that it is now the ONLY viable option, because Israeli settlements are now too entrenched to make a minimally acceptable Palestinian state possible. I believe that this is what is now leading many Palestinians, including even Sari Nusseibeh, to the same conclusion – I take it you are not accusing him of deliberately trying to sabotage a two-state solution, are you?
This conclusion is based on a close look (via Peace Now's maps and figures – see link to peacenow.org.il
at the numbers of settlers, the location of some of the larger settlements, and the need for territorial contiguity and reasonable access to agricultural land and natural resources in the resulting Palestinian state. My (admittedly rough and ready) calculation is that to get to a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem which meets those conditions, one would need to move a minimum of 100,000 settlers from their homes. Israel has never done anything even remotely comparable, and bluntly, I don't think Israel is ever going to have the political will for it in any foreseeable future.
Now, you may dispute my factual premise – I would be interested to hear your own estimates of what would be needed demographically to bring a two-state solution about and whether you think Israel is up to it politically – but I would appreciate it if you actually addressed the point, rather than avoiding the issue by impugning people's motives. There is no point in the left (or anyone else) "committing" to work for a two-state solution if a two-state solution is no longer demographically possible.
The Israelis are completely, not partially, responsible for the failure of Oslo to be the origin of a two-state solution, because they never intended to allow the establishment of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state. They did intend to continue to build settlements, set up checkpoints, and suffocate the Palestinian economy on the West Bank and in Gaza. The Palestinians are responsible for the failure of Oslo and the two-state solution only in the sense that Arafat collaborated with Israel to allow this to happen, rather than demanding that it not. Palestinian violence, however reprehensible, was used only as an excuse to continue settlement and occupation as ususal. Israeli terrorism, of course, was much worse.
I have blogged Judea Pearl in the following entries:
I summarize my current thoughts about Daniel Pearl's beheading in Zionist Internet Censorship Never Stops.
David,
I got your point. Nothing political is dead, was an earlier point of mine.
The one-state solution was regarded as dead a while ago. But, that was a misuse of the term.
Pearl's comments are that the Palestinians didn't regard the one-state solution as dead, even as tabled. He's confused about to what extent different individuals and groups invested in it, concluding that the critical mass NEVER did.
Just as David Green concludes the oppossite about Israel, as if Israel is monolithic (a falsehood).
There is a criticism of the peace-now liberal Zionists, that they/we never invested fully to really put our necks out in the two-state solution and that that is a large cause of the failure (in that it reduced the degree of political support that an elected leader could then rely on).
I think that there is a parallel to the Vietnam War, as in 1972/3 when anti-war activists largely lost interest in the political agitation. The draft was reduced and then they stopped calling people up at all.
A critical mass of the young people involved got focused on other things. I did. I still worked to change the world, but not politically, not in the hot-headed activist, angry at the world, mode.
Witty says:
He probably is telling the truth in a sense. He seems to have worked to change the world in the exploitative, genocidal, mendacious Zionist sense.
For example, a few blog entries back Witty gave some ridiculous number for the number of Holocaust survivors that came to Israel from the Displaced Person camps.
According to Grodzinsky in In the Shadow of the Holocaust, the camps contained 300,000 refugees, of whom only 100,000 had any interest in relocating to Palestine.
Let us consider the criminal mentality of Witty, who will use any lie to justify Zionist crimes (yet rants about anti-Semitism or fascism when anyone tries to understand but not justify anger toward Jews in Central and E. Europe during the early 20th century).
Most of the Jewish colonists in Palestine had no desire to be in Palestine. In 1947, only 100,000 Jews had the slightest interest in emigrating into Palestine.
Obviously, the correct thing to do would have been to dismantle the Jewish settlement in Palestine and distribute the settlers and DPs into various host countries.
But Zionist Jewish plutocrats and intelligentsia were not willing to walk away from the goal that no one really wanted. Instead they manipulated the US government and scaremonger the UN into a ridiculous partition plan that would have put a large number of Palestinians under a Jewish dominated government
Thus to bring 300,000 mostly unwilling immigrants to Palestine, murderous genocidal Zionist thieves, interlopers and invaders ethnically cleansed 800,000 – 900,000 native Palestines.
So Witty can you perhaps understand why Zionist has become synonymous with liar and enemy of the human race throughout most of the world and why it become hard for most of the human race to distinguish between Jew and Zionist when American Jews lie so hard as you do in order to justify Zionist crimes?
Or has your Zionist belief system so rotted your brain that you are now incapable of reasoning on principles of basic human decency?
Everything you believe is lie!
You are guessing as to my life, and it makes you look like an idiot.
How would you expect to have any integrity for your comments when you guess and characterize so frivolously?
You mischaracterize Zionism, Martillo.
It is neither evil nor perfect. It is human. And, it definitely needs reform.
But, it is not a lie to assert one's community identity, to develop institutions to construct it and defend it.
While many regard attacking Zionism as a means to restore Palestinian dignity and improve objective conditions, that is an 1/8th of strategy.
Succeeding in attacking Zionism leaves nothing on the ground. Success for Palestine and Palestinians has to rest on the lion's share, on investing in Palestinian life, in improving Palestinian life in all the ways that are possible to.
And, to my mind that looks most promising by fully reconciling with Israel.
Chasing a shadow only gets to eating the shadow (which is nothing).
The single-state solution sounds good, but in practise is a uniquely fantastic solution, and in the delay and fantasy, is is functionally a uniquely cynical one.
Especially when framed in the neglect to actually help Palestinians, and instead ONLY offering political "solidarity".