The rise of Avigdor Lieberman is raising fundamental questions about Israel and Zionism in the US media that have long been ignored. While Israel expansionism in the occupied Palestinian territories has been justified over the years as a "security issue" or a temporary measure that can be undone, Lieberman's platform of "no loyalty, no citizenship" has revealed Israel's ethno-nationalist nature in a way that can't be ignored.
The Los Angeles Times addressed this question yesterday in the editorial "Israel's identity crisis." The editorial compares Israel to the United States in the 1940s, before the civil rights movement, before equality between its citizens was considered possible. The Times explains the reality of Palestinians inside Israel:
They've been second-class citizens from the start — a bit like African
Americans before the civil rights movement. Today, 20% of Israel's
citizens are Arab (about 1.3 million people), but their roads generally
aren't paved as fast as those in Jewish neighborhoods, and their
schools and healthcare institutions don't get equal funding. Worse,
they've faced impediments to their ability to buy property and
limitations on where they can live. Not surprisingly, the number of
Arabs living in poverty is triple that of Jews.
The editorial then goes on to the implications of Lieberman's success in the recent Israeli elections:
These developments present very basic and very obvious civil rights
concerns. But they also raise a deeper, fundamental question that
Israelis generally prefer to avoid: Is it possible to be both a Jewish
state and a democratic state? Or, put another way: Can a nation founded
as a Jewish homeland — with a "right of return" for diaspora Jews but
no one else, a Star of David on the flag and a national anthem that
evokes the "yearning" of Jews for Zion — ever treat non-Jews as true,
equal citizens?No one ever said democracy was
easy, especially not for a country facing existential challenges and
internal disaffection, but history suggests that Israel may be moving
in an unhelpful direction. The United States was wrong in 1940 when,
fearing left-wing subversion, it declared it a crime to advocate the
overthrow of the government. And it was wrong again when, fearing a
fifth column in its midst, it interned American citizens of Japanese
descent during World War II. Israel should expand, not rescind, the
basic democratic rights of its Arab minority if it wants to ensure
loyalty and good citizenship.
Of course the Times could have also chosen to make the comparison to the Jim Crow laws which instituted apartheid in the US.
A common defense of the "special relationship" between the US and Israel is that we share common values. How long will this rationale continue to hold up as it becomes increasingly clear that the values Israel shares started going out of vogue in the US 40 years ago and are now considered racist? (Adam Horowitz)
