Anyone who believes in a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict must address the principle of national self-determination. First endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson, this principle more than any other has animated the history of the twentieth century. National self-determination flows from nationalism, defined by Ernest Gellner as being “primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.” Israel today, in many ways, embodies this principle for Jewish nationalists. To many Jewish nationalists, or Zionists, Israel’s existence is the just correction of Jewish statelessness. Some Jewish nationalists may express regret over the way their movement played out in Palestine. They may also claim to adhere to human rights principles and struggle alongside Palestinians in the West Bank; these are the ‘liberal Zionists.’ Yet, I would argue that the Jewish nationalist movement, in attempting to secure Jewish national rights at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian community, has shown itself to be doctrinally racist. The incongruence between liberalism and racism is obvious to many, but liberal Zionists deserve the benefit of the doubt. It is my contention that Zionism is antithetical to principles of self-determination despite the superficial agreement I outlined above. Furthermore, anyone who hews to liberal principles faces a contradiction between those beliefs and those of Zionism. For many this is leading to a break from Zionism, and I believe more ‘liberal Zionists’ are coming to this conclusion every day.
Why is Jewish nationalism racism? Evaluated in a vacuum, it isn’t – at least not more than other nationalisms. If Zionists chose to colonize a hypothetical island in the Pacific Ocean, devoid of human inhabitants, I would say it isn’t very different at all. Theoretically then, Zionism is no different from French nationalism. But the decision by early Zionists to colonize Palestine caused theory and reality to diverge. Palestine was inhabited by indigenous people. Jewish nationalists had to ethnically cleanse the territory in order to occupy it.
But that doesn’t completely explain why Zionism is racist. For that, I’ll fast-forward to the present day. Jewish nationalists have mostly achieved their goal of creating an ethnically pure state in Palestine. But not totally; roughly 20% of Israelis are non-Jews. Now suppose over the next fifty years the Palestinian minority in Israel grows to 40% of the population – where does that leave Jewish nationalism? Suppose the Palestinian minority in Israel today, who already enjoy Israeli citizenship, reach 55% of the population in 75 years. What then? What remedies are available to the Jewish Israeli liberal in the event of an Arab baby tidal wave? I encourage ‘liberal Zionists’ to begin thinking about these questions today. It will be difficult to correct a surfeit of wrong-raced infants within the confines of liberalism. I do not envy ‘liberal Zionists’ their task. These questions are why liberalism and Zionism are incongruent. Anyone who describes himself as a ‘liberal Zionist’ has to come to terms with the racially exclusive nature of Jewish nationalism in Palestine/Israel. In short, Jewish national self-determination is only possible in Palestine/Israel at the expense of Palestinian national self-determination, and I believe, Jewish humanity.
I said above that Zionism is antithetical to principles of self-determination. The Zionist government of Israel frustrates and undermines the hopes of millions of Palestinians and their legitimate expression. The Zionist government of Israel really has no choice. Zionist logic compels it to behave the way it does. Someone who believes that the Jewish people have a right to lands inhabited by indigenous peoples in 1948 must also believe that Jewish people have a right to lands inhabited by indigenous people in 2009. There is no difference between the ethnic cleansing carried out in Israel proper sixty years ago and the ethnic cleansing being carried out in the West Bank today. This is the logic of Zionism. Jewish self-determination means Jewish self-determination in Palestine, which means native dispossession, and the maintenance of Jewish supremacy in places where that dispossession has yet to be completely fulfilled. That’s why there is no such thing as ‘liberal Zionism.’
I believe the solution to the Problem of Zionism is the one-state solution. But, how can a multiethnic state give full expression to the principle of self-determination? And what about the very reasonable desire, expressed by both Palestinians and Jews, to live in a state that embraces their cultural traditions, ethno-religious narratives and normative values?
In liberal thought, the individual is the fundamental unit from whence all political legitimacy is derived. National self-determination, which is basically a liberal tenet, also takes an irreducibly individual form. In America, the basic unit of ‘national self-determination’ is ‘individual self-determination.’ More specifically, freedoms of speech, association, movement, etc., which are an individual’s prerogatives, coalesce to comprise ‘individual self-determination.’ The sum of the expression of these freedoms makes up ‘national self-determination.’ Put differently, the choices of individual Americans combine to decide where America should go as a nation – or ‘national self-determination.’ Indeed, in truly free societies the notion of national self-determination takes on a kind of redundancy. Why should I care if you celebrate Eid with other Muslims, Christmas with other Christians, Hanukkah with other Jews, or Divali with other Hindus so long as I can celebrate anything I choose with whomever I choose? America manages, more or less, to accommodate the cultural traditions, ethno-religious narratives and normative values of different communities by permitting the multitudinous expressions of individuals’ self-determination through individual choice. This may seem like an idealistic vision of the future for Palestine/Israel, but relentless Zionist territorial maximization has guaranteed that the partition plan will never happen. The two peoples will have to live in one state, and the American model of ethno-religious accommodation seems like a good one to aspire to.
The question of what Palestinians and Israelis want is an important one. What if no one in Palestine/Israel wants a one-state solution? My answer is that their choice is already being made for them. Palestine/Israel is already a de facto single state, with an entrenched system of apartheid. From a realpolitik perspective, Israel can never relinquish control over vital water resources in the West Bank and Gaza, the Mountain aquifer and Coastal aquifer, respectively. Also, 500,000 Jewish colonists are not going anywhere. And the putative Jewish state – it isn’t really Jewish if one in five people isn’t Jewish – will never permit a Palestinian entity to exercise military independence. Fellow Palestinians must understand that Israeli people are not going anywhere – and that Zionists in Israel will never allow them to really self-govern.
Besides, on the Palestinian side, the question may be a semantic one. Let a pollster ask Palestinians ‘Would you like to redeem all of historic Palestine?’. I think many would answer in the affirmative.
In any case, this is the reality of the situation. I extend my sympathies to everyone on both sides who wants to live in an ethnically-pure state; it can’t happen. The question now is how to make the present reality livable for everyone.
I hope ‘liberal Zionists’ will some day come to the conclusions I outlined above. I believe in the one-state solution as the only possible solution for Palestine/Israel, but it will have to come about by the free choice of individuals to determine their future collectively. But there are limits to individual choice. I cannot choose to oppress another individual as an expression of my individual or national self-determination.
Zionists must come to understand that the status-quo that has served them so well until now will not come at the expense of Palestinian human rights and dignity. Let ‘liberal Zionists’ understand that the racial privilege they enjoy in Palestine/Israel is coming to an end. Zionism is a spent force, I suspect, and it has no place in the Holy Land.
Yes, self-governance is not a blank check to do whatever you want. And neither is collective self-governance. Otherwise there’d be no need for criminal and civil laws,
nor any need for the UN. Dahmer had to be curbed, as did Madoff, as did the Mafia, and of course the German Nazi regime leaders at Nuremberg–and, for that matter, how about that former impressed teen-age camp guard now being tried in Germany at the ripe age of, what, 88? And that, after he was released by Israeli law…
Obviously, Mister Moor’s logical take conflicts with–what shall I call it, the Witty take?
Achmed Moor wrote:
“Zionists must come to understand that the status-quo that has served them so well until now will not come at the expense of Palestinian human rights and dignity. Let ‘liberal Zionists’ understand that the racial privilege they enjoy in Palestine/Israel is coming to an end. Zionism is a spent force….”
With all due respect to Mr. Moor’s erudition, and admiration for what is obviously his cosmic level of hopefulness, give me a break. Zionism has been and right now still is stomping the shit out of every pathetic effort mounted in the name of “Palestinian human rights and dignity” and there isn’t a shard of evidence that this is going to end with the Palestinians getting anything out of it other perhaps than some utterly ridiculous squiqqle of the poorest land in the area.
Maybe … maybe … if, say, the Palestinians could for one freaking second even prove themselves able to do the simplest thing such as … oh … latching onto a leader who wasn’t just the walking incarnation of buffoonish corruption, well then maybe there’d be some hope for them. But c’mon, I’ve been reading all these feel-good blurbs here lately of the same stripe and just have to smile: Hell, right now Abbas has just seemed to say that a lousy six-month building halt to the settlements is all that he really needs to start talks again and … that he could get a peace agreement in six months.
Six months? Six freaking months? In six months with its present climate Israel is going to agree to remove or leave out in the cold one half million settlers? And vacate East Jerusalem? Or become a multi-ethnic country and absorb all the Palestinians as equal citizens?
The man either has Alzheimers, is on LSD, or, more likely, knows that all he needs is six more months of the same talks and kind of cover he got before with Olmert to absolutely give away freaking everything the Palestinians want, meanwhile bulking up his Zurich bank accounts with even more Mossad money.
So the Palestinians of today, instead of rising and booting this guy out the window as far as possible, sit there and see this, and let him betray them, and then tomorrow after they are screwed by him think they only pay attention later and rise up anytime they want and *then* reject it and gee, the world will always understand.
Lots of talk here about how the Israelis/jews always see themselves as eternal victims, well the Palestinians sure as hell got a problem in that regard too I’d suggest. “Gee,” they seem to feel, “we can keep electing or supporting these kinds of clowns, demonstrate in the street for Saddam, cheer over photos of incinerated Israelis or celebrate 14 year-old suicide bombers and … the world will understand! It’s because of course we are all viiiiictiiims….”
Nuts.
“we can keep electing or supporting these kinds of clowns, demonstrate in the street for Saddam, cheer over photos of incinerated Israelis or celebrate 14 year-old suicide bombers and … the world will understand!
Let’s see–
Clowns–George Bush. Hell, Obama is a bit of a clown himself.
Demonstrations–Think tea parties. Actually, Americans don’t demonstrate enough about the people we help kill overseas and when we do demonstrate, it’s often about imaginary plots to kill Grandma.
Cheering for photo–War porn is pretty popular with the great American public. Nothing like watching our missiles light up the skies of Baghdad. Israelis cheer for their own bombers too, I noticed.
Celebrate 14 year old suicide bombers–As opposed to re-electing torturers or joking about it or making them into heroes on TV dramas or remaining totally indifferent to those victims mentioned above. Or maybe being snide about the behavior of the people we help oppress. Or lumping them all into a category of “people not worthy of our concern”.
Could be we don’t deserve any better than those primitives overseas.
I came to that realization myself, while listening to a discussion on NPR about Erik Prince and Blackwater.
We are the real jihadists. Americans are the real jihadists. We’re the ones who are invading and raping and pillaging and torturing in the name of our God.
Yeah, I feel your tenor. OTH, what are the Americans doing while they have so much more material and civil rights power? Allowing their own government to shit all over them; they favored attacking iraq in ’03; many still think it’s a good enterprize; many see Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan as equally good; now their leaders are pushing
for war on Iran; those Iran sanctions are a big step in that direction–see anyone protesting? Hold that same candle you shine on the starving Palestinians on the fat Americans–
see anything? And consider further that the Americans actually have a democratic tradition and a Constitution that has been the model for the world for a long time now.
Citizen wrote:
“Hold that same candle you shine on the starving Palestinians on the fat Americans–
see anything?”
Yeah, nothing nice that’s for sure. And I ain’t being snide, nor unconcerned vis a vis the Palestinians. But just as I don’t see the Israelis talking about how we treated our native people however long ago I don’t see the Palestinians excusing themselves by pointing at us either. After all this is *their* fight; does anyone really want to argue that they’ve done it well? Or, even more relevantly, anyone want to argue that they are doing it well with Abbas now?
(And I won’t even ask whether anyone thinks it’s being done so well that it’s rendering Zionism a “spent force,” which after all is what I was responding to originally.)
Actually, many Israeli leaders have often justified their conduct by saying the USA did the same to the native Americans, so why pick on Israel.
“After all this is *their* fight; does anyone really want to argue that they’ve done it well?”
Your second post lacked the snideness of your first.
If you mean the leadership, no, they stink for the most part. (People talk about the jailed Marwan Barghouti as a possible exception, but I don’t know enough to say.) But look at the politicians of the US or Israel most of the time and they mostly look like jackasses or worse. It’s rare that you get people of the stature of a Nelson Mandela in any country at any time. Now what you do frequently get in “liberation” struggles are ruthless killers, people who will use any means necessary to win, and I think both the Israelis and Palestinians have produced that type. In the case of the Palestinians, though, the odds were against them- we support Israel, not them and I’ve heard your particular complaint before several times.
As for ordinary Palestinians, not having been there I can’t say what they’re like, but one gets the impression the average Palestinian has at least as much courage and dignity as the average American (which may be setting the bar low). Any prospective Mandelas or Gandhis that rise up from the ranks are likely to be jailed or exiled by the Israelis anyway.
I sure agree that the average Palestinian has at least as much courage as the average average American–and they are put to the test much more. Americans
have produced very few Ron Pauls, Dennis Kuciniches, Ralph Naders, Bairds, McKennzie’s etc. Gee, FOX news and MSNBC & CNN for example, all tote the
hasbara line, mirroring nearly our whole congress and executive branches of government, and repeating our Fourth Estate MSM.
Yeah, there are darn few American politicians that seem to have any guts. They get weeded out before they can get very far. We’re better off in America than in many other places (on average, that is) for various reasons, but none of them include the quality of our leaders.
Do you really think that the Palestinians have much control over who is elected to represent them or that Israel would allow any Palestinian leader who truly represents Palestinian interests?
Just take a look at the elections in Gaza for one answer, or the imprisonment of much of the Palestine parliament for another.
Not to mention the Israeli assassination of many Pal civilian political leaders.
Moor’s analysis is so similar to my own, I can only say Amen. For the reasons he states so succinctly in his article, the one-state solution is the only long-term viable one and is inevitable. We should work to make the transition from here to there as peaceful, painless and speedy as possible.
But, instead we will have a war with Iran, during which Israel will get rid of many
Palestinians more; the writing on the wall was the recently passed Berman bill for Iran sanctions. The cover for this? Witty knows it well.
There is more to Jewish national self-determination than meets the article. It is hinted at, but not spoken: Jewish national self-determination must also come at the expense of freedom of religion for Jews.
Jews who convert to Islam, Christianity, or any other religion are just as much a part of the demographic threat as Muslims who engage in sex.
Ultimately, the need to maintain a state religion makes Israel fundamentally different than modern first world countries. Nationalism under Israel is far more restrictive and encompassing than Nationalism in Europe. In the sense of Nationalism, Israel is a lot more like Saudi Arabia than the United Kingdom.
Ahmed,
Thanks for your sympathetic words.
My observation of the political solution, the selection of jurisdiction that is most democratic is the two-state solution that optimizes the degree that the residents describe themselves as “self-governed”.
My first choice of that would be a humane Israel adjacent to a humane Palestine.
My second choice would be a humane Israel/Palestine, in which all individuals are secure, free, democratic.
The common characteristics of both of those options are mutual acceptance, of persons, of communities, of identities.
The choices that would NOT be attractive in the slightest include:
1. A faux democracy in which either Israeli majority fundamentally impose on Palestinian minority, or a Palestinian majority impose on Israeli minority.
2. A state of intimate hateful conflict.
3. A revolutionary state that values struggle more than security and safety.
So, from what is communicated from likud, there is little basis of confidence in either of the two potential goods. And, from what is communicated from Hamas, there is little basis of confidence in either of the potential goods.
And, sadly from Abunimeh, Omar Barghouti, and other advocates for a single state, with the insistence on full right of return and full realization of return, the outcome is likely one of the unattractive options.
On the point “Zionism is racism” again. There is nothing inherently racist in Jewish self-identification within current Israel. It is a body. Like an individual has a body that is opaque, takes up physical space, has perspective (and inevitable blinders), but can also be a good and compassionate human being, a community can also be a good neighbor.
In fact, it requires a body to be a good neighbor.
On the question of external migration, ALL of human history, ALL peoples with very few exceptions (Australian aborigines and sub-Saharan Africans) are relatively recent migrants to the local that they currently reside, with much inter-communal genetics, and fluid history (like a glaciar is fluid, slow sometimes, rapid at others).
And, the migration that peoples were forced to make were always due to external circumstances: ecological, social.
It is a curse on Jews, an inhumane sentiment, to insist that our being forced is of no consequence, and not accepted within reasonable behavior.
It suggests a conditional acceptance of Zionism, rather than the ultimate rejectionISM that underlies long militant Palestinian threads.
Not all Palestinians initiated or even consented to that militancy, but the notion that only resistance is a possible redeeming approach to Zionist presence is really a martial consciousness that underlies most of the angry anti-Zionism expressed publicly.
Maybe relevant, hopefully reviewed, as under review it doesn’t seem to succeed from my read of modern history, in fact the oppossite.
There are other ways to assert, without militancy.
Mutual respect creates a format by which collaboration in opposition to evil, and/or to suggest alternative relations, are possible.
I can see where you might think that, considering everything you know about Hamas and about the conflict in general has been demonstrated to emerge primarily from statements issued by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. At least, if your rhetoric is to be used as any indication.
Word for word, Witty. Really now.
Just to clarify the headline,
My view is that liberal Zionism and self-determination are on a synnergistic course.
In contrast, any of the militant flavors are on warring courses. Such is the role of certainty about either/or political agitation, rather than development of mutual social sympathy.
If the degree of social sympathy is thin, like the evangelical extent of sympathy to “I feel so bad for you that you are not saved”, then that isn’t really sympathy. The parallel to the evangelical conversion in the radical religion, is “I feel so bad for you Jewish people that are supportive of Israel, you haven’t seen the light”.
Both religious in a trivial sense.
Rather than more sincere and comprehensive human sympathy that results in actual peace.
You have the gall to talk about sympathy after what you said here? After you consciously and deliberately ignored crimes against children purely because they weren’t Jewish?
Gee, Witty, will you at least allow the Pals to have Israeli government-authorized casinos; and can they sell home-grown tobacco products without Israeli taxes? Can the Pals join the IDF? Can thy get some drinking water from the Jewish swimming pools, or a few crayons for their kids if USA taxes paid for them?