It is very common these days to hear supporters of Israel seek to justify ethnic cleansing by saying that You did it– you Americans. Amira Hass has a fabulous piece up at Haaretz that takes on this model head on. She exposes the Israeli desire to defeat the Palestinian people, as the U.S. defeated the Native Americans, and then only have to deal with the “remnant” (a reference to Eastern European Jewry after the Holocaust). And she explains why this is not possible, and why we are now in the endgame of “the Jewish regime” because Israel did not want a two-state solution.
Read this amazing true line: “The question was, and is, how much more bloodshed, suffering and disasters will be needed until the Jewish regime of discrimination and separation, which we have created here over the past 64 years, crumbles.” This is a frankly anti-Zionist piece, written by a child of Holocaust survivors. Amira Hass is thirsting for the DeKlerk to lead her society out of its racist dead-end. I cannot imagine it being published in the New York Times. A sad reflection on our discourse.
But happily, and to our relief, the Palestinians are one people (unlike the hundreds that were in America ) and the process of Jewish settlement did not wipe them out. We are in a different age and a different region. Thinking big makes us forget that, unlike the model we admire and seek to emulate, we are a minority in the region. And the region is evolving and demanding a change in the rules of the game that have been so convenient for the United States and Israel.
The real question is not whether the solution is “two states” or “one state.” History in any case does not recognize end points – every stage leads to another. Visions are also not lacking. The visions must develop and change during the struggle for equality and justice, otherwise they will become gulags. The question was, and is, how much more bloodshed, suffering and disasters will be needed until the Jewish regime of discrimination and separation, which we have created here over the past 64 years, crumbles.
The Palestinians provided us, the Israelis, a ladder that would have saved us the kind of suffering and loss that we have caused them. A ladder that we could have climbed to a historic rung where we could have been accepted in the region as neighbors who also have roots in this place and rights – not only as aggressive invaders. But successive Israeli governments, with the backing of their voters, have knocked the ladder over. They knew only too well why they must thwart the two-state solution (in its original, pre-1967 borders format ). It would have led to different ways of living together and sharing the land. But the basic logic of these ways of life requires giving up Jewish hegemony and superiority.
There is an additional point to be made.
The comparison with America vis-a-vi Native Americans is something even ‘liberal’ Zionists like Bradley Burston do. He ridicolously compared America at 63 years of age with Israel – despite about 150 years difference. The world was a very different place ca 1840 compared to today. Not a single country allowed women to vote. Slavery was legal. And so on. But apparently this didn’t stop Burston from trying to defend Israel by defaming America.
The same is true of Native Americans. There simply isn’t a comparison in the modern, Western world to Israel. That’s why it’s supporters have to invent facts or go back 150+ years to find a country of equal footing(and what should that tell you?).
This doesn’t mean that Western countries discriminate against ethnic minorities, but it does mean that America or any other modern Western state like Canada, Britain, Australia etc don’t control millions who can’t even vote or even access clean water. Or have specific laws which prevent people from certain ethnic backgrounds to marry each other (like the law in Israel which allows settlers in the West Bank to marry a Jew in Israel ‘proper’ but an Arab in Israel ‘proper’ can’t marry a Palestinian under Occupation).
But again, what’s surprised me is the extent of moral corruption even ‘liberals’ like Bradley Burston, an editor of Haaretz.com no less, are filled with. Same is true of Goldberg. We can’t have a clean, liberal message until the charalatans and posers of liberalism are exposed and excommunicated from the liberal community unless they actually adopt a true liberal position. The longer people hear outright racist comments and comparisons from ‘liberals’ – without getting punished for it – then the more it dilutes the message of genuine liberals, like Max Blumenthal.
Since Hass seems quite pessimistic about the prospects of a two-state solution at this point, this paragraph amounts to a call for a one-state solution:
Amira gets to the real point when supporters of Israel use the phrases “destruction of Israel,” “existential threat,” “delegitimization,” etc. They are not and never were talking about the physical destruction of the nation or the slaughter of its people. They are talking about, as Amira so perfectly put it, the crumbling of the “Jewish regime of discrimination and separation.” This is very precise language. If you take away any of those elements, you have the “destruction” of Israel, at least the destruction of Israel as it is in currently conceived. That is why supporters of Israel, even while claiming to never support the Occupation or discrimination inside Israel (but only to support the “Jewish” part of that description), never actually take any action to support ending the things they don’t support. They understand on a deep level that the “Israel” they seek to preserve is based on those elements, not just “Jewishness” but also “discrimination” and “separation.”
Israeli’s like making comparisons with Amerindians because they know they’ll attract some sympathy in the US. By contrast the Israeli’s reject totally the much more apt comparison with apartheid South Africa, because Americans and most people in the world that regime was pretty much all bad with no redeeming aspects at all.
The other thing about comparing the plight of Amerindians to Palestinians. Its the closet that zionists will ever come to admitting that ‘project israel’ is an evil enterprise. Zionists can only justify what they are doing to Palestinians by drawing 0n the most controversial and morally questionable acts committed by other states throughout history.
“They knew only too well why they must thwart the two-state solution (in its original, pre-1967 borders format ). It would have led to different ways of living together and sharing the land. But the basic logic of these ways of life requires giving up Jewish hegemony and superiority.”
I think the time for pro Israel chest-beating has came and went – one hopes. Netanyahu may be one in a long line of Israeli baboons to come. It may definitely get worse. It’s like Israelis need to show the world how destructive they are to foment their global anti semitism crusade.