One apartheid state, with liberty and justice for Jews only

(Photo: Reuters)

Heartfelt thanks (truly) to the New York Times for doing a public service by publishing this op-ed by Dani Dayan, the essential manifesto of the current state of Israeli colonialism, stripped of any pretense: one state in all of Palestine, run by the Jews in perpetuity, with a basket of limited rights for the lucky subject people—if they behave themselves.

And forget about the “right of return of Palestinians to Palestine,” the sine qua non of the so-called homeland of the Palestinian people. NB: I’m not speaking of Israel. Dayan makes clear: Greater Israel (i.e., what others call the occupied territories) will not allow itself to be overrun by returning Palestinians). That’s out of the question. The bizarre Israeli concept of democracy rests on controlling the demographic threat such that there must never be a Palestinian majority in the one state. So long as Jews are the majority, the thinking goes, they may in good conscience oppress the minority. That is the meaning of majoritarian democracy (also known as ethnocracy) as understood by Israeli Jews; a bill of rights protecting all does not figure in to this system.

Author Dani Dayan is not a crank in the sense of being a wild-eyed outlier. Rather, he is the chairman of the settler council in the “Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria” (to the rest of us aka the occupied Palestinian territories). He speaks truth to (1) the leadership of the Western world, too cowardly ever to challenge the voracious Israeli appetite for Lebensraum; to (2) all those Jewish organizations that supported Israeli aggression and colonialism through thick and thin in the name of a “two-state solution” that was being obviated by the very acts they supported; and to (3) all those individual Jews who have mouthed the two-state lies themselves while also denying the aggression and colonialism to critics. I know plenty of the number 3’s myself, and I know that many of you do, too.

There are many in the Jewish world—the Adelson types, the Malcom Hoenlein types, the Mort Klein (ZOA) types, the Aipac types, most of the Orthodox Jewish world—who were already on board with the apartheid program. But for the faux liberals—the JStreet types—this will be uncomfortable indeed, as playing pretend has been their stock in trade.

But the mask has been removed, revealing the ugly face of Israeli colonialism for all to see. The time for denial has ended, because this, then, is the dystopian vision of the single state of Greater Israel, in which the Palestinian population will live in its bantustans under the oppressive thumb of the Jewish overlords as Israeli Jewish colonists expand their illegal reach to every corner of Palestine, what the rest of the world considers the OPT (occupied Palestinian territories). The solution (Lebensraum) to the Israeli housing crisis lies on stolen land.

This is the apartheid one-state solution of which Jimmy Carter warned in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006). No doubt all recall that he was excoriated as an anti-Semite for daring to utter the words. Now we should welcome this bald, if grotesque, presentation by Dani Dayan because it is indeed the reality on the ground and it is time that everyone knew it.

Let the foolish Europeans sort this one out, for they know well that Dayan expresses the reality that comes out of Netanyahu’s government and yet, as we read not two days ago in the Guardian, the EU is piling up the presents it intends to heap on Israel—for bad behavior, apparently. Presumably President Obama, if reelected, will not embarrass himself with any more talk of two states. And presumably the Israelis advocating Israeli unilateralism to get toward a two-state solution (that is, of course, totally unfair to the Palestinians), e.g., Blue White Future, or Shaul Mofaz’s absurd 60 percent plan, will realize that they have been exposed as frauds by the settler movement and the government that backs it.

The question now is how the “world”—states, organizations, individuals—will choose to go forward. Will they continue to support the one apartheid state? One thing is for sure: the growing grass roots movement to end the occupation, including BDS, will continue to expand its push for justice and equality for all (i.e., for Palestinians, who are the ones lacking justice and equality). And that effort is looking more and more as if it must be in the context of the one-state reality created by the Jewish colonial project—only without the apartheid.

Dani Dayan pulls no punches: it’s there in blue and white for all to see.