The new rightwing coalition in Israeli politics allows Jeffrey Goldberg to describe his political fantasy:
here’s my fantasy: A unity government of the mainly secular Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu party and a new, mostly secular centrist party that would have the votes to actually make progress on synagogue-state separation issues.
Goldberg elaborates on the fantasy; and it is all about the liberalization of Israeli society. But there is absolutely no reference to Palestinian freedom here. To what power such a “secular centrist” party would have over Israel’s fundamental problem: occupation and apartheid rule over more than 4 million non-Jews.
My political fantasy is that if all the governed were granted the right of consent to their government– a principle we’ve enunciated in the U.S. for more than 200 years– then liberal Israelis and liberal Palestinians would form a political coalition to marginalize the fundamentalists in both societies. Put another way, if blacks didn’t have the right to vote, Virginia would be squarely in the Romney column right now, and everyone would be thankful he’s not Sarah Palin. That’s Israel.
P.S. That’s not a fantasy for Zionists. Two years back Peter Beinart made this statement in a dialogue with Jeffrey Goldberg:
PB: I’m not asking Israel to be Utopian. I’m not asking it to allow Palestinians who were forced out (or fled) in 1948 to return to their homes. I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. I’m actually pretty willing to compromise my liberalism for Israel’s security and for its status as a Jewish state. What I am asking is that Israel not do things that foreclose the possibility of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, because if it is does that it will become–and I’m quoting Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak here–an “apartheid state.”
Just imagine an American writer saying he wasn’t interested in full, equal citizenship for Jews? Goldberg would have been all over it. This passed without comment.
Phil: “all the governed were granted the right of consent to their government– a principle we’ve enunciated in the U.S. for more than 200 years” ??
ALL? 200 years ago? Well, not women, not black slaves, not native Americans, not Chinese when they arrived to work in the West. Not the vote, anyway. Not always the right to testify before a court.
However, the American experiment has run a long course, in many ways a good one, and Israel might have done better to follow some of our ideas rather than returning to the Middle Ages — and the upside-down-anti-Semitism of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
The strongest critiques of Israel and Zionism itself come from people who think they are defending them. Just listen to how they think and compare it to what liberals would say in any other circumstance, which is what you did here.
Gets worse.
Larry Derfner in +972 mag is basically trotting out the ‘liberal’ Zionist line about how Bibi was a “moderate” and that some people who came to Israel “even admired him”.
And, with this, Bibi has more or less, in so many words, turned to the dark side.
This also dovetails nicely with Ari Shavit, a Haaretz columnist no less, who wrote this:
Bolds are mine. See the pattern? ‘Liberal’ Zionists are so predictable.
It’s like the Republican equivalent on economic policy. There are facts(with a well-known liberal bias) and then there is the parallel universe. Same is true here, but for Israel and instead of Republicans we have the ‘liberal’ Zionists.
In this parallel universe, that only they see(for reasons they refuse to share), Bibi is this mythical moderate figure who is ‘held captive’ by ‘dark forces'(Shavit/Haaretz) and is ‘admired’ around the world(Larry Derfner/+972 mag).
Also note that Likud is presented as a liberal nationalist party(the irony of this oxymoron is, sadly, completely lost on all these ‘liberal’ Zionists)
Again, all this just shows once and for all that the ‘liberal’ Zionists are just as racist as their brethren.
Some of them are probably not aware of this, others(like Goldberg) probably are but don’t care.
Either way, it is striking how similar the rhetoric is. Israel has to be saved in their own mental world, so they create this alternative universe, in order to soothe their own consciences and their support for an Apartheid state.
” I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. ”
After reading Peter’s “Crisis” book, I think he may have changed that position. Unless I missed the point, he now argues that Israel must give up the West Bank, or as he calls it, Undemocratic Israel. I thought he wanted eveyone in Democratic Israel to have full equal citizenship, and any settler remaining in territory that will be a Palestinian state to either be entitiled to Palestinian citizenship or move back within the green line.
“I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state.”
Why should he opposed full and equal citizenship to all Israelis? His support for discriminating against Arab Israelis certainly seems racist. Has Beinart ever explained himself on this? Has his position evolved over the last two years, or does he still hold this view?