Great piece by Dan Perry of AP, from Tel Aviv, headlined “Israel left wing sees Jewish state’s end.” This is important because Ehud Olmert’s declaration of a few years ago, that Israel is committing suicide, is finally entering the mainstream in the United States. Though the Israeli speakers in the piece, including Amos Oz of J Street and Yuval Diskin of the Gatekeepers, are trying to save Zionism; they state that the choice is between rightwing apartheid and Palestinian rule. Maybe the choice is between apartheid and democracy? (Thanks to Omar Barghouti). Perry:
An apocalyptic tone has crept into Israel’s hitherto muted election season, with opposition leaders and others sounding increasingly desperate warnings that a few more years of rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s heavily favored right wing might well destroy the Jewish state.
…Perhaps the most strident proponent of this message is former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who four years ago led peace talks with the Palestinians and recently founded a new party whose primary message is that the Zionist project is in danger. “Netanyahu is leading us toward the end of the Jewish state,” she said in a statement Friday. “Israelis must choose between extremism and Zionism. Israel is in great danger and everyone must wake up now.”
Outgoing opposition leader Shaul Mofaz, a former military chief and defense minister, warns at campaign appearances that Arabs will soon outnumber Jews in the Holy Land and the main strategic priority must be to partition the land to prevent the emergence of a “binational state.” Leaders of the main center-left Labor Party say much the same.
“Israelis must choose between extremism and Zionism.”
What does she mean? Zionism is never extreme? What policies would she change?
Tzipi Livni is really responsible for the failure of Israel to take the most generous deal ever imagined offered by the Palestinians. The deal described in the Palestinian papers that she declined shows Israels true intentions. They will never accept a contiguous Palestinian state. They have no intentions of dismantling even the most remote settlements that infringe on the ability of Palestine to have a minimalist state. Why is tzipi portrayed as a reasonable leftist?
“The Jewish state end” prediction accompanies Israel since its birth. In its early days, with a population of around a million or two, a narrow belly on the coastline where most people live, a relatively weak economy and in particular no high-tech capabilities plus a monolith of Arab countries that looked placid and free to deal with Israel as its main target, it surely looked more threateningly so. Granted, even with all the dramatic changes in all of those regards Israel`s existence is still precarious – dictated by its objective conditions – so such expressed fears are understandable and hence also now and then expressed even by key figures. There is really nothing new here and of course a heated period as election times is likely to bring everything out. In the essence though, “the show” just goes on.
Blownaway,
Tzipi Livni is a liberal Zionist. End of story.
Some other liberal Zionists: Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Haim Saban, Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller, Martin Indyk, etc.
Liberal Zionists are playing a double game: trying to provide a fig leaf of respectability for Likud Zionism and Greater Israelism. They have talked peace while Israel continued to build more Jewish-only settlements under both Labor and Likud.
It was understandable that many sincere and idealistic people were taken in by this game during the 1990s and the first half of the last decade — but no longer.
And this is why Israel is now on the verge of a total breakdown in relations with the United States and Europe.
>> “Netanyahu is leading us toward the end of the Jewish state,” she said in a statement Friday.
This is a good thing, especially if the end toward which he is leading is a secular, democractic and egalitarian Israel, a state of and for all Israelis, equally.
>> “Israelis must choose between extremism and Zionism. … ”
Israelis must choose between Zio-supremacism – and the injustices and immorality that it comprises – and peace, justice, morality and equality (among other positive values).