From the category archives:

One state/Two state

Progressive NY attitude on gays in military should be portable to Palestine, but it isn’t

by Philip Weiss on February 4, 2010 · 15 comments

Yesterday Brian Lehrer, the smart host of a public radio talk show in New York, had on Scott Garrett, a Republican congressman from New Jersey, to talk about economic policy. Lehrer also made a point of bringing up an issue dear to his listeners’ concerns: gays in the military. Lehrer supports repeal of don’t-ask-don’t-tell. (So do I.) He quizzed Garrett intently about Garrett’s opposition to repeal. He bored in on him, as a good questioner does. Garrett said that he would vote for repeal only if it was not politically-motivated, if commanders and soldiers convinced him that the change would have "absolutely no impact whatsoever" on the daily performance of their duties.

Lehrer persisted: "And if it took some time to bring people along [in the military] who were resistant, it wouldn’t be worth it for the equality?"

Garrett said Only if it didn’t degrade the performance.

I admire Lehrer’s position here. Change involves discomfort. Equality is an important goal of all public policy. It’s why we integrated the army racially in 1948.

But Lehrer is PEP: He is Progressive Except for Palestine. (And yes, he is Jewish and yes that is relevant.) A liberal in almost all spheres, when it comes to the Middle East, he gives his mike to neocons such as Frank Gaffney. Imagine the values that Lehrer took on Garrett with brought to bear on a Democratic American Zionist in the name of what many think of as a liberal ideal: a binational polity in Israel/Palestine that treats all citizens as equal. Or even the end to Jim Crow in the West Bank.

What if it took some time to bring American Jews along who were resistant to the idea, it wouldn’t be worth it for the equality? I don’t think I will ever hear him ask that question.

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trying to get Washington’s head around… ‘basic human rights’

by Philip Weiss on January 29, 2010 · 25 comments

MJ Rosenberg gets read inside the Beltway, and inside the lobby, too, and in this column on the end of negotiations for the 2-state-solution, he seems to be preparing power types for the one-state solution. An important signal to the forces of rejection in Washington. Note the radical principles that Rosenberg invokes: "basic human rights." The question here is whether American Jews (the only game in town, in my view) will marry Netanyahu’s institutionalized dont-worry-be-happy apartheid. Or will they take up the struggle against it. Rosenberg:

Netanyahu’s announcement yesterday that Israel intends to annex Ariel, a West Bank settlement of 15,000 that is 25 miles deep into the West Bank, could be the death knell for negotiations.  The Ariel announcement means that the borders of Israel would extend so far into the West Bank that a contiguous Palestinian state could not be created…

Are [Palestinians] completely without recourse?

Not at all. 

[read the full article…]

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Facts on the ground: the creation of a ‘de-facto binational structure’

by Philip Weiss26 January 2010

Israeli political scientist/leader Meron Benvenisti says that a binational entity is the inevitable solution in Israel/Palestine because the landgrab has created such a structure in fact. He points out that binationalism has long been a current in the ideological contention over Palestine and the political resolutions. Who knew? This is instructive reading:
Until the mid [...]

18 comments

Jewish student mag publishes one-state argument, signaling generational battle ahead

by Philip Weiss21 January 2010

I keep saying that there’s about to be a Jewish intifada, that young empowered American Jews are going to throw off the idea of a Jewish state just because it is not meaningful to them. I deal in straws in the wind, and I saw it at J Street when young people spoke openly of [...]

212 comments

Nusseibeh: After 40 years of meaningless 2-state talk, Israelis remain colonial ‘outsiders’

by Philip Weiss18 January 2010

Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds University and longtime two-state pusher, in Le Figaro interview:

In 1967, one of the first advocates of the two-state solution was Uri Avnery. He had no support at that time. Four decades later, his ideas have been immensely successful, as they are shared today by the entire world, even [...]

3 comments

Why was I silent about my politics in the Holocaust survivor’s house?

by Philip Weiss17 January 2010

A week ago I went to three weekly demonstrations in Israel/Palestine, winding up in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Much of the day was spent discussing anti-Zionism with Israeli Jews.
I found two camps among the Israeli Jews who were demonstrating. One camp was those who are there to try and save the Jewish state. Didi [...]

120 comments

One-state solution is debated in California congressional race

by Philip Weiss11 January 2010

Here’s a fine piece by Linda Milazzo in the LA Progressive, showing how viciously the lobby responds to talk of a one-state solution. LA Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of Energy and Commerce and a big liberal, goes haywire against Marcy Winograd, the challenger to Congresswoman Jane "AIPAC" Harman in a neighboring district. Milazzo points out [...]

125 comments

40 years after first epiphany, Judt still very bashable

by Philip Weiss11 January 2010

Evan Goldstein in the Chronicle of Higher Ed profiles Tony Judt, and does a nice job tracing his path to the groundbreaking one-state essay in the New York Review of Books. But note that Goldstein uses the opportunity to convene the liberal-Zionist bashers, most of them deeply invested in the Jewish state, instead of focusing [...]

6 comments

Brit Tzedek begins to reckon with idea of binational state

by Philip Weiss24 December 2009

Yesterday I got an email from Brit Tzedek, the American Jewish peace group, which has always had a generational feel for me– people in their 50s and 60s and 70s, who are still somewhat ethnocentric. (I know; I’m ethnocentric.) It contained a conversation with Amjad Atallah, of the New America Foundation, asking him, What do [...]

93 comments

How the mainstream media marginalize reasonable ideas

by Philip Weiss22 December 2009

I’m agnostic on the one-state solution. I think those people over there hate each other so much it might be good to keep them apart. The Balkans. India/Pakistan. But I sure do want to hear people talk about one state, and therefore I appreciate the LA Times piece explaining why Israel should begin to treat [...]

14 comments

In dreams begin responsibilities: ‘LA Times’ bravely pictures one-state coexistence

by Philip Weiss20 December 2009

What if it ends, not with a bang but a whimper?
The LA Times seems to be the only big American paper dealing with reality: The reality of the collapse of the Obama initiative, of the unending occupation, of the Israel lobby in our lives, of apartheid and ethnic cleansing and an anguished Palestinian people. The [...]

35 comments

Liberal Zionism and self-determination are on a collision course

by Ahmed Moor16 December 2009

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, [...]

20 comments

If feds hadn’t stopped Geo Wallace in ‘63, we’d still have apartheid

by Philip Weiss13 December 2009

Reuters reports: There’s no real freeze on settlers; Israel plans to add 10,000 in the next few months.

"This is neither a freeze nor a suspension," [Likud minister Benny Begin was quoted as saying]. "Construction in Judea and Samaria will continue in the next 10 months," he said, using the Biblical term for the West Bank. [...]

9 comments

gobsmacked

by Philip Weiss11 December 2009

Haaretz: "U.S. not opposed to Israel pumping more funds into settlements."
From Rashid Khalidi’s book, The Iron Cage. Please note Khalidi describes U.S. policy from nearly 20 years ago, never enforced.

…the United States failed to respect its own commitments in the joint U.S.-Soviet letter of invitation to the Madrid Peace Conference, and particularly in the U.S. [...]

15 comments

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