I got a lot out of listening to neo-pagan Adrian Ivakhiv on public radio earlier this year. To repeat his lesson: all peoples are gripped by geographical/mythical fantasies. They all "want" to return. So: millions of Diaspora Jews say at Passover, "Next year in Jerusalem," and now when they have the power to do something about that, they don't act on it. Only the wingnuts do. And my mother won't even take a trip with me to Israel. The point is, You should live where you live. Applied to the Middle East: Diaspora Jews should crank down the Israel lobby craziness, Israeli Jews should recognize that the "European" society they've made is 500 miles east of Istanbul, and yes some Palestinians should accept that they live in Syria or Jordan or wherever.
Which isn't an argument against the right of return. It's saying that those who actually want to return should be able to do so. Lately Richard Witty pointed out to me that Jews were in Hebron before
'48 (and of course Morocco and Egypt, Baghdad and Damascus) and before the massacres of '29 or so. Why shouldn't Jews get to live in Hebron in the Occupied Territories?
My problem with this is that Jews are now the only ones who get to exercise the right of return. I can "return" to Israel tomorrow. Jews can "return" to fantasyland Judea and Samaria tomorrow, West Bank colonies. But what about those 500 extirpated Palestinian villages in Israel? Shouldn't Arabs who want to go back be allowed? Of course. Wouldn't this openness promote healing– rather than the chaos that was always predicted in South Africa too, when it was a manifestly unjust society? And let the politics bring up the rear.
Witty responds:
The
politics are not in the rear. Lots
of bad judgments have been made. For example, Tel Aviv would make a good
capital. And, for the Palestinians, Ramallah is functional. There is no need to
make Jerusalem an either/or city.
study, and then the issues about control would be limited only to the external
fanatics. Its
important that the unifying work be DONE, not particularly talked about,
especially with a political agenda on the end of it.
public health, ecology, culture, worship of the ONE could be
done. I
think agitation is useful ONLY if it does not result in hatred, and that is
abused so frequently, that I can't in good conscience pursue primarily
political definitions as activism.
seen it so damn often, that people that call themselves "committed" only commit
to the extent of dissent, and FAIL to commit to actual healing and
reconstruction. To me,
that is the most glaring naked emperor.
Weiss again, now in blue: I like your idea for Tel Aviv and Ramallah. I'd work for that. I'd work for the international city of Jerusalem that U.N. negotiator Folke Bernadotte wanted till he was killed by the future Israeli prime minister's gang in '48; and lo, his successor, Ralph Bunche came up with a different idea! I do think there are powerful political constructs that have to be dealt with here. When Alan Dershowitz is the lead figure in an Obama video, and he accuses the Green Party of antisemitism because they support the right of return and liken the treatment of Arabs in Palestine to apartheid, and he can publish in the Daily News, this attack, and they can't get a letter in in response. Well, there is something really wrong with our discourse, our politics. It's not that I support the Greens all the way here, it's that David Frum gets a platform for his extremist views, but the Greens are marginalized as "far left". And yes, it's Diaspora Zionist influence or deference, with Dershowitz now colonizing the progressive movement of Obama. Until America can discuss these things openly, I will be engaged in activities you consider "agitation." Writing about this stuff on my blog as outrageous. Obviously it doesn't suit your temperament. But consider, I got to write about Vietnam once in this manner, and South Africa, and the treatment of blacks in the south. And all that was considered good old first amendment; and all of them were human-rights issues.
