Back in January, in the wake of the carnage in Gaza, we posted a video featuring Ali Abunimah, Mark Green, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, where Abunimah challenged progressives to speak out more on Israel/Palestine. Green was defensive (and offensive) whereas vanden Heuvel was silent. At the time I thought it was maybe because she knew Abunimah was right.
Well, congratulations and thanks to The Nation for publishing a great article from Abunimah in their May 28 issue. Focused on Mahmoud Abbas’s visit to Washington, he outlines the challenges in front of Obama, and specifically the obstacles Netanyahu is putting in the way of meaningful negotiation. Here is Abunimah talking about the Israeli demand that Israel be maintained as a Jewish state:
But can Israel’s demand be justified? A useful lens to examine its claim is the fundamental legal principle that there is no right without a remedy. If Israel has a “right to exist as a Jewish state,” then what can it legitimately do if Palestinians living under its control “violate” this right by having “too many” non-Jewish babies? Can Israel expel non-Jews, fine them, strip them of citizenship or limit the number of children they can have? It is impossible to think of a “remedy” that does not do outrageous violence to universal human rights principles.
What if we apply Israel’s claim to the United States? Because of the rapid growth of the Latino population in the past decade, Texas and California no longer have white majorities. Could either state declare that it has “a right to exist as a white-majority state” and take steps to limit the rights of non-whites? Could the United States declare itself officially a Christian nation and force Jews, Muslims or Hindus to pledge allegiance to a flag that bears a cross? While such measures may appeal to a tiny number of extremists, they would be unthinkable to anyone upholding twenty-first-century constitutional principles.
But Israeli leaders propose precisely such odious measures.
This is an important sign of how the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is changing. Thank you to The Nation for changing with the times, hopefully other publications on the left will follow.
