At the Daily Beast, Indiana University’s Shaul Magid is justly angered by the censorship of a non-Zionist youth group’s event at the 14th Street Y and asks why it is a heresy to oppose the two-state solution. I would put Magid, a legendary scholar of Jewish studies, in a growing camp that includes David Shulman– thoughtful people with status who have begun to question what Zionism is doing to the Jewish soul, and the Palestinian soul too. I’m referring to Shulman’s piece in the New York Review of Books preparing American Jews for the one state future.
Magid surely misrepresents Jewish Voice for Peace in this excerpt– JVP has not endorsed a one-state solution. [Update– I am told that Daily Beast has fixed the errors.] But he makes an important point I’ve always wondered about: 25 years ago you were considered a heretic for supporting the two state solution. So who is the heretic now? Paradigms change like the weather:
Someone should write a history of the two-state solution. This is not only because it is an interesting and important idea, but because it has moved so quickly in Jewish circles from being anathema to being a dogma of the Jewish mainstream.
The less likely the reality of two-states, the more it becomes a dogma… The more we believe it will never happen, the more we claim that it must and that anyone who claims otherwise is outside the mainstream and thus illegitimate. The absurdity of the two-state dogma among mainstream American Jews (according to Tertullian all dogmas are “absurd”) showed itself in the Y’s treatment of JVP.
It is true that JVP supports a one-state solution, that is, a liberal democratic Israel where all citizens are treated equally and given full rights supported by a constitution; kind of like the United States (flaws notwithstanding). What is ironic about this is that JVP is not the only Jewish group against two states…. [Magid mentions all the rightwingers]
Would “mainstream Jewish groups” deny groups supporting settlers access to Jewish communal space because they “do not endorse a two-state solution”? One would hardly think so.
What should we make of this, Phil, considering that originally England did not have the authority to create a Jewish state in the Palestine Mandate, and that the Balfour Declaration itself, declared without the needed authority, only envisioned a single Palestinian state with a Jewish “homeland” there as well? Not to mention, any such “homeland” for for the Jews could not in any way curb the right of the non-Jews living there? It’s amazing to me that even the UN partition, giving, what 56% of the land, to Jews from all over the world, is not the most Israel may claim as internationally legal.
Now, Israel has all but 22% of the total Palestinian land. Why don’t major American leaders ever point this out?
The 2 state solution is like a peep show Israel has been making money from for the last 20 years. Turns out there is no lady behind the door. It’s actually a child being tortured. And now people can get what they want online and Israel thinks they owe it something .
Israel has encircled Palestinian Area A (Areas in the West Bank under the control of the P.A.) to the extent that a Palestinian state has become impossible. Israel wants to maintain control over the Jordan Valley and keep the settlement blocs to the west, like Ariel for example.
So what tools or methods does Finkelstein propose Palestinians use in pressuring Israel to halt its territorial annexation of Palestinian land?
And if BDS is not the answer, then what is?
It seems like Finkelstein is caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand he wants a two-state solution, one that Israel has made impossible at this point, and on the other hand he is afraid that BDS could lead to a one-state solution, thus spelling the end of a Jewish state.
The Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental Jewish-Israeli organization, is charged with educating Jews around the world about Israel. Its Department for Jewish Zionist Education produces a giant map (at least 10 feet high) of Israel. I just saw one two days ago. The Gaza Strip is surrounded by a border and is designated as a separate Palestinian territory. There is no such line around the West Bank. If you did not know your map of Israel, you would have no idea that there is an Israeli part and a Palestinian part.
To non-Jews, foreign governments and peaceniks, the Israelis say: 2ss.
To the Jews, they say: it’s all ours.
I can see the irony (I remember the days when “two states for two peoples” was the cry of a handful of Israeli communists), but I think that the cold shoulder given to JVP has a lot more to do with its perceived lack of “feeling” for Israel than its advocacy of a single state. The “loyalty” of warmongers and racial supremacists on the other hand, is never questioned. In other words, the Jewish mainstream is willing to accept virtually any Jewish position, as long as it does not entail “disloyalty”. The soup du jour may be a theoretical peace process (alas, perennially unrequited), but if you fail to demonstrate your loyalty, it’s out the shtetl you go.* That’s why even the foremost American advocate of the two-state solution (J Street) is kept at arms length, and Beinart gets nothing but scathing reviews in the NYT.
*Too many metaphors for any sentence, but what’s done is done.