Last month I met author Jonathan Cook in Nazareth and pushed my latest theory: that when forced to choose, many liberal Zionists will choose liberalism over the ideology of religious nationalism.
Cook is not so optimistic. Labor Zionism has always struggled to maintain the “illusion of a Jewish and a democratic state,” he says, lately by adopting security rhetoric to rationalize second-class citizenship for Palestinians inside Israel. Labor Zionists favored expulsion of Palestinians historically, and today the policy of Judaization of the territory that is being effected inside Area C of the occupied territories is going on in Israel too.
At 11:40 I push my point that human beings are remediable, and that liberal Zionists in the U.S. won’t support racist policies if the choice is made stark to them. Cook demurs. Based on Israeli political history, he says liberal Zionists will move rightward. “They side with the Jewish elements… the nationalistic element is likely to predominate.”
As to “Liberal Zionism”: [1] a question of Jewish or democratic? That’s only one question, maybe not the most important, a distraction. How about [2] a question about continual violation of international law, conventions, etc. and continually renewed war-crimes versus NOT being lawless and war-criminal?
No-one to my knowledge, no PEP, no LZ, has answered the question: How does the settlement program help provide for Israeli “security”? The answer to that is that it does not. It is merely part of a land-grab, and illegal during the occupation.
My thinking is that Likud knows what it’s doing so does Labour.
The thinking is to build as many settlements as possiable and everytime there’s a flare up build more in the name of security, block off additional tracks of land for security “reasons” than give the land to settlers for deveoplement to the point that the pot burst and than use this as a excuse to cleanse the majority if not all Palestinian from the west bank any critisim against such action will be meet with revoking Israeli non-jewish citizenship. Than forcing egypt to take control of the southern part of gaza and the northern becomes a no-go zones.
I think many Liberal will still be on board and justify it by pointing out the violent actions of Palestinian (of course ommitting violent actions by both setters and the IDF or Israel itself). The difference between the Likudnites vs Liberal Zionist is the Likudnites are doing it out in the open(which makes it hard to attempt to justify rationally). It’s going to get even more nasty as Israel loses more and more support in the U.S.
“I push my point that human beings are remediable, and that liberal Zionists in the U.S. won’t support racist policies if the choice is made stark to them.”
Great post but I disagree because such ideology will not allow them to see themselves supporting racist policies. This can be seen in many liberal zionist responses to Israel Violations of human rights. How many leaders/journalist make false equivalence when Israel does something? Dismiss,ommit or outright don’t talk about it? Even the most serioius comments made by rabbi lior, rabbi Yosef, Avigdor Lieberman,danny danon, are ommitted in U.S. press yet all receive praise in one way or another. Don’t forget Oren.
NPR for example praised Yosef when they were talking about Bibi speaking his support while his comment about abbas was never mention,
The lines that will be repeated now as it will be repeated later by Liberal Zionist will be “security” and “there not citizen’s of Israel” It will follow with “Israel has the right to defend themselves” and “arabs will_____ to Jews if_____-”
Recall that alan dershowitz considers himself a liberal zionist and CAMERA while liberal in terms on american issues this does not often translate in regards to Israel and it’s more likely that “Liberal Zionist” will embrace Likud actions more than back away from it as Cook thinks.
Regarding the clashes between the police and Israeli Arab citizens in the beginning of the second Intifada Cook is blatantly lying regarding “peacefull” nature of the demonstrations.
Jonathan Cook. A moral giant.
I don’t think Cook is a moral giant. I’ve emailed him at his website several dozen times to contradict some of what he’s said in his published articles. He’s never once responded to my emails. Apparently, he is not someone who is open to dialogue.