The other day I did a post on the debate between Alan Dershowitz and Peter Beinart at the City University of New York that focused on Dershowitz’s outlandish remarks. Now I want to focus on the liberal Zionist leader, Beinart, his challenge and his fear.
1. The challenge to Beinart.
At J Street last year, they sold t-shirts with Beinart’s picture on them and the slogan, “Beinart’s Army.” The claim was that young Jews are charged up by Beinart’s effort to redeem the Jewish state from the occupation. But when I walked into the hall the other night, a friend joked, “You just brought the average age here down by ten years.” I’m 57. It seemed like everyone there was in their 60s and 70s, and I bet they came for Dershowitz. So, where’s Beinart’s young following? These debates were well-advertised. I bet Beinart is experiencing just what other Zionists are experiencing– the brand is Enron. The young don’t want any part of it. Also, Beinart is the kind of young person that old people love, which explains his being the heart-throb of J Street funders and the Daily Beast.
2. Beinart’s fear– of civil war and a Muslim takeover
At least twice during the debate, Beinart expressed fear that democracy in Israel/Palestine would produce civil war. I believe these fears are widespread in the Jewish community and the US political establishment, too. Let me break out his statements:
–Someone asked about the promise of equality in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and Beinart said Israel had been violating those core principles in the occupied territories for 45 years. But
“the only way you can resolve that tension between equal citizenship and being a state that offers a refuge to the Jewish people, is within a two state solution…. In the context of a one-state solution it will not be a state that offers a refuge for the Jewish people…. Ultimately, I think it would probably be civil war.”
–Someone else asked about Beinart’s fears. He said, “South Africa… apartheid.”
That Israel will be one state which permanently has millions of people who will lack basic rights because they’re not of the right nationality, ethnicity, religion, whatever you want to call it, and those people with the backing of much of the world will be involved in a process of overturning the entire existence of the state and turning it into what they can call a secular binational state, which I personally believe will be a bloody civil war. And that’s exactly what I fear.
Dershowitz chimed in that there would “never” be a bi-national secular state in Israel and Palestine, as Palestinians would seek a Muslim state. “Palestinians will never allow a secular state.” If they obtained a majority in one state they would name it Palestine or “maybe they will name it something else that would have a more Muslim meaning,” said the Frankfurter professor, who concluded, “What makes you think it will be secular?”
Beinart said:
“I agree with you by the way.”
These fears are widely shared. The New York Review of Books is clearly afraid of political Islam’s advances across the Middle East. And while I am in Beinart’s camp with respect to Hamas— I think it’s awful that they wouldn’t let hundreds of women run in the marathon that had to be canceled last month– these fears clearly merge into Islamophobia, as Dershowitz’s crude pronouncements show.
But where is the outrage about Jewish religious extremism that is a far more powerful force than radical Islam inside Israel and the occupied territories?
And, how do our fears justify denying self-determination to another people?
I would argue that at this point the only political path that will marginalize both the Palestinian religious extremists and the Jewish ones is democracy. It is obvious that the two societies are incapable of doing so on their own. Israel just gets more and more extreme. But if the secular portions of both societies work together and vote together, they can marginalize the religious. As we struggle to do in our society.
Of course how Palestinians get to political freedom is an issue; and it is naive to dismiss Beinart’s fear of civil war. But apartheid and worse are the actual conditions for millions of Palestinians right now– his claim that apartheid is imminent is misleading– and revolutions have taken place on lesser grounds than these. For me the answer is South Africa, and international nonviolent pressure that forces Israel to reform.
If you’ve come to this conclusion:
“For me the answer is South Africa, and international nonviolent pressure that forces Israel to reform,”
then can we have some posts about how to conduct BDS, rather than so many posts about the possible minute shifts in the attitudes of American Jews? We ARE international wrt Israel/Palestine, remember? We have to be part of the international nonviolent pressure. Let’s get on with it already!
Two points. First, the promise of equality in Israel’s Declaration of Independence has been violated in a way that even Beinart and Dershowitz would agree for all but one year of Israel’s existence. From 1948 to 1966, the Palestinians who resided in Israel lived under martial law. There was not even a semblance of equality. In 1966, Israel lifted martial law, but a year later, it assumed rule over millions of non-citizen Palestinians that it has never relinquished. So between 1966 and 1967, Israel made its best attempt to provide equality for Jews and non-Jews. The other 64 years of its existence, no attempt at all was made. Of course, people of common sense know that even in the best of worlds, the Jewish State cannot provide true equality or anything close to it. Beinart acknowledges this, and says he can live with the compromise to his liberal principles (big of him); Dershowitz insists that Ben-Gurion’s promise of equality has been completely fulfilled.
Second, in my opinion, there is a greater prospect of civil war in the two-state solution. There are hundreds of thousands of settlers, and a large portion of them would have to be either removed to within the Green Line or agree to be bound by Palestinian jurisdiction and lose the protection of the IDF. While many are economic settlers who could be induced to change their residence, many are well-armed ideological settlers who will fight if the IDF tries to relocate them, or fight the Palestinian authorities who attempt to force them to live under Palestine law. Either way, it is a prescription for civil war. A 1ss may not be a walk in the park, but the parties could do their best to negotiate complete freedom of religion and security guarantees for all.
An ‘Israel’/Palestine that is post-Apartheid and democratic is unimaginable for Beinart – I think it is probably so far removed and inferior to the Israel he loves in his heart that it would be unrecognizable for him.
I think something along these lines is why a Beinart or Uri Avnery hang on to the 2 state solution – they simply cannot imagine an Israel with dismantled Apartheid because it is such a deep dismantling of the liberal Zionist dream that they just recoil from the thought of it.
I actually think they (and many other Israelis) wouldn’t like the character of a Post-Apartheid Israeli state – it would no longer be the ‘dream Israel’ that is so important to them.
Finally – I think Beinart wouldn’t get to be a good Jewish boy any more if he actually didn’t support the phony 2ss either. He would be about as welcome to debate a Dershowitz as a Norman Finkelstein at that point. Is he the type of guy who can take being shunned, ostracized, and excommunicated by tribe, friends and family – ‘Goldstoned’? – I don’t think so. This is why Beinart is appearing more and more limited, in my view
How to resolve the tension between citizenship and being a state that offers refuge to Jewish people? By giving up on this outdated refuge nonsense, that’s how. Instead, same as for everyone else, we Jews, should be engaged citizens of whatever nation we happen to live in, while at the same time participating in the struggle to make the world a safe & hospitable place for everyone.
First, I just want to give readers here this article on details of an organization I’ve never read about before, an organization that is behind the power of the Israeli settlers in Israel: http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/the-organization-behind-illegal-west-bank-outpost-construction.premium-1.523823?localLinksEnabled=false
Second, in her comment to another recent article here on MW, German Lefty depicted her encounter with a German Zionist. She said he did not listen to her about the most immediate subject of debate, but simply dismissed her, and damned her, if memory serves, for advocating the inherent fairness of supporting Palestinian right of return as the only way to insure any possible future peace–he cut her off by saying such ROT would be misusing Palestinians as guaranteeing a blood bath between Jews & Palestinians. In other words, he was certain in his own mind of a bloody civil war between the Jews and Palestinians if anybody sought to bring actual (theoretical, emotional) recipes for fairness to the table as a way of solving the dispute. The monitoring and guaranteeing role of the UN was never discussed.