Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, says he rejects one state in Israel and Palestine, even if it’s a “democracy,” because Palestinians outnumber Jews and they will end the Jewish state.
In a webinar talk last month, Moulton said that he questions the “viability” of the two state solution, but he remains committed to that outcome because it is the only way to preserve a Jewish state:
One of the simplest ways that I found to look at is that if you actually had a true one state where Palestinians and Israelis had equal rights– a democracy, right?– then demographically the Palestinians are probably going to take over the Israelis in relatively short order, they would outvote them, and that means you would really lose the concept of a Jewish state. It would be some sort of coalition government, I’m sure, but for everybody who advocates for a Jewish state and the right for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in the world, it’s hard to see how that works under a truly democratic single state as one would be necessarily constructed here. And that’s something that people don’t like to talk about frankly. I think that’s a hard truth for a lot of people to face. It’s something a lot of people especially in the Israeli government don’t like to admit.
As someone who believes in the right for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in the world and also believes in democracy, in the primacy of democracy as a form of government, it’s hard to see how this works…A two state solution is hard to envision now, but a one state solution is even harder.
Moulton spoke on a webinar hosted by J Street after the liberal Zionist lobby group took him to Israel and Palestine in February, his fourth visit to the country.
Moulton’s comment that the contradiction between a Jewish state and a democracy is a “hard truth” people don’t like to face is important, because activists on the left have long pushed this contradiction, and now it’s being discussed in the mainstream. Lara Friedman said last week that recent reports accusing Israel of apartheid have caused embarrassment to Democrats by “saying the quiet part out loud — we want Israel to be a state which gives supremacy to Jewish citizens at the cost of what is democracy and equality and anti-racism and anti-discrimination. We want that but we still want to be called a democratic state but if we have to pick we’ll pick the supremacist state… There’s a cognitive dissonance for a lot of progressives who have long believed .. if you wrap yourself in this cloak of I-support-negotiations, I-support-two-states, that somehow that inoculates you from being responsible for essentially being supportive of a regime that isn’t democratic in any real way except for Jewish citizens of Israel…Saying Israel is democratic for its Jewish citizens is not saying it’s a democracy in any serious way.”
Here are some other excerpts of Moulton’s webinar, which was attended by many in Massachusetts. (A friend shared the Zoom password link with me).
Moulton admitted that Congress is on Israel’s side, thanks to the Israel lobby.
As you might imagine, the conversation in the Congress tends to be fairly one sided. There is a remarkably effective p.r. effort from the Israeli government and from advocates here in the United States to present their side of the story, and the Palestinians don’t have that kind of effort. Ultimately I think this does impair the resolution of the conflict. Make no mistake, I am a very strong Israel supporter. I spent four years of my life fighting terrorism in the Middle East… I’m no softy here when it comes to being pro Israel but at the same time only seeing one side of a conflict makes it very difficult if not impossible to resolve.
Moulton, 43, a former Marine captain, said the world sees Palestinians as a “monolithic terrorist organization” and he has pushed Palestinian leaders since his first visit to change the script.
I asked leaders of the P.A., You have such a more compelling case to the world community if you just stop shooting the damn rockets. I asked the same question on this trip… When that’s what the world sees and that’s what Israeli families have to worry about with their kids, it’s very easy to paint the Palestinians as one big terrorist organization, and you don’t understand that there are a lot of… innocent Palestinians as well and that’s why just to get to the heart of this question, it gets hard to convince people that we should be so focused on protecting Palestinians, when there’s this view that it’s just a monolithic terrorist organization.
Moulton said that today even members of Congress are questioning the viability of the two-state solution.
One of the things that’s been floating around in the press and in discussions but in the halls of Congress [too]… is what is the actual viability of the two state solution. And even on the trip we heard people who really questioned whether that remains viable. Certainly it’s been tested a lot in the last couple of years particularly under Netanyahu’s leadership. There were people who said you know it’s just not going to work. There are other people who said it was essential.
The J Street delegation met with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, a centrist, and Lapid said that the two-state solution was the best way to end “this horrible ongoing conflict,” but he couldn’t say so officially.
It was fascinating to hear him say that and then also explain that he cannot make that position a part of the platform because he wouldn’t be able to put together his coalition government if he took that position.
Moulton found that sad.
It’s very sad to be there, and having been there three times before, to feel like we’re further away from that than we have been in times past. But at the same time I think it’s the best solution that we have out there.
The Israeli government’s opposition to the two-state solution is influencing Congress against it. Moulton pointed out that Rep. Andy Levin is sponsoring a two-state bill in Congress that has the support of liberal Zionists, but only 46 Democratic Congresspeople– because it’s become “controversial.”
I understand that this bill has been painted by a lot of people to be controversial, and I think that’s in the context of a lot of people shifting away from advocating for a two-state solution including leaders in Israel like Netanyahu saying that’s not a viable way forward and ultimately they don’t think that is in the best interests of the Israeli people. I just don’t believe that to be true. I think there’s a reason why longstanding policy has been in favor of a two state solution…
Moulton said that the “tenuous” support for the two-state solution in Israel has made it unpopular in the Congress.
This position represented by Rep. Levin’s bill has become so tenuously popular, so tenuous in Israel that the governing coalition can’t even accept it as part of its platform. And I think fundamentally that’s why it’s controversial back here. But if you actually read the [Levin] legislation… there’s nothing that’s radical or revolutionary as far as what the U.S. position has been, for a number of years.
Moulton said that “things are moving in the wrong direction,” so he has decided to push for small actions that can “nudge” the discussion toward a two-state solution. For instance, after seeing ample documentation of settler violence against Palestinians, he pressed Yair Lapid over the “really strange” policy in which Israeli soldiers back the settlers. Lapid denied this.
We saw numerous examples, even saw video and met with some targets of settler violence and came to understand this really strange policy where the IDF is not allowed to intervene to prevent settler violence, they’re only allowed to protect the settlers. So I asked the prime minister [Lapid is actually alternate prime minister] about the position that this puts not just the country of Israel morally, but the position that it puts the troops in… That exchange was worthwhile because it could actually lead to a policy change as something that we can follow up with a letter to hold the prime minister accountable for what he pledged to us in a meeting, which is essentially that this is not the policy and it wouldn’t happen. Of course we saw something different out there on the ground.
The chat during Moulton’s talk was not very sympathetic to the congressman. Many called on him to do more for Palestinian rights or to support a one-state solution. Janette Hillis-Jaffe, a senior official at J Street who was a host of the discussion, said that these are the views of “folks from other organizations” who support a one state solution, and she asserted the J Street line: that given the acrimonious history of the conflict, a one-state solution “is more of a recipe for a civil war than anything else right now.” She said J Street believes in “a peaceful separation, maybe a confederation,” where the two states exist side by side, “E.U. style.”
A second J Street official, Adina Vogel-Ayalon, then seemed to correct Hillis-Jaffe, saying that “confederation is not an alternative to two states, it is a way to two states.”
Mark my words. One day in the not-so-distant future, 1967 will be remembered not as the highly romanticize Hasbara fever dream of victory and Jewish might for the “little nation that could”, but as a “catastrophe” for the Jewish State of Israel, in the same way 1948 is finally being recognized as the “Nakba” for the Palestinians.
Possibly the worst outcome from Israel’s attack on Egypt, subsequent invasion, occupation, and annexation of Palestinian land, was Israel’s resounding military success and the half century of appeasement, protection, financing, and coddling by the US.
Israel was the dog that caught the bus. Only the bus contained millions of people! The day Israel decided it would expand its official borders, snatch East Jerusalem, and keep the land but not the people, was the day Israel stopped becoming a democracy and became a supremacist Apartheid state. Despite all the atrocities and ethnic cleansing carried out in its founding in 1947/8, Israel won enough support for statehood and international legitimacy and could have successfully maintained its image and the dream of a Jewish and democratic state. That ended in the immediate wake of its actions in 1967.
There was, and is, no Two State Solution. Period! Israel will NEVER give up East Jerusalem or allow it to be a bi-national capital for both nations. Israel will NEVER remove hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis living beyond the Green Line right up to and including the Jordan River Valley. Israel will NEVER leave thousands of Jewish Settlers to remain under the sole jurisdiction of a Palestinian government and laws in an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.
And in this One State Reality, and as the ONLY state between the river and the sea, Israel has made it clear it will NEVER accept the Palestinians within this One State as Israeli citizens with full and equal rights, representation, and freedom, because that effectively ends Israel as a Jewish State.
The irony is there is no future where Israel can maintain its 1967 victory, annexation, occupation, and goals and remain a Jewish State and a democracy. It chose Apartheid in 1967 and chooses Apartheid today, because the end of that Apartheid with no prospect of two states means the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Pandora’s Box is open and the toothpaste in out the tube. Congress members like Rep. Moulton know this. 1967 it the reason. This is why it will be remembered as Israel’s very own “catastrophe”.
Well, of course if Israel were a democracy it would cease to be a Jewish state.
In 2009, Canadian Quakers approved a minute (that’s Quakerese for “passed a resolution”) calling on Israel and any future state of Palestine to give the same rights, privileges, duties and responsibilities to all their respective citizens. Most of them probably did not realize that they were calling for Israel to cease to be a Jewish state, and instead become a “state of all its citizens” — something that is anathema to Zionists.
If all the Western nations, including the US, stopped their nefarious activities, arms sales, and covert operations, with Israel, and threatened to stop the billions and billions of dollars in aid from being sent there. Israel would be singing a different song today.
It is unbelievable that the US Congress is so beholden to the Israeli lobbies, and many members seems desperate for their support, and the campaign donations (that buy their unwavering support). that they do not have the spine to reject what I think is a toxic entity, that does not put the interests of the country they live in first.
Israel has spied on us (Pollard), had its spyware company spy on our officials (Pegasus), and has still not spoken out against Russia’s aggression, instead it is sitting on the fence and worrying about their wealthy Jewish oligarchs in Russia. Talk about biting the hands that feed it.
Israel is known for playing both sides, and is deceitful any way you look at it.
With “friends” like this, who needs enemies?
In an effort to discourage Palestine activists from using Nazi/Third Reich analogies I have often urged them to instead compare aspects of contemporary Israel to the Confederate States of America (CSA) thereby completely subverting and circumventing the Zionist tactic of smearing them with the bogus charge of antisemitism.
Both states – CSA and Israel – asserted that they were “democracies” even in the face of towering evidence to the contrary. In fact, both states were only “democratic” for a specific demographic and specifically, rigidly not for others. Both states declared they: had an almighty mandate to exist; a right to expand and to demand that they be recognized as is; the right to oppress, brutalize and even kill non-privileged populations with impunity and without sanction among other similarities. It is also true that Israel and the CSA did share a number of institutions indispensable to genuine democracies: a free press; an independent judiciary; regular elections; freedom of movement and freedom of religion, among others.
The hypocrisy becomes apparent with the admission that the full range of rights do not apply to every citizen of Israel/Occupied Territories and extended only to the white male population of the CSA. Israel is a true democracy, but only for Jews. The CSA was a true democracy but only for whites. For decades before the Civil War (1861-1865) “The Slavocracy” was able, owing to its intimate presence in Congress, to influence that legislature with the same degree of zeal and effectiveness that AIPAC and other Zionist institutions influence (notice: I did not say “control”) Congress today. Even a hollow puppet like Moulton can see the evidence for that comparison.
Ironically, in 1861 the United States was adamantly, violently against the idea of a “two state solution”; One free and one slave. Today it is performatively, obsequiously, dedicated to evangelizing one for Israel. It took Americans decades to finally recognize the moral evil that slavery and it only did so because the Southern bloc in Congress continually chipped away at American freedoms (see The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850). I posit that organized Zionism’s efforts to undermine the Constitution in service to Israel, (see Anti-BDS Laws) is a modern-day re-enactment of those ill-advised and desperate efforts of Southern states to defend the indefensible.
Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to make this comparison?
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Though I’d be somewhat surprised if it happens, I hope that Moulton continues to wrestle with these contradictions and recognizes that the solution is to give up the idea of having a Jewish state. And while I can’t entirely appreciate his efforts to get a morally corrupt enterprise right, I appreciate that he’s asking people to do better.
But I also hope that his district realizes that it could have a better representative in Congress than Seth Moulton, for this and other reasons. If Moulton doesn’t show more signs of becoming that representative, I hope that someone better replaces him.