Well...it's a question long argued between the different camps long before Israeli statehood. If you read writers like Herzel, it was as idealistic and well-intentioned as it was naive. The slogan was "A land for a people for a people without a land," with it understood that that land was uninhabited. And when those groups began to settle from Europe (an we are talking 19th century, at least 50 years before Israeli statehood) they did it with the blessing of the Ottomans, and those than came, did so with the presumption of being Ottoman subjects. It's telling that most of the leaders went to Turkey first to learn Turkish and Ottoman law. When they got there, they couldn't just move to Jaffa. The locals there weren't too cool with that, so that's how Tel Aviv was born, as a suburb next to the port, and most everyone else moving to empty areas to build collective farms in undeveloped areas. That's when Revisionist Zionism was began to gain steam,after WWI and the political situation had changed, from the point of view that conflict was inevitable, that the Ottomans were no longer in charge and the British weren't going to be there forever, a state of some kind was possible one day, and that Jews may find themselves forced to fight for it with locals (both Jewish and Arab) not too keen on the idea. But if you read Jabotinsky, the erstwhile father of Likud in Israel and the right in general, it's full of things like this: It's hard to imagine any Likud MK saying something like this in 2014. Until very recently, there were 3 old guys left that were good for reminding the electorate of history and the legacy of what Revisionist Zionist was actually supposed to be about, but even they have been purged from political life for being too "left" (which they absolutely were not). Ethnic cleansing certainly wasn't in the writing or rhetoric back then, and the Nakba is still a taboo subject, almost on the level of Armenian genocide for Turks, which I think is a major roadblock. The open call to "transfer" Palestinians to Jordan didn't happen until Kach which despite Israeli efforts to ban the party, many of those ideas were co-opted by other parties who are responsible for a starkly righward, messianic mission creep in Israel as a whole. I think any Palestininan leader, instead of rolling his eyes at the "recognizing Israel as a Jewish state" demand should be countered with a "fine, but if I do that, Israel should officially recognize the Nakba happened and offer some kind of reasonable compensation." By making that declaration that Zionism is about ethnic cleansing and land grabs is to silence those who do identify as zionist and advocate Palestinian statehood, minority rights, and march in peaceful demonstrations in support of those things. By alienating those allies in the cause of a reasonable peace is to be an agent of increasing the polarization and distance between two goals that need not be mutually exclusive. But to put it another way...hearing anti-Israel activists talk about the evils of the "zionists" makes me cringe in the same way hearing Sean Hannity say the word "jihad," both without an understanding of context and how the word is used by the people for whom it has a meaning to.
I'm not sure you are looking for a serious answer to your question as much as you are seeking confirmation bias. I can tell you that both the Israeli and Palestinian national narratives are full of romantic untruths, and that the work of actual historians is a bothersome inconvenience to political rhetoric. I am firmly in the camp of doing the best of trying to deal with things as evidence supports and as reality permits rather than flying a flag and ignoring anything that challenges the myths I was taught. Otherwise, I'd be typing this from a settlement in the West Bank with firm conviction of my moral superiority . I'm also not sure where you are going with Ethiopian-Israelis , considering that airlifting Jews from Ethiopia and settling them in Israel has been a major project for decades, and that the vast majority of Ethopian Jews themselves tend to be very nationalistic and religious as a group. It might be that you are confusing them with non-Jewish African refugees to Israel, who are definitely treated very poorly, particularly those from Eritrea.
David Sheen has done great work to reveal the levels of discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in Israel in 2014. Today's Israel is not only a far cry from the Israel sold to Americans by AIPAC and the ADL, it is a dystopic malformation of the Israel your father and grandfather once knew. Sure, Israel never was a true democracy and always had a racial hierarchy that dictated the dispersion of civic and political power, but in Israel today, the racially charged rhetoric and actions of the government and of the vast majority of Israeli Jews reflects the debilitating nature of the Zionist project on racial cohesiveness and social justice. Check out David Sheen's findings on the living situations of Ethiopian Jews and African migrants in Israel. It is truly disheartening. Clearly, Arabs in Israel fester at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, but today, the consolidation of power by Ashkenazi Jews at the top and the glut of Russian Jews that compromise the middle debunk your sanitized description of the treatment of Ethiopian and Mizrahi Jews in Israel. You know a lot Deji but I recommend updating your understanding of what , today, may only be called Israel's ethnocracy.
Thank you Deji for this very accurate review of the Israeli state. There is a lot to work in building the trust between the Palastinians and the Israelies, mainly because every time an agreement have been made, one side broke it. We have missed so many opportunities for peace that so many people seems to have lost hope on the chance, but it is the only solution and one day people will realize it. One day the Palastinians will forget about the rage and lost honor of their parents and start thinking about the future of their children. One day Israelis would not fear that every Palastinian plots to kill them whenever they turn their back on him and realize that the Palastinians needs a progressive state for both nations sake. One day peace will come, because no one is going anywhere...
And you kind of miss my point that you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you disqualify everyone who is a "zionist" as being a land-grabbing right-winger. It's the same as calling any Palestinian that ever supported Fatah a terrorist. You can't really engage the Israeli camp and talk about a lasting peace without understanding both their narrative, and the nuances and realities of that narrative. It's one thing to point out the shortcomings, it's another to dismiss the entire nation as a collection of war criminals, which is essentially how is sounds to them. I agree...the two state solution is near dead, but that's largely because the advocates on both sides have been marginalized and they are giving up. What's true of labor zionists is also true of Abbas and his camp within the PA. The squeaky wheels are getting the grease and it's everyone's fault and it's a tragedy long in coming. Why bother if no one will listen and even outsiders buy into the more extreme versions of national narratives? That's unfortunately true at this point, but as far as what he says, it's kind of like what they used to say about Arafat, it depends on who asks and in what language. If Netanyahu wasn't so weak and beholden to interests well right of him I'm not sure it would impossible. He's certainly not stupid and I'm sure he understands better than most that the situation isn't one that will scale well over time, but he I think he's kind of trapped saying and doing what he needs to for his political survival. Israeli leaders have a long precedence of doing unpopular things for the good of the country. When Begin gave up Sinai to Egypt for peace, it wasn't at all popular either, but then, Begin was a different kind of leader. I don't have a problem with that in principle, especially in light of the intransigence and the obvious civil right issues the status quo invites. But it's also very condescending to Palestinian aspirations for statehood and identity. Creating a new or confederated state requires even more political compromise than one in pre-'67 territory. Why should Palestinians have to do that, especially when the PA has done a reasonable job of playing by the rules set by Oslo? To me it seems extremely unjust to say the last 20+ years were for nothing. But I'll concede that the younger generation of Palestinians cares a lot less about nationalistic aspiration. I think most of them would accept belonging to any state that permitted them equal participation, at least from what I've been told anecdotally. But right now, the only Israelis talking single state are on the far-right or far-left and that won't change as long as the status quo is the least painful decision from an Israeli point of view. Because that's the true center, neither one state or two states, but doing nothing at all because it's the easiest.
Listen, I really get where you're coming from, but please stop short of comparing my words to those of Hannity on Islam. You know, there are Zionists who do have noble and legitimate intentions, like the parents of one Noam Chomsky, who lived and worked on a kibbutz in the years before the founding of the state of Israel and for a while after. Followers of Ahad Ha'am, who I'm sure you are familiar with, they advocated for a Zionism that was built around the kibbutz community structure and not one that relied on a nationalist identity or state-like apparatus, certainly not one that required terrorist groups like Irgun and Haganah to commit crimes so as to impose a military state on the indigenous population. The unfortunate reality of Zionism though, is that, certainly as it exists today, it mandates the ethnic cleansing of the land of its Arab populations so as to guarantee any Jew from NYC to Brisbane a place in this 'national home', most obviously at the expense of any sort of Palestinian national identity. And since it's inception, Israel has done all it can to trample the political and economic rights of Palestinians, most notably, those within Israel 48, citizens who should be granted full rights in a democracy. They have never possessed complete rights in any form or fashion. And today, it is worse than it was just 10 years ago. The settlement enterprise was never a mistake or a venture gone wrong; it was always supposed to happen. That israel is a settler colonial state is undeniable to any objective observer. As Mandela once said, 'our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians'. And to quote Chomsky from today's democracynow.org broadcast: Israel's actions against Palestinians are 'much worse than apartheid' in South Africa. Europeans forcibly establishing themselves in a non-European land under various incorrect and/or malicious preconceptions, like the claim that it was a land without a people. Chaim Weizmann knew full well that there were indigenous Palestinian Muslims and Christians living there. It did not matter. Why? Because leading revisionist and labor Zionists alike always knew that ethnic cleansing had to be done. It's settler colonialism, always was, always will be. EDIT: Right to exist as Jewish state? There is no such right. You either exist as a state or you don't. And your state is either an ethnocracy, here a Jewish one, or it isn't.
I really hope this is the case, I don't know for sure but there are some indicators that would suggest there's a substantial chance. It would make the single state option a viable opportunity, assuming international pressure on Israeli political and cultural society was sufficient to incentivize real changes in attitude and mentality.
Well let me answer. Hamas built tunnels which is their basic human right. Do you disagree that they did this primarily to avoid starvation and to keep their economy from totaling failing as they are want to do when there is a total blockade, an act of war under international law. Oh international law? I know many Israelis and their backers hate it and don't believe in it. Now do they have as much right to import arms through the tunnels as Israel has to import arms from the US? Yes. The the logic and morality of this is obviousl unless you start from your implied position of Israelis/Jews are human and Gazans are subhuman as proved by omg! voting for Hamas.
Why do you disagree though.. Is it because Arabs are just prone to doing TERRORIST things? Because Arabs prioritize violence over sustenance or possessing simple consumer goods? I don't get it.
Of course if you go down this path then Israel is just asserting its right to defend itself. So you want Hamas to attack and Israel to do nothing? Yeah, that's a solution.
Poll conducted on popular Israeli news site shows that half of respondents wish to send President Obama the Ebola virus for his birthday. Sure, it's a playful poll, but the results are a disturbing reflection of a fascist strain in Israeli society. http://972mag.com/nstt_feeditem/pop...israelis-wish-president-obama-death-by-ebola/
You missed his point. If you blockade an area and impose a siege, then those living inside the area will rightfully build tunnels to use for importing/exporting goods and allowing human beings to move across the sieged border. And if the siege won't stop, then the tunnels will inevitably facilitate the acquisition of arms by those who want freedom from the siege and the destitution produced by it. Israel has fully asserted that right, so much so that 80pct of those dead after the assertion are innocent civilians.
For further reading on the issue. Thanks to exiled for a link to some nice videos. http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/when-smoke-clears.html ********* Americans among us are beginning to read Ma’an News, The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Jadaliyya, Counterpunch, The Middle East Monitor, The Link, download reports from the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), listen to Democracy Now!, follow the tweets of Gaza journalists such as Mohammed Omer, or simply take notice of the steadfast activism of Jewish Voice for Peace, International Solidarity Movement (Palestine), Students for Justice in Palestine, Codepink, U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, USACBI, to name but a few
And here I thought I found a Palastinian I could talk to. Yes If you want to use the historic rights of your fathers you can not ignore from the historic rights of the Jewish people in Israel (although I would prefer to ignore this stupid "who was here first" debate and move on). Yes- because of the Holocaust, and because the riots in Russia, and in the arab world, and because the sufferings the Jews have endured in centuries as minorities in the forced exile from Israel, they have decided to build a state in which they will not be the scapegoat whenever something goes wrong in the economics of their country. No, there is no ethnic cleansing like you keep on saying. More than a million arab-Israelies live inside the state of Israel with more freedom and prosperity than any other state in the middle east. Yes- there have been horrific things done in the past in the fights between the jews and the arabs (on both sides). 70 years ago african-americans could not ride in the front of the buses in USA, Aboriginals were thought like animals in Australia and Jews have been exterminated in Europe. Many bad things have happened in the past, we all need to remember, learn from it and forgive. The Palastinians need to realize that the state of Israel is here to exist, if they like it or not. Whenever you choose the path of war, people will die. that's the only universal truth of man kind. Palastinians deserve the right of self determination exactly like the Jews have that right, so please don't act like a martyr, call for the destruction of a country, shoot at it citizens and expect them not to react. Until both sides will recognize that they need to find a way to live side by side and not die side by side the fight will go on
