Can a place be a "Jewish homeland" and not be a "racist state?"
Basic-Law Israel
"Basic Principles (a) The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish People in which the State of Israel was established. (b) The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which is realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to determination. (c) The realization of this right to national self-determination is exclusive in the Jewish People."
Other countries have different founding principles and different contradictions. The nation of Israel affirms that its founding principle is that Israel is for Jews. Fresh in the memory of Jews is being a victim of a mass program of ethnic cleansing, the holocaust. Yet the historic land of Israel was not a blank slate to be created anew. Christians and Muslims lived there and had for centuries, people with homes, farms, businesses, and sacred places of their own. What is Israel to do with them?
Herb Rothschild is a retired professor of English. During his working years he was a political activist on behalf of world peace and civil rights for Black Americans. He is still doing that work, advocating for peace and justice. He lives in Talent, Oregon.
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| Rothschild |
Guest Post by Herb Rothschild
At a conference for the progressive organization Netroots Nation on July 15, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) made comments critical of Israel. In the course of them she called Israel “a racist state.” The next day she apologized for using the term “racist," although she affirmed her criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Her apology was in vain. Her Republican and Democratic colleagues fell over themselves in the race to distance themselves from her. On July 18, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 412-9 for a non-binding resolution declaring that “the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state,” that “Congress rejects all forms of antisemitism and xenophobia," and that “the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.”
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| Source: https://ifamericansknew.org |
For defenders of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, I would guess that debates about whether Israel is rightly called a “racist state” or an “apartheid state” are a welcome distraction from the main point--that Israel continues to appropriate land that belonged to the Palestinians. The map I’ve provided tells the story of Jewish expansion.
To go with it, here are the historic population figures (rounded to thousands):
1900: 24,000 Jews, 499,000 others (mostly Muslims)
1914: 39,000 Jews, 602,000 others
1944: 529,000 Jews, 1,061,000 others
2014: 6.1 million Jews, 6.2 million others
What the map doesn’t provide is evidence that, from the beginning of Zionism, the intention was to encompass within a Jewish state as much of what Zionists called Eretz Israel, the Biblical land of Israel, as they could get, and they have worked at realizing that intention since the first settlements at the beginning of the last century to the most recent settlements in the occupied West Bank. What follows is documentation of my assertion.
"[We Zionists will] spirit the penniless population across the border [of the Jewish state] by denying it employment . . . Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Diary of Theodore Herzl, co-founder of the Zionist movement, entry dated June 12, 1895.
“The Islamic soul must be broomed [ethnically cleansed] out of Eretz-Yisrael.” Also, "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews of Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.” Ze'ev Jabotinsky, spiritual father of the Likud Party, in a letter dated November 1939 to a Revisionist colleague in the U.S.
"There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, all of them." Also, "Not one village, not one [Arab] tribe should be left.” Diary entries of Yosef Weitz, director of the Transfer Committee Israel created in 1948, the year of its founding.
"The compulsory transfer of the Arabs . . . could give us something which we never had [even in Biblical times].” Also, "With compulsory transfer we will have a vast area . . . I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." David Ben-Gurion, first prime minister of Israel, quoted in Benny Morris, “Righteous Victims: A history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1999.”
"It is not as though there was a Palestinian people . . . and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them . . . they did not exist." Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel 1969-1974, quoted in The Washington Post, June 16, 1969.
"There is no Zionism, colonization, or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Ariel Sharon, prime minister of Israel 2001-2006, quoted in the New York Times, 1998.
In April, 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex portions of the West Bank.
So what shall we call a people who displaces by force a native population? How about “White American”?
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12 comments:
Whether it’s possible for a theocracy to be democratic is a good question. Probably not. But it’s definitely not racist or antisemitic to criticize Israeli policies.
Well, I'd say General George Marshall is the American in history whom I admire most, and he certainly thought establishing the Israeli state was a bad idea. So, I'm with Marshall...and fortunately, not a public figure!
The term "colonizers" is most appropriate. White Americans is too specific, it is not broad enough. The State of Israel is a predominantly European-American Jewish colony in a predominantly Arab and Muslim part of the world.
Often the oppressed turn around and oppress another group.
I wonder why the author of this blog failed to include "legal" and systemic discrimination against 50% of the population? Including, but certainly not limited to, disenfranchising women for 144 years after the Declaration of Independence?
Might makes right. That's the way it's always been, like it or not.
Leading up to the Six Day War in 1967, the Arab nations surrounding Israel massed forces with the goal of destroying Israel and killing the Israeli Jews so that Israel would not rise again. Israel launched a preemptive strike. After the Holocaust and the Six Day War, what would you expect Israel to do now? I expect it to defend itself. Reasonable minds can differ about how Israel should defend itself. However, the stakes for Israel are life or death; the question is how Israel plays its hand with those stakes in mind. If you agree that Israel has the right to exist, what do you think Israel should do? If Israel shouldn't exist, in your opinion, why shouldn't it exist? And, if Israel shouldn't exist, what do you think should happen to the Jews who live there?
My understanding is that there is a political tug of war taking place now in Israel between Jews who came from or trace their ancestry to Europe or the U.S. and Jews who came from or trace their ancestry to other locales. That political tug of war affects Israeli policies. But, for an American, the answer to the question of whether or not Israel should exist shouldn't depend on what one thinks of Benjamin Netanyahu.
What about the Palestinians? See, it's complicated. But make no mistake, criticism of Israel can in some cases be antisemitic. Such was the case with Keith Biome Erickson. He ran for mayor of Ashland in 2012. It's reported in some media that, in 2019, Havurah Shir Hadash had armed security to keep him from entering the synagogue. Mr. Erickson died on January 31, 2023, at age 47, from injuries suffered in a single-vehicle car accident in the Applegate. He was an antisemite. I don't blame the Havurah for being careful in dealing with such people.
If memory serves, Roosevelt was opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine. I believe he had an agreement with the King of Saudi Arabia to direct a Jewish settlement be established in Ethiopia! FDR's untimely death ushered in the Truman presidency and his endorsement of Israel as the Jewish state unaware of FDR's plan. He made this public announcement with the king of Saudi Arabia sitting in the front row. It was a blow to the King and a slap to his face considering the assistance he provided in supplying the war effort with petroleum. Israel is now a source of constant animus in the Middle East. Comparison to the US expansionism on the North American continent is tenuous but accurate in similarity of the original inhabitants. Similar in the belief part pf Puritan colonists thought they were spreading Christianity and that somehow America was "promised land". There are a host of other events but let's say history is not a repetition rather it's an echo of the situation in present day Israel.
Herb Rothschild provides a very slanted and one-sided view of the Israel/Palestine issue. Here are some additional facts about the situation that deserve consideration:
* In 1947, the Jews were willing to accept the United Nations partition plan. The resulting map would have been the 2nd map that Herb provided. The Arabs not only refused, but five Arab armies from neighboring countries invaded, with the goal of “pushing the Jews into the sea”. The Jews defeated those armies, leading to Herb’s third map.
* Starting in the 1990s with the Oslo Accords, there was a large Israeli peace movement, dedicated to a “two-state solution”. This movement evaporated and the Israeli left disappeared, when the Palestinians responded to something like five different Israeli proposals for a Palestinian state with successive waves of terrorist violence. It became abundantly clear to the Israelis that the only peace Palestinians were interested in was the “peace” that would result from the destruction of Israel.
* The Israelis withdrew completely from Gaza, which included uprooting Jewish settlements. They left the Palestinians with prime Mediterranean beachfront property that the Palestinians could have turned into a thriving place of their own. Instead, the Palestinians voted in Hamas, and turned Gaza into a fundamentalist Islamic state dedicated (in its founding charter) to the destruction of Israel. Gaza is the source of frequent rocket attacks against Israeli citizens. You could expect the same if the Palestinians got full control of the West Bank.
There is an old saying: if the Palestinians stopped fighting, there would be no more war; if the Israelis stopped fighting, there would be no more Israel.
Fascism knows no ethnic or racial boundaries.
My idea for a practical and responsible Jewish homeland is to carve out a piece of the USA equivalent to the size of Israel. Most Jews already live in either the US or Israel. The states with the largest Jewish populations are New York, California, Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Of course some non-Jewish Americans would be displaced, but their fates would not be any worse than the fates of Palestinians and American Indians. These Americans should be generously compensated.
The US already has a large Jewish population and our government officially supports Israel. The USA should walk the talk and stop interfering in the Middle East.
Michael, thank you for filling in some gaping holes in Herb’s very slanted post. There are so many more complicated issues unaddressed beyond his oversimplification.
Michael,
Thank you for that summary. People often fail to review history before commrnting which sometimes reveals their biases.
A fellow Mike
Let's keep religion out of politics, especially in the US.
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