Won’t apologize for using the ‘M’ word

You say: “We must support two-states, I said, because two-states is the only solution. One-state, as more and more Palestinians are advocating out of anger and six decades of failure, would be the Palestinians’ “Final Solution.” We can’t afford to let the extremists hold us hostage by causing so much violence that it gives Israel more excuses to back away from compromise and make Palestinians suffer even more.’

Yes, giving Palestinians equal voting rights is equivalent to the Holocaust. Unbelievable.

Calling you an Arab Uncle Tom would be understatement.

I called you an Uncle Tom because you equated the demand for equal rights for Palestinians with “The Final Solution.”

Your response is to call me “a fanatic who supports continued violence, a rejection of peace, and one-state is like being called ugly by a pig.”

How many non sequiturs are in that Quisling-esque response?

1. So to oppose the ghettoization of Palestinians makes me “a fanatic”?

2. To to oppose the ghettoization of Palestinians make me a supppoter “of continued violence”?

You got all that from my post?

No wonder you are every Zionist’s favorate Arab. Do you shine shoes too?

Hey American — we’re ALL American in America by the way — this is the debate that is taking place, unfortunately, in the US among the extremists … you write something and they distort it, lie about it and then claim it as fact. And they call you names. When you respond, they reply with indignity and shock like, wow, I called you all kinds of names and you dared to make fun of me?

Don’t be discouraged. The majority of palestinians support two-states, compromise on the Right of Return, a sovereign Palestine, the return of the West Bank, dismantling of settlements and sharing of Jerusalem, and most important, a rejection of violence … let the extremists say what they will. They ALWAYS look for the pebble and then fixate on it instead of seeing the bigger picture.

Israel HAS been stealing more and more land and one reason why is not the bickering but the rejection of genuine peace by the far secular left and the religious extremists. They are the problem and always have been the problem since the day this conflict started. They enable Israel to do all that it does, good, bad and ugly.

PS … the name calling doesn’t bother me. I just look at the source, as my comment humoroulsy explained above!

Ray Hanania
http://www.RadioChicagoland.com

I rest my case. Keep it up, and the Palestinian people will end up with nothing.

You two, and all of the Palestinian people, had damned well get their act together, and find a middle ground, or Israel is going to chew you up and spit you out, with the support of a large portion of the world community. Your children deserve better. Get your act together, or you are just going to be another sad chapter in the history books. Israel is winning, and it is in no small part because of the kind of bickering you two are engaged in.

Ray,

Its possible to advocate for a one-state solution without supporting the religious fundamentalism and tactics of Hamas, just like it was possible to advocate for a non-racial democracy in South Africa without supporting the black nationalist groups responsible for acts like the murder of white nuns during South Africa’s Apartheid period. It seems to me you’re creating a kind of false dichotomy here.

Israel is, in essence, the last European colonial exercise of the 20th century. Even claims that much of the original territory of Israel was legally bought mask the reality of Zionists buying land from wealthy Arab landowners then refusing to lease to the original poor Arab residents, a practise which is considered racist and is illegal in most western democracies, whether it fits the definition of “legal” or not – as well as ignoring the extensive Zionist terrorism that preceded the foundation of the state.

So there is certainly a moral case for the one-state solution. And the idea that Jews “deserve” a state of their own is not consistent with universally accepted values. There are hundreds of minorities around the world who have suffered discrimination for centuries, like the Roma, and do not have their own state – especially not one carved out of previously occupied land and founded on ethnically exclusive principles. Comparisons to, say, France, which is mostly “French” are weak. The french do not have ethnically discriminatory laws like the right of return, or the offical legal status afforded to ethnically excusive organisations like the JLA in Israel. The nationalist era in Europe consolidated states around existing populations, states that then evolved into non-racial states with universal equality. Israel has been viewed through a lens which accords it a unique status and applies different standards to any other case. An imagined Basque or Roma state with laws and practises like Israel’s would be considered a racist state by most.

I’m a white South African of Irish extraction (not Jewish or Palestian) who grew up under Apartheid and the discourse of Israeli nationalists today is startlingly familiar to me. White nationalists in South Africa used “black on black” and other forms of violent reaction to violence to justify Apartheid. White Afrikaner nationalists, who speak a dutch-language derivative exclusive to Southern Africa, spoke of the “survival” of their race being at stake. They also drew on historical tragedy, much like many Zionists drink at the well of the Holocaust. In the case of Afrikaner nationalism, it was the estimated hundreds of thousands of boer women and children that died in British Concentration camps during the SA war. They also claimed that black South Africans weren’t actually South Africans, pointing to the artificially created black “homelands” (bantustans) created under Apartheid and archeological evidence that the Nguni people were only recent settlers of the Southern African region, much like Europeans. Just as Israel does today (most Arabs in the region are from elsewhere. West Bank Arabs are not Israeli’s, Israeli Arabs have equal rights – a lie).

Practicality is certainly valid grounds for any argument about a settlement. I recall, too, having fierce arguments with Irish nationalist friends who’s father was jailed for IRA terrorism. This at a time when “facts on the ground” were long established and most N. Irish were in favour of remaining part of the UK, thanks to earlier massive colonisation. Sometimes unravelling a historical justice is impossible without far greater suffering (N.Ireland, the USA, Australia…).

But in all of the examples cited, the people involved at least put an end to any legal cover for discimination, whereas many of Israel’s supporters today continue to support the idea of a legally Jewish state and all the discrimination that implies, from selective right of return to obliquely discrimatory land laws like the legal cover given to the JLA and the existence of structures that ensure discrimination flourishes at a beauracratic level (predominantly Jewish nationalist Commitees being responsible for the issuing of building permits in Israeli Arab communities). Even the legal cover for this last kind of covert discrimination has been eliminated in other western democracies. Look at the plethora of laws created specifically to stop beauracratic discrimination in the American southern states, for instance.

So on practical grounds it may be fair to support a two-state solution to end the cycle of suffering, but that does not imply supporting a continuation of support for Israel as a Jewish State. That idea should be anathema to anyone who truly believes in equal human rights (as should be the idea that any future Palestinian state will be an exclusive Muslim or Arab state in legal terms).

Right now, though, Israelis must discard their fantasies about original legitimacy and accept, like the citizens of other European colonies, that their nation was born in the blood, suffering of and injustice imposed on another people. And the citizens of other nations that continue to provide material support to Israel must accept that Palestinians are an oppressed people who stand on the higher moral ground, regardless of whether some of their political representatives, like Hamas, espouse equally unacceptable views. And they should support wholesale disinvestment from Israel, just as the world did during Apartheid in South Africa.

Prior to the demise of Apartheid in South Africa, white people pointed to black nationalist movements that openly stated they wanted to drive all whites into the sea, claiming that the very survival of whites in Africa was at stake – and especially the survival of the uniquely African culture of Afrikaans white people. Massive disinvestment from South Africa forced them to accept the inevitable and as a result, Apartheid ended, our society became integrated, and 15 years on I am a white man living comfortably under a black government, free of discrimation.

Whether it would turn out the same way in Israel is anybodies guess. But as a white male growing up in SA I was 100% ready to accept the possibility that a future black state would force me into exile. I accepted the fact that fundamental, factual illegitimacy of the white state I lived in was a greater moral crime than the abstract, unrealised aspirations of some racist black nationalists. So I have zero sympathy for Israeli’s who employ exactly the same bogeyman of the scary Arab nationalist to whip up sympathy elsewhere.

I do, however, appreciate the efforts of peace-minded Palestinians to marginalise Muslim extremist organisations like Hamas and their religious/ethnically exclusive vision of a Palestinian future, just as the ANC split from other liberation movements in casting themselves as a human rights movement rather than simply a black liberation movement.

Maybe you’re right about Palestinians themselves being exceptionally reasonable and accomodating as a path to peace. Its hard for outsiders to buy the “its complex, but everyone’s to blame” line when one side is being overtly reasonable and accomodating. But at the same time I fully support BDS, which is something those of us who aren’t connected by blood, religion and origin can do. Its a potent weapon in the fight against injustice.

oops I meant strong believer in equality