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06/17/2004:

"Toward a Single State Solution***Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine"

This is an excellent article which gives a history of modern Zionism and the state of Israel, the origins of the 'Palestinian problem,' gives an example of Zionist collaboration with Hitler, discusses the Christian Coalition's relationship with Israel, and engages at length the tabu topic of how any faint criticism of Israel leads to charges of anti-Semitism. The author goes on to propose a 'one-state solution.'

by Noel Ignatiev counterpunch.org full article
...Unlike many countries, including the United States, the Israeli state does not belong, even in principle, to those who reside within its borders, but is defined as the state of the Jewish people, wherever they may be. That peculiar definition is one reason why the state has to this day failed to produce a written constitution, define its borders, or even declare the existence of an Israeli nationality. Moreover, in this "outpost of democracy," no party that opposes the existence of the Jewish state is permitted to take part in elections. It is as if the United States were to declare itself a Christian state, define "Christian" not by religious belief but by descent, and then pass a "gag law" prohibiting public discussion of the issue.

If one part of the Zionist project is the expulsion of the indigenous population, the other part is expanding the so-called Jewish population. But here arises the problem, which has tormented Israeli legal officials for fifty years, what is a Jew? (For a century-and-a-half U.S. courts faced similar problems determining who is white.) The Zionists set forth two criteria for determining who is a Jew. The first is race, which is a myth generally and is particularly a myth in the case of the Jews. The "Jewish" population of Israel includes people from fifty countries, of different physical types, speaking different languages and practicing different religions (or no religion at all), defined as a single people based on the fiction that they, and only they, are descended from the Biblical Abraham. It is so patently false that only Zionists and Nazis even pretend to take it seriously. In fact, given Jewish intermingling with others for two thousand years, it is likely that the Palestinians-themselves the result of the mixture of the various peoples of Canaan plus later waves of Greeks and Arabs-are more directly descended from the ancient inhabitants of the Holy Land than the Europeans displacing them. The claim that the Jews have a special right to Palestine has no more validity than would an Irish claim of a divine right to establish a Celtic state all across Germany, France, and Spain on the basis that Celtic tribes once lived there. Nevertheless, on the basis of ascribed descent, the Zionist officials assign those they have selected a privileged place within the state. If that is not racism, then the term has no meaning.

more excerpts:

...The Zionists knew they had to rid themselves of the Arab majority in order to have a specifically Jewish state. Although 75,000 Jews moved to Israel between 1945 and 1948, Jews still constituted a minority in Palestine. The 1948 war afforded the Zionists an excellent opportunity to rectify this; as a result of the war, more than three-quarters of a million Arabs fled their homes. The case of Deir Yasin, in which Israeli paramilitary forces, under the command of future prime minister Menachem Begin, massacred over 250 civilians, sending a message to Palestinians that they should depart, is the most well known example of how this flight was brought about. In his book, The Revolt, Begin boasted that without Deir Yasin there would have been no Israel, and adds, "The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting 'Deir Yasin'" (quoted in Menuhin, 120). Recent writings by Israeli revisionist historians have refuted the longtime insistence of Israeli officials that the departures were voluntary. Some of the refugees went to neighboring Arab countries; others became refugees in their own country. Those 750,000 expelled from their homes and their descendants, who together total 2.2 million people, make up the so-called refugee problem. Although the United Nation has repeatedly demanded they be allowed to return, the Israeli government has refused to agree. The war ended with the Zionists in control of 80% of Palestine. In the next year, nearly 400 Arab villages were completely destroyed. This was no accident but the result of deliberate policy, as shown is the following statement by one of the most authoritative officials of the Zionist state:

"Among ourselves it must be clear that there is no place in our country for both peoples together The only solution is Eretz Israel, or at least the western half of Eretz Israel, without Arabs, and there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain."


...Israel is a racial state, where rights are assigned on the basis of ascribed descent or the approval of the superior race. In this respect it resembles the American South prior to the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, Ireland under the Protestant Ascendancy, and, yes, Hitlerite Germany. But in its basic structures it most closely resembles the old South Africa. It is therefore not surprising that Israel should have developed a close alliance with South Africa when that country was still under apartheid. After the first talks held in 1970 between Shimon Peres and South Africa's defense minister, Botha, cultural, commercial, and military cooperation between the two racial regimes developed. These relations were publicly celebrated during the visit of South African Prime Minister Vorster to Israel in 1976-the same Vorster who held during the Second World War the rank of general in the pro-Nazi organisation Ossewabrandwag

Of course Israel's greatest support comes from the United States, $3 to $5 billion a year, more than what the U.S. gives to any other country and exceeding the total of U.S. grants to the whole of Africa south of the Sahara. Every shell fired into a Palestinian village, every tank used to bulldoze a home, every helicopter gunship is paid for by U.S. dollars.

...History has shown, in Ireland, India, and everyplace else it has been tried, that partition of a territory along lines of descentæwhether called "racial" or "religious"æis a guarantee of permanent war. It is understandable that some Palestinians, having been subjected to torture for over two generations, have reluctantly agreed to accept as a substitute for justice a Palestinian State built on less than a fourth of their original land. But they are making a mistake. Such a State, if it is ever established, will be a Bantustan, a reservation where the only attributes of a free nation will be a flag and a national anthem. I am no more a Palestinian Zionist than I am a Jewish Zionist.

What solution, therefore, do I propose? A simple and moderate one: within historic Palestine, the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, live ten million people. I propose that there be established there a single state, in which every person who declares his intention to live there and adopt citizenship be recognized as a citizen and have one vote. I propose further that the special advantages given to Jews be terminated, that the Palestinians who were forced into exile after 1948, and their descendants, be granted the right to live there, and that the state undertake practical measures to make it possible for them to do so by building housing and extending to them to right to rent or buy, if necessary providing funds to help them. I propose further that both Hebrew and Arabic be declared official state languages to be taught in the schools, that all residents be granted the right to publish newspapers and maintain cultural institutions in any language they choose, that the special position of Orthodox Judaism be ended and that the state declare freedom of worship and make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

...The one exception to my earlier generalization about the Israeli opposition is a fraction of Orthodox Jews in Israel, who reject the State of Israel on religious grounds; according to them, the exile from the holy land was divinely ordained, and therefore the Jews are to live among the nations in every corner of the earth and not attempt to establish a State before the coming of the Messiah. Allow me to read from a statement by one of them, Rabbi Mordechi Weberman:

"It is precisely because we are Jews that we march with the Palestinians and raise their flag! It is precisely because we are Jews that we demand that the Palestinian peoples be returned to their homes and properties! Yes, in our Torah we are commanded to be fair.
We are called upon to pursue justice. And, what could be more unjust then the century-old attempt of the Zionist movement to invade another people's land, to drive them out and steal their property?

We have no doubt that would Jewish refugees have come to Palestine not with the intention of dominating, not with the intention of making a Jewish state, not with the intention of dispossessing, not with the intention of depriving the Palestinians of their basic rights, that they would have been welcomed by the Palestinians, with the same hospitality that Islamic peoples have shown Jews throughout history. And we would have lived together as Jews and Muslims lived before in Palestine in peace and harmony.

To our Islamic and Palestinian friends around the world, please hear our messageThere are Jews around the world who support your cause. And when we support your cause we do not mean some partition scheme proposed in 1947 by a UN that had no right to offer it.

When we say support your cause we do not mean the cut off and cut up pieces of the West Bank offered by Barak at Camp David together with justice for less than 10% of the refugees.

We do not mean anything other than returning the entire land, including Jerusalem, to Palestinian sovereignty!

At that point justice demands that the Palestinian people should decide if and how many Jews should remain in the Land.

We have attended hundreds of pro-Palestinian rallies over the years and everywhere we go the leaders and audience greet us with the warmth of Middle Eastern hospitality. What a lie it is to say that Palestinians in particular or Muslims in general hate Jews. You hate injustice. Not Jews.

Fear not my friends. Evil cannot long triumph. The Zionist nightmare is at its end. It is exhausted. Its latest brutalities are the death rattle of the terminally ill.

We will yet both live to see the day when Jew and Palestinian will embrace in peace under the Palestinian flag in Jerusalem. And ultimately when mankind's Redeemer will come the sufferings of the present will long be forgotten in the blessings of the future."
(http:www.marchforjustice.com/becauseweare jews.php)