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Thus Spoke Equality
Why Israel Has No
"Right to Exist" as a Jewish State
By Oren Ben-Dor
11/20/07 "Counterpunch" --- -
-Yet again, the Annapolis meeting between Olmert and Abbas
is preconditioned upon the recognition by the Palestinian side
of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Indeed the
"road map" should lead to, and legitimate, once and for all, the
right of such a Jewish state to exist in definitive borders and
in peace with its neighbours. The vision of justice, both past
and future, simply has to be that of two states, one
Palestinian, one Jewish, which would coexist side by side in
peace and stability. Finding a formula for a reasonably just
partition and separation is still the essence of what is
considered to be moderate, pragmatic and fair ethos.
Thus, the really deep
issues--the "core"--are conceived as the status of Jerusalem,
the fate and future of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied
Territories and the viability of the future Palestinian state
beside the Jewish one. The fate of the descendants of those
750000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed in 1948 from
what is now, and would continue to be under a two-state
solutions, the State of Israel, constitutes a "problem" but
never an "issue" because, God forbid, to make it an issue on the
table would be to threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish
state. The existence of Israel as a Jewish state must never
become a core issue. That premise unites political opinion in
the Jewish state, left and right and also persists as a
pragmatic view of many Palestinians who would prefer some
improvement to no improvement at all.Only "extremists" such as
Hamas, anti-Semites, and Self-Hating Jews--terribly disturbed,
misguided and detached lot--can make Israel's existence into a
core problem and in turn into a necessary issue to be debated
and addressed.
The Jewish state, a supposedly
potential haven for all the Jews in the world in the case a
second Holocaust comes about, should be recognised as a fact on
the ground blackmailed into the "never again" rhetoric. All
considerations of pragmatism and reasonableness in envisioning a
"peace process" to settle the 'Israeli/Palestinian' conflict
must never destabilise the sacred status of that premise that a
Jewish state has a right to exist.
Notice, however, that
Palestinian are not asked merely to recognise the perfectly true
fact and with it, the absolutely feasible moral claim, that
millions of Jewish people are now living in the State of Israel
and that their physical existence, liberty and equality should
be protected in any future settlement. They are not asked merely
to recognise the assurance that any future arrangement would
recognise historic Palestine as a home for the Jewish
People.What Palestinians are asked to subscribe to recognition
the right of an ideology that informs the make-up of a state to
exist as Jewish one. They are asked to recognise that
ethno-nationalistic premise of statehood.
The fallacy is clear: the
recognition of the right of Jews who are there--however unjustly
many of their Parents or Grandparents came to acquire what they
own--to remain there under liberty and equality in a
post-colonial political settlement, is perfectly compatible with
the non-recognition of the state whose constitution gives those
Jews a preferential stake in the polity.
It is an abuse of the notion of
pragmatism to conceive its effort as putting the very notion of
Jewish state beyond the possible and desirable implementation of
egalitarian moral scrutiny. To so abuse pragmatism would be to
put it at the service of the continuation of colonialism. A
pragmatic and reasonable solution ought to centre on the problem
of how to address past, present, and future injustices to
non-Jew-Arabs without thereby cause other injustices to Jews.
This would be a very complex pragmatic issue which would call
for much imagination and generosity. But reasonableness and
pragmatism should not determine whether the cause for such
injustices be included or excluded from debates or negotiations.
To pragmatically exclude moral claims and to pragmatically
protect immoral assertions by fiat must in fact hide some form
of extremism. The causes of colonial injustice and the causes
that constitutionally prevent their full articulation and
address should not be excluded from the debate. Pragmatism can
not become the very tool that legitimate constitutional
structures that hinder de-colonisation and the establishment of
egalitarian constitution.
So let us boldly ask: What
exactly is entailed by the requirement to recognise Israel as a
Jewish state? What do we recognise and support when we purchase
a delightful avocado or a date from Israel or when we invite
Israel to take part in an international football event? What
does it mean to be a friend of Israel? What precisely is that
Jewish state whose status as such would be once and for all
legitimised by such a two-state solution?
A Jewish state is a state which
exists more for the sake of whoever is considered Jewish
according to various ethnic, tribal, religious, criteria, than
for the sake of those who do not pass this test. What precisely
are the criteria of the test for Jewishness is not important and
at any rate the feeble consensus around them is constantly
reinvented in Israel. Instigating violence provides them with
the impetus for doing that. What is significant, thought, is
that a test of Jewishness is being used in order to
constitutionally protect differential stakes in, that is the
differential ownership of, a polity. A recognition of Israel's
right to exist as a Jewish state is a recognition of the Jews
special entitlement, as eternal victims, to have a Jewish state.
Such a test of supreme stake for Jews is the supreme criterion
not only for racist policy making by the legislature but also
for a racist constitutional interpretation by the Supreme
Court.The idea of a state that is first and foremost for the
sake of Jews trumps even that basic law of Human Freedom and
Dignity to which the Israeli Supreme Court pays so much lip
service. Such constitutional interpretation would have to make
the egalitarian principle equality of citizenship compatible
with, and thus subservient to, the need to maintain the Jewish
majority and character of the state. This of course constitutes
a serious compromise of equality, translated into many
individual manifestations of oppression and domination of those
victims of such compromise--non-Jews-Arabs citizens of Israel.
In our world, a world that
resisted Apartheid South Africa so impressively, recognition of
the right of the Jewish state to exist is a litmus test for
moderation and pragmatism. The demand is that Palestinians
recognise Israel's entitlement to constitutionally entrench a
system of racist basic laws and policies, differential
immigration criteria for Jews and non-Jews, differential
ownership and settlements rights, differential capital
investments, differential investment in education, formal rules
and informal conventions that differentiate the potential stakes
of political participation, lame-duck academic freedom and
debate.
In the Jewish state of Israel
non-Jews-Arabs citizens are just "bad luck" and are considered
an ticking demographic bomb of "enemy within". They can be given
the right to vote--indeed one member one vote--but the potential
of their political power, even their birth rate, should be kept
at bay by visible and invisible, instrumental and symbolic,
discrimination. But now they are asked to put up with their
inferior stake and recognise the right of Israel to continue to
legitimate the non-egalitarian premise of its statehood.
We must not forget that the two
state "solution" would open a further possibility to
non-Jew-Arabs citizens of Israel: "put up and shut up or go to a
viable neighbouring Palestinian state where you can have your
full equality of stake".Such an option, we must never forget, is
just a part of a pragmatic and reasonable package.
The Jewish state could only come
into being in May 1948 by ethnically cleansing most of the
indigenous population--750000 of them. The judaisation of the
state could only be effectively implemented by constantly
internally displacing the population of many villages within the
Israel state.
It would be unbearable and
unreasonable to demand Jews to allow for the Right of Return of
those descendants of the expelled. Presumably, those descendants
too could go to a viable Palestinian state rather than, for
example, rebuild their ruined village in the Galilee. On the
other hand, a Jewish young couple from Toronto who never set
their foot in Palestine has a right to settle in the Galilee.
Jews and their descendants hold this right in perpetuity. You
see, that right "liberates" them as people. Jews must never be
put under the pressure to live as a substantial minority in the
Holy Land under egalitarian arrangement. Their past justifies
their preferential stake and the preservation of their numerical
majority in Palestine.
So the non-egalitarian hits us
again. It is clear that part of the realisation of that right of
return would not only be a just the actual return, but also the
assurance of equal stake and citizenship of all, Jews and
non-Jews-Arabs after the return. A return would make the
egalitarian claim by those who return even more difficult to
conceal than currently with regard to Israel Arab second class
citizens. What unites Israelis and many world Jews behind the
call for the recognition of the right of a Jewish state to exist
is their aversion for the possibility of living, as a minority,
under conditions of equality of stake to all. But if Jews enjoys
this equality in Canada why can not they support such equality
in Palestine through giving full effect to the right of Return
of Palestinians?
Let us look precisely at what
the pragmatic challenge consists of: not pragmatism that
entrenches inequality but pragmatism that responds to the
challenge of equality.
The Right of Return of
Palestinians means that Israel acknowledges and apologises for
what it did in 1948. It does mean that Palestinian memory of the
1948 catastrophe, the Nakbah, is publicly revived in the
Geography and collective memory of the polity. It does mean that
Palestinians descendants would be allowed to come back to their
villages. If this is not possible because there is a Jewish
settlement there, they should be given the choice to found an
alternative settlement nearby. This may mean some painful
compulsory state purchase of agricultural lands that should be
handed back to those who return. In cases when this is
impossible they ought to be allowed the choice to settle in
another place in the larger area or if not possible in another
area in Palestine. Compensation would be the last resort and
would always be offered as a choice. This kind of moral claim of
return would encompass all Palestine including Tel Aviv.
At no time, however, it would be
on the cards to throw Israeli Jews from their land.An
egalitarian and pragmatic realisation of the Right of Return
constitutes an egalitarian legal revolution. As such it would be
paramount to address Jews' worries about security and equality
in any future arrangement in which they, or any other group, may
become a minority. Jews national symbols and importance would be
preserved. Equality of stake involves equality of symbolic
ownership.
But it is important to emphasis
that the Palestinian Right of Return would mean that what would
cease to exist is the premise of a Jewish as well as indeed a
Muslim state. A return without the removal of the
constitutionally enshrined preferential stake is return to
serfdom.
The upshot is that only by
individuating cases of injustice, by extending claims for
injustice to all historic Palestine, by fair address of them
without creating another injustice for Jews and finally by
ensuring the elimination of all racist laws that stems from the
Jewish nature of the state including that nature itself, would
justice be, and with it peace, possible. What we need is a
spirit of generosity that is pragmatic but also morally
uncompromising in terms of geographic ambit of the moral claims
for repatriation and equality. This vision would propel the
establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But for
all this to happen we must start by ceasing to recognize the
right Israel to exist as a Jewish state. No spirit of generosity
would be established without an egalitarian call for jettisoning
the ethno-nationalistic notion upon which the Jewish state is
based.
The path of two states is the
path of separation.Its realisation would mean the entrenchment
of exclusionary nationalism for many years. It would mean that
the return of the dispossessed and the equality of those who
return and those non-Jew-Arabs who are now there would have to
be deferred indefinitely consigned to the dusty shelved of
historical injustices.Such a scenario is sure to provoke more
violence as it would establish the realisation and
legitimisation of Zionist racism and imperialism.
Also, any bi-national
arrangement ought to be subjected to a principle of equality of
citizenship and not vice versa. The notion of separation and
partition that can infect bi-nationalism, should be done away
with and should not be tinkered with or rationalised in any way.
Both spiritually and materially Jews and non-Jews can find
national expression in a single egalitarian and non-sectarian
state.
The non-recognition of the
Jewish state is an egalitarian imperative that looks both at the
past and to the future. It is the uncritical recognition of the
right of Israel to exist at a Jewish state which is the core
hindrance for this egalitarian premise to shape the ethical
challenge that Palestine poses. A recognition of Israel's right
to exist as a Jewish state means the silencing that would breed
more and more violence and bloodshed.
The same moral intuition that
brought so many people to condemn and sanction Apartheid South
Africa ought also to prompt them to stop seeing a threat to
existence of the Jewish state as the effect caused by the
refugee 'problem" or by the "demographic threat" from the
non-Jew-Arabs within it. It is rather the other way round. It is
the non-egalitarian premise of a Jewish state and the lack of
empathy and corruption of all those who make us uncritically
accept the right of such a state to exist that is both the cause
of the refugee problem and cause for the inability to implement
their return and treating them as equals thereafter.
We must see that the
uncritically accepted recognition of Israel right to exist is,
as Joseph Massad so well puts it in Al-Ahram, to accept Israel
claim to have the right to be racist or, to develop Massad's
brilliant formulation, Israel's claim to have the right to
occupy to dispossess and to discriminate. What is it, I wonder,
that prevent Israelis and so many of world Jews to respond to
the egalitarian challenge? What is it, I wonder, that oppresses
the whole world to sing the song of a "peace process" that is
destined to legitimise racism in Palestine?
To claim such a right to be
racist must come from a being whose victim's face must hide very
dark primordial aggression and hatred of all others.How can we
find a connective tissue to that mentality that claims the
legitimate right to harm other human beings? How can this
aggression that is embedded in victim mentality be perturbed?
The Annapolis meeting is a con.
As an egalitarian argument we should say loud and clear that
Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.
Oren Ben-Dor grew up in
Israel. He teaches Legal and Political Philosophy at the School
of Law, University of Southampton, UK. He can be reached at:
okbendor@yahoo.com
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