Excuse Me, But Israel Has No Right to Exist. By Sharmine Narwani.
Excuse Me, But Israel Has No Right to Exist. By Sharmine Narwani. Al Akhbar English, May 17, 2012. Also at Mideast Shuffle.
FreedumbAndDemocrazy. By Sharmine Narwani. Al Akhbar English, July 6, 2013.
Arabs, Beware the “Small States” Option. By Sharmine Narwani. Mideast Shuffle, July 31, 2013. Also at Al Akhbar English.
Forget Democrazy, Give Me Safe Borders. By Sharmine Narwani. Al Akhbar English, October 31, 2013.
Normalize This! By Remi Kanazi. Video. BDS Movement, November 1, 2012. Also at Poetic Injustice.
BDS is a long term project with radically transformative potential. By Ahmed Moor. Mondoweiss, April 22, 2010.
Israel’s Jewish Character Is Subject for Debate. By Ahmed Moor. The Huffington Post, September 30, 2010.
I am Zionism’s mandatory object. So don’t I get to define it? By Ahmed Moor. Mondoweiss, November 21, 2010.
Israel Simply Has No Right to Exist. By Faisal Bodi. The Guardian, January 2, 2001.
An extremist named Sharmine Narwani finds a home at “Comment is Free.” CiF Watch, February 26, 2013. Also at Huffington Post Monitor. All posts on Sharmine Narwani and User Profile at Huffington Post Monitor.
The Quotable Sharmine Narwani Video. Huffington Post Monitor, March 21, 2011.
Sharmine Narwani Goes on the Offensive. The Brothers of Judea, July 1, 2010.
Sharmine Narwani Calls for the Destruction of Israel. The Brothers of Judea, July 2, 2010.
Narwani [Excuse Me]:
The
phrase “right to exist” entered my consciousness in the 1990s just as the
concept of the two-state solution became part of our collective lexicon. In any
debate at university, when a Zionist was out of arguments, those three magic
words were invoked to shut down the conversation with an outraged, “are you
saying Israel doesn’t have the right to exist??”
Of
course you couldn’t challenge Israel’s right to exist – that was like saying
you were negating a fundamental Jewish right to have . . . rights, with all manner of
Holocaust guilt thrown in for effect.
Except
of course the Holocaust is not my fault – or that of Palestinians. The
cold-blooded program of ethnically cleansing Europe of its Jewish population
has been so callously and opportunistically utilized to justify the ethnic cleansing
of the Palestinian Arab nation, that it leaves me utterly unmoved. I have even
caught myself – shock – rolling my eyes when I hear Holocaust and Israel in the
same sentence.
What
moves me instead in this post-two-state era, is the sheer audacity of Israel
even existing.
What a
fantastical idea, this notion that a bunch of rank outsiders from another
continent could appropriate an existing, populated nation for themselves – and
convince the “global community” that it was the moral thing to do. I’d laugh at
the chutzpah if this wasn’t so serious.
Even
more brazen is the mass ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian
population by persecuted Jews, newly arrived from their own experience of being
ethnically cleansed.
But
what is truly frightening is the psychological manipulation of the masses into
believing that Palestinians are somehow dangerous – “terrorists” intent on
“driving Jews into the sea.” As someone who makes a living through words, I
find the use of language in creating perceptions to be intriguing. This
practice – often termed “public diplomacy” has become an essential tool in the
world of geopolitics. Words, after all,
are the building blocks of our psychology.
Take,
for example, the way we have come to view the Palestinian-Israeli “dispute” and
any resolution of this enduring conflict. And here I borrow liberally from a
previous article of mine. . . .
The
United States and Israel have created the global discourse on this issue,
setting stringent parameters that grow increasingly narrow regarding the
content and direction of this debate. Anything discussed outside the set
parameters has, until recently, widely been viewed as unrealistic, unproductive
and even subversive.
Participation
in the debate is limited only to those who prescribe to its main tenets: the
acceptance of Israel, its regional hegemony and its qualitative military edge;
acceptance of the shaky logic upon which the Jewish state’s claim to Palestine
is based; and acceptance of the inclusion and exclusion of certain regional
parties, movements and governments in any solution to the conflict.
Words
like dove, hawk, militant, extremist, moderates, terrorists, Islamo-fascists,
rejectionists, existential threat, holocaust-denier, mad mullah determine the
participation of solution partners — and are capable of instantly excluding
others.
Then
there is the language that preserves “Israel’s Right To Exist” unquestioningly:
anything that invokes the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and the myths about historic
Jewish rights to the land bequeathed to them by the Almighty – as though God
was in the real-estate business. This language seeks not only to ensure that a
Jewish connection to Palestine remains unquestioned, but importantly, seeks to
punish and marginalize those who tackle the legitimacy of this modern
colonial-settler experiment.
But
this group-think has led us nowhere. It has obfuscated, distracted, deflected,
ducked, and diminished, and we are no closer to a satisfactory conclusion . . . because the premise is wrong.
There
is no fixing this problem. This is the kind of crisis in which you cut your
losses, realize the error of your ways and reverse course. Israel is the
problem. It is the last modern-day colonial-settler experiment, conducted at a
time when these projects were being unraveled globally.
There
is no “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” – that suggests some sort of equality in
power, suffering, and negotiable tangibles, and there is no symmetry whatsoever
in this equation. Israel is the Occupier and Oppressor; Palestinians are the
Occupied and Oppressed. What is there to negotiate? Israel holds all the chips.
They can give back some land, property, rights, but even that is an absurdity –
what about everything else? What about ALL the land, property and rights? Why
do they get to keep anything – how is the appropriation of land and property
prior to 1948 fundamentally different from the appropriation of land and
property on this arbitrary 1967 date?
Why are the colonial-settlers prior to 1948
any different from those who colonized and settled after 1967?
Let me
correct myself. Palestinians do hold one chip that Israel salivates over – the
one big demand at the negotiating table that seems to hold up everything else.
Israel craves recognition of its “right to exist.”
But you
do exist – don’t you, Israel?
Israel
fears “delegitimization” more than anything else. Behind the velvet curtain
lies a state built on myths and narratives, protected only by a military
behemoth, billions of dollars in US assistance and a lone UN Security Council
veto. Nothing else stands between the state and its dismantlement. Without
these three things, Israelis would not live in an entity that has come to be
known as the “least safe place for Jews in the world.”
Strip
away the spin and the gloss, and you quickly realize that Israel doesn’t even
have the basics of a normal state. After 64 years, it doesn’t have borders.
After six decades, it has never been more isolated. Over half a century later,
and it needs a gargantuan military just to stop Palestinians from walking home.
Israel
is a failed experiment. It is on life-support – pull those three plugs and it
is a cadaver, living only in the minds of some seriously deluded foreigners who
thought they could pull off the heist of the century.
The
most important thing we can do as we hover on the horizon of One State is to
shed the old language rapidly. None of it was real anyway – it was just the
parlance of that particular “game.” Grow a new vocabulary of possibilities –
the new state will be the dawn of humanity’s great reconciliation. Muslims,
Christians and Jews living together in Palestine as they once did.
Naysayers
can take a hike. Our patience is wearing thinner than the walls of the hovels
that Palestinian refugees have called “home” for three generations in their
purgatory camps.
These
universally exploited refugees are entitled to the nice apartments – the ones
that have pools downstairs and a grove of palm trees outside the lobby. Because
the kind of compensation owed for this failed western experiment will never be
enough.
And no,
nobody hates Jews. That is the fallback argument screeched in our ears – the
one “firewall” remaining to protect this Israeli Frankenstein. I don’t even
care enough to insert the caveats that are supposed to prove I don’t hate Jews.
It is not a provable point, and frankly, it is a straw man of an argument. If
Jews who didn’t live through the Holocaust still feel the pain of it, then take
that up with the Germans. Demand a sizeable plot of land in Germany – and good
luck to you.
For
anti-Semites salivating over an article that slams Israel, ply your trade
elsewhere – you are part of the reason this problem exists.
Israelis
who don’t want to share Palestine as equal citizens with the indigenous
Palestinian population – the ones who don’t want to relinquish that which they
demanded Palestinians relinquish 64 years ago – can take their second passports
and go back home. Those remaining had better find a positive attitude –
Palestinians have shown themselves to be a forgiving lot. The amount of carnage
they have experienced at the hands of their oppressors – without proportional
response – shows remarkable restraint and faith.
This is
less the death of a Jewish state than it is the demise of the last remnants of
modern-day colonialism. It is a rite of passage – we will get through it just
fine. At this particular precipice in the 21st century, we are all,
universally, Palestinian – undoing this wrong is a test of our collective
humanity, and nobody has the right to sit this one out.
Israel
has no right to exist. Break that mental barrier and just say it: “Israel has
no right to exist.” Roll it around your tongue, tweet it, post it as your
Facebook status update – do it before you think twice. Delegitimization is here
– have no fear. Palestine will be less painful than Israel ever was.