Is It Time for Ukraine to Split Up? By Brian Whitmore.

Is It Time for Ukraine to Split Up? By Brian Whitmore. The Atlantic, February 20, 2014.

Wikimedia Commons.

Is Russia’s Destiny Autocratic? By Robert Kaplan.

Is Russia’s Destiny Autocratic? By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, February 20, 2014.

Kaplan:

In 1967, the late British historian Hugh Seton-Watson wrote in his epic account, The Russian Empire, 1801-1917, “If there is one single factor which dominates the course of Russian history, at any rate since the Tatar conquest, it is the principle of autocracy.” He goes on to explain how the nations of Western Europe were formed by a long struggle between “the monarchial power and the social elite.” In England, the elite usually won, and that was a key to the development of parliamentary democracy. But in Russia it was generally agreed that rather than granting special privileges to an elite, “It was better that all should be equal in their subjection to the autocrat.”

 

This profound anti-democratic tradition of Russian political culture has its roots in geography, or as Seton-Watson prefers to explain it, in military necessity. Between the Arctic ice and the mountains of the Caucasus, and between the North European Plain and the wastes of the Far East, Russia is vast and without physical obstacles to invasion. Invasion of Russia is easy, and was accomplished, albeit with disastrous results, by Napoleon and Hitler, as well as by the armies of the Mongols, Sweden, Lithuania and Poland. As Seton-Watson argues, “Imagine the United States without either the Atlantic or the Pacific, and with several first-rate military powers instead of the Indians,” and you would have a sense of Russia’s security dilemma. Whereas in America the frontier meant opportunity, in Russia, he says, it meant insecurity and oppression.

 

Because security in Russia has been so fragile, there developed an obsession about it. And that obsession led naturally to repression and autocracy.

 

Russia’s brief and rare experiments with democracy or quasi-democracy were failed and unhappy ones: Witness the governments of Alexander Kerensky in 1917 that led to the Bolshevik Revolution and of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s that led to Vladimir Putin’s neo-czardom. Truly, Russia’s fare has been autocracy, and given the utter cruelty of czars and communists, Putin is but a mild dictator. When Western pundits and policymakers say they are unhappy with his autocratic arrangement, they are basically making a negative judgment on Russian history. For by Russia’s historical standards, Putin is certainly not all that bad.

 

Putin now represents an autocrat in crisis, a familiar story in Russia. His problems are, for the most part, unsolvable, like those faced by Russian autocrats before him. And there are many of them.

 

Controlling the ultimate destiny of Ukraine is of paramount importance to him, for reasons both geographical and historical. Russia grew out of ninth century Kievan Rus, located in present-day Ukraine. Ukraine’s population density (compared to immense tracts of Russia) and geographical position make it a crucial pivot for the Kremlin, if it wants to permanently dominate Eastern Europe and the Black Sea. Yet, Putin finds that he cannot wholly control Ukraine or further undermine its sovereignty. There is simply a very substantial element in Ukrainian politics and society that demands a shift closer to Europe and the European Union. Putin has various tools to undermine Ukraine, such as erecting trade barriers and rationing deliveries of natural gas. But it is hard work, and he probably can never achieve an outright victory.

 

Putin fears the westward, pro-NATO and pro-EU stirrings inside the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova. He fears unrest in former Soviet Central Asia, where reliably autocratic, Soviet-style regimes may soon face increasing turmoil at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists – the very force Putin fears could destabilize Russia itself. Russia needs stability and compliance in its near abroad, and both will be increasingly at risk in Central Asia: Witness Kazakhstan’s recent currency crisis. Putin not only worries about Russia’s possible deteriorating position in world energy markets in the long term, but of the rising demographic weight of Muslims in Russian society over the long term, too.

 

Putin worries about an American-Iranian rapprochement, given how the estrangement for so long between those two countries has been so convenient to Russia’s interest. Oh, and here’s what Putin really isn’t happy about: internal interference in Russian politics by American, pro-democracy nongovernmental organizations. What the United States considers human rights activity, he considers foreign subversion. And that goes for what American NGOs are doing in Ukraine also.

 

Putin wants to engage in cynical geopolitical deal making; instead he often gets lectures on morality from the West.

 

Could Putin actually be toppled? Not likely. The unhappiness with his rule that the Western media fervently wants to believe in is probably manageable, and a really free and fair election today in Russia would probably return him to power. He is only 61 years old and lives a relatively healthy life, unlike Yeltsin, who drank to excess. Sure, Putin is under extreme levels of stress. But you don’t rise to his position in a place like Russia without the ability to handle levels of intrigue and anxiety that would psychologically decimate the average American politician.

 

The United States has every right to hate Putin for the Snowden affair alone. But, as I’ve indicated, Washington may be dealing with Putin for many years yet. As his dictatorship continues, he is liable to become more embattled, and rather than move toward reform, he is more likely to retreat further into a corrosive, authoritarian model. For that is a Russian historical tendency – something Seton-Watson would have understood. If that is the case, Russian institutions and civil society, such as they exist, will further deteriorate. And with that, a post-Putin Russia, whenever it comes, could be a Russia in some substantial degree of chaos.

 

Putin is not like Spain’s Gen. Francisco Franco, who in his latter years methodically laid the groundwork for a less authoritarian, post-Franco era. He is not like the collegial autocrats of present-day China, who have made their country – with all its problems – a relatively safe and predictable place for foreigners to do business and thus aid the development of the Chinese economy. While Russia, with its high literacy rates and quasi-European culture, cannot be compared with the much less developed Arab world, Putin’s Russia does contain a scent of the thuggery and benightedness that characterized former regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Because Putin is not a modernizer – he is building neither a civil society nor a 21st century knowledge economy – he is leading Russia toward a familiar dead end, from which only chaos or more autocracy can issue.

 

Russia is not fated to be governed illiberally forever. Geography is being tempered by technology, and individual choice can overcome – or at least partly overcome – the legacy of history. Though one cannot speculate about which future leader or group of leaders can save Russia, one can outline the shape of a less autocratic yet stable power arrangement. And that shape must feature decentralization. Because of Russia’s very vastness – nearly half the longitudes of the earth – democracy in Russia must be a local phenomenon as well as a Moscow phenomenon. The Far East, oriented around Vladivostok, must be able to carve out its own political shape and identity, the same with other parts of Russia. The center must become by stages weaker, even as the whole Federation becomes more vibrant because of the emergence of a rule of law. Such a Russia would draw in a near abroad united by a legacy of Russian language use from Soviet and czarist times. Centralization is not the opposite of anarchy; civil society is. Thus only civil society can save Russia.

We Are Not Strangers in Our Homeland. By Avi Sagi and Yedidia Stern.

We are not strangers in our homeland. By Avi Sagi and Yedidia Stern. Haaretz, March 23, 2007.

Sagi and Stern:

The wheel comes full circle. Not long ago, we sinned by asserting lordship – “There is no Palestinian people.” Over the years this view was shorn from the marketplace of ideas of the Jewish majority in Israel, and we no longer reject the national identity of these others. Now however, leading figures among Israel’s Arab community are paying us back in a similar coin: Several recently published documents laying out their vision for the future call for the annulment of the Jewish identity of the State of Israel, from which it follows that they are rejecting a central element of identity of the Jewish people in our generation. This is a strategic move by a substantial portion of the leadership of about a fifth of the country’s citizens, and it should be taken seriously.

 

We pushed the Arab citizens into an alley with no exit: they are experiencing prolonged discrimination that cannot be justified. Their right to full civil equality is not being realized. Decent Israelis cannot remain silent in the light of the state’s ongoing failure in its treatment of minority group. Moreover, decent Jews cannot ignore their responsibility to protect the national minority from manifestations of racism. We did not make an effort to consolidate civil partnership; we did not create inviting conditions for honorable coexistence. The outcry of the poor Arab, who is discriminated against as a person and who feels excluded and alienated as the member of a minority group, is resonating across the country. It raises doubts about the depth of our true commitment to the values of a “Jewish state” and a “democratic state.”

 

However, the new initiatives of the Arab leadership in Israel are not making do with a call to rectify the wrongs done to the minority. The central innovation of principle in these documents lies in their categorical assertion that proper equality will not be achieved as long as Israel is a Jewish state. Accordingly, they launch a frontal assault against the state's Jewish character. If the previous generation of Arabs, the “stooped generation,” was content to aspire to civil equality, the present “erect generation” is challenging the right of the majority to maintain a Jewish nation-state.

 

Conspiracy of elites

 

The broad context of the “Future Vision” document arises clearly from its opening lines. The reproof sticks out like thorns in one’s eyes: “Israel is the outcome of a settlement process initiated by the Zionist-Jewish elite in Europe and the West and realized by colonial countries.” The voice that is speaking here is none other than the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel. These people, Israeli public representatives who live in close proximity to us Jews, believe that the State of Israel is not the realization of generations of Jewish longing to return to Zion, but a conspiracy by elites seeking to impose Western control over the Middle East. “Next year in Jerusalem, As long as deep in the heart . . . My heart is in the East and I am at the ends of the West” – none of these are authentic expressions of the Jewish soul across the generations.

 

This is historical nonsense. Postcolonial theories cannot transform a full life into a fiction. Even those who feel victimized by the Nakba cannot erase the fact that “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped,” as Israel’s Declaration of Independence states. Israel’s Arabs lose our attention if they refuse to recognize the fact that, as the declaration states, “After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it hroughout their dispersion, and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom. We are not strangers in our homeland.”

 

The Arabs’ visions also offer concrete solutions. They are striving to shape Israel as a multicultural state. However, the Arab leadership is not content with protecting certain public spaces, which are populated largely by members of the Arab minority, as areas in which Arab culture and identity will be embodied. They want much more. They are demanding that all the elements of the Israeli space – sovereignty, territory, norms and symbols – be freed of any specific identity. They are unwilling to make do with the rights accruing to a cultural minority. They want the Jewish majority to narrow its identity and apply it only in sub-state spaces. The state will be a neutral playing field, transparent and hollow, possessing a universal character.

 

An attempt to fashion a multicultural state of this kind will not succeed. History shows that multiculturalism has blossomed only when it is cultivated in a stable national-political space. The leadership of Israel’s Arabs is seeking what no one had dared call for: for the overwhelming majority of the country’s citizens to withdraw their collective identity to outside the public space, which is so vital to realize identity. In the absence of another Jewish state, the import of their demand will be to dwarf and diminish Jewish identity in our generation to its private and community dimensions, just as it was for two thousand years, when we were a people in exile.

 

Moreover, states need a unifying national ethos. Without it, a state is liable to become a random federation of communities that will find it difficult to exist as a homogeneous unit. This is even more acute in the Israeli context. The Arab minority is tied to social-cultural communities that exist in the Arab states and it is part of the Palestinian nation, which is in the process of establishing an independent state abutting on Israel. Is it far-fetched to be concerned that the Arab minority is actually interested in a two-state plan: voiding the existing ethos and replacing it, when the time comes, with a different national vision that will integrate into Arab or Islamic visions that are shared by the rest of the Palestinian nation, across the border.

 

If the State of Israel is voided of identity components, it will lose one of the crucial elements of national resilience which that its continued existence in a hostile arena. Will Israeli youngsters – to whom the whole world is open – respond to a mobilization call that asks them to give up their best years, and sometimes also their very lives, for an organizational framework that does not provide them with meaning? The internal centrifugal forces will make us fall apart from within, and the opportunities that beckon in the global village will hasten the process from without.

 

Behind the multicultural rhetoric

 

The suspicion arises that behind the multicultural rhetoric lies the aspiration to liquidate Israel as a political entity. Implicit in it is the ouster of the Jewish nation from the world’s nations. Academic language possessing political charm might turn out to be a weapon in the struggle against the State of Israel. The Arab elite is leading its followers into dangerous realms. They must understand that the members of the Jewish people, including the salient supporters of civil equality for all, will not forgo the realization of their right to self-determination in this space, the cradle of the Jewish nation. The Jewish people has an inalienable right to the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.

 

Israel’s Arab citizens have to demand – and the Jewish majority must agree to – a fair division of the public space between the two groups. The Jewish majority will have the larger part of the realization of identity in this space, and the Arab minority will be left with the smaller part. Any other alternative will undermine, and ultimately void of content, the concepts of identity that underlie multiculturalism.

 

However, not all the public assets are amenable to division between majority and minority. Thus, for example, the definition of the state’s character as “Jewish,” to which the documents of the Arab vision object, is indivisible. This is the source of the argument that the right of the Arab minority to equality in the public space is infringed upon. Even though this is true, it cannot lead us to hesitate in our insistence on preserving the state’s definition as “Jewish.”

 

Isaiah Berlin stated that “[equality] is neither more nor less rational than any other ultimate principle.” The basic point of departure of a liberal society is that equality is the primary value that must be applied, but it is possible to depart from this value if there is sufficient cause. Indeed, in Berlin’s view, the majority of social disputes are related to the question of the nature of the sufficient cause to depart from equality.

 

As we noted, the demand of the Arab minority for civil equality is meritorious because no sufficient cause to justify its rejection is posited against it. In contrast, their demand for equality in the public space, to be achieved by removing the collective identity of more than three-quarters of the country’s citizens from the sovereign space, is intolerable. Posited against it are extremely cogent sufficient causes, above all the discrimination against the Jewish national identity (vis-a-vis either national identities which find expression in a political space, including the Arab identities) and the degeneration it is liable to suffer as a result. To this we must add the concrete concern that the Israeli political state will be disassembled into unconnected sub-units, and the danger that strategic harm will accrue to national resilience.

 

The Arab public in Israel would do well to direct its energy to a struggle for civil equality, in which it will find many partners among the Jewish people. But continuing to build verbal sandcastles in the form of documents of the vision is pointless. The Jewish people does not intend to divest itself of its aspiration to realize its nationhood in the political space of the State of Israel.

Homemade Israel-Bashers. By Amnon Rubinstein.

Homemade Israel-bashers. By Amnon Rubinstein. Jerusalem Post, February 27, 2008.

Rubinstein:

Shortly after I began teaching at Columbia University, I was taken aback to hear that the Iranian ruler Ahmadinejad had been invited to speak on campus. There was hardly any time to organize a protest against the event. Despite this, three kipot-wearing students from Hillel House worked day and night to distribute posters and pamphlets featuring a choice selection of the guest’s hate-filled, genocidal invective. They organized a demonstration in front of the hall where the Iranian president was to speak, and all without any outside help. I spoke at the demonstration, where I discovered that almost all the participants present were local Orthodox Jewish students. The number of secular Israeli students could be counted on the fingers of one hand – with fingers to spare. Inside the hall sat an Israeli student who applauded Ahmadinejad. I asked another Israeli who witnessed this behavior to tell me about her. I asked: How can she applaud someone that wants to exterminate her? His matter of fact reply: “She’s known to be a leftist.” In other words, “leftists” applaud a tyrant, a Nazi, a persecutor of minorities, oppressor of women, stoner of “adulterers,” and executioner of homosexuals. If he protests the oppression of the Palestinians, then he must clearly be a member of the “left” and should therefore be cheered. Later, I encountered other Israeli academicians at Columbia who added more fuel to the fire of hatred against Israel – all belonged to what is known as the radical Left.

 

WHEN THE semester ended, my wife and I were invited to a Shabbat meal on Friday night prepared by the organizers of the demonstration. I am a professed and impassioned secular Jew. My Judaism is national and cultural. I believe that my approach is in no way inferior to the Orthodox or haredi one. It contains neither temptations of paradise, the punishment of hell, nor the revival of the dead. It is filled with a rich, multifaceted and wondrous Jewish-Hebrew culture. I also believe that secular humanism is the right answer for us as individuals and as a nation. But if I had to choose between the kipa-wearing Jews at Columbia and the representatives of what is known in Israel as the radical Left – I know where my heart is. That is the entire story. No, it is the end of the story. It is also the end of the story of the anti-Israeli squadrons in the Israeli academia.

 

FOR SOME time, I have been waiting for a hysterical outburst from this direction, one that would bring their claims to such an absurd point, that they would be finished. I always believed that their “post-intelligent” anti-Israeli claptrap would eventually climax in an paroxysm of extremist mumbo-jumbo lunacy, after which there would no longer be anything to argue about. They’d be exposed. Ben-Dror Yemini provided me with just that evidence (Ma’ariv, January 11), in an article in which he tells of a research project carried out by graduate student Tal Nizan at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research question was: How is it that, contrary to the accepted practice among other occupation armies, the Zionist occupation army does not rape? The researcher had two explanations: First, IDF soldiers do not rape Palestinian women because for them, these women have been dehumanized, and “consequently, a sexual act cannot be carried out with someone that is perceived as less than human.” Second, the soldiers refrained from raping the Palestinian women in the service of a higher, demographic goal, because the rape could cause pregnancies that would subsequently increase the numbers of our enemies. In other words, not only are there no rapes, there are no condoms either. The significant aspect is not this surreal research project. It is not unusual. Incitement against Israel can be found on the lowest level in some of the social science departments in Israel’s universities. A well-known philosopher in Tel Aviv University called Israel the dustbin of Europe – and students, as we know, are influenced by their teachers, even when the latter are seized by a frenzy of hatred toward the state that provides their livelihood, and at the expense of which, thanks to their attacks on it, they make their names. The interesting thing is that this “research” project won a prize from a sociology association, with a number of distinguished professors voting in favor of granting the researcher a prize. It would be interesting to hear how these professors propose that Israel amend this serious flaw, that IDF soldiers are not serial rapists. Does that fact that female tourists are not raped mean that they too have been dehumanized? These professors are wrong. It's not true that there is no rape. There is – the rape of the academia, of science and of the students forced to listen to these professors’ drivel.

America’s Failing China Paradigm. By Gordon G. Chang.

America’s Failing China Paradigm. By Gordon G. Chang. The National Interest, February 19, 2014.

What Primary Sources Tell Us About Lydda 1948. By Naomi Friedman.

What primary sources tell us about Lydda 1948. By Naomi Friedman. Jerusalem Post, February 17, 2014.

Myths and Historiography of the 1948 Palestine War Revisited: The Case of Lydda. By Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela. The Middle East Journal, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Autumn 2005).

Operation Dani and the Palestinian Exodus from Lydda and Ramle in 1948. By Benny Morris. The Middle East Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter 1986).


Friedman:

On July 13, 1948, thousands of Arabs left their homes in Lydda (now Lod) and marched in the heat of the summer toward Ramallah, then held by the Arab Legion. Why they did this has been the subject of great historical and political debate.

 

One account explains the exodus as a product of the civil war that preceded the May 1948 attack on Israel by its Arab neighbors.

 

Another account, now making the rounds of Jewish book clubs across the United States, is Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Ignoring the recent work of prominent Israeli academicians and the growing body of first-hand narratives and other primary sources, Shavit paints the exodus as an act of ethnic cleansing.

 

Citing primary sources, from by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) telegrams and reports, to documents found at the Lydda Military Command, to personal accounts by both Jewish and Arab participants, Israeli academicians Avraham Sela, Alon Kadish and Arnon Golan’s book, The Occupation of Lod, July 1948, meticulously documents the unfolding of events. Here is the account, in brief.

 

On November 30, 1947, the day after the UN voted to partition the British Mandate of Palestine, Arab fighters launched the War of the Roads. Stationed in Lydda and other towns along the major trade routes, they attacked trucks and later convoys carrying supplies to Jewish Jerusalem and other Jewish villages. In July 1948, the IDF implemented Operation Dani whose ultimate goal was to gain control of the road to Jerusalem. The first objective of the operation was to capture Lydda.

 

The attack on Lydda was not organized or carried out as planned, as indicated by IDF reports and telegrams. It was led by the Palmach, a part of the IDF. On July 11, Moshe Dayan’s jeep force drove into the city, opened fire, got lost, came under heavy attack by the Arab Legion, and withdrew permanently.

 

Then 300 foot soldiers, led by Palmach commander Mula Cohen, with no heavy arms (and not aware of Dayan’s intention not to support their push) entered the city. They took tenuous hold of part of the city center.

 

According to accounts by both Jewish and Arab sources, Arab fighters gathered at their headquarters, olive groves, and the police station.

 

This is well-established by first-hand accounts of Shmaryahu Gutman, the Palmach leader in charge of negotiating with the Arab population of Lydda, and Arab civilian guard member Spiro Munayyer.

 

On the following day, July 12, two or three Arab Legion tanks entered Lydda and opened fire on Jewish forces. Arab Legion forces stationed at the police station and other local fighters launched a counterattack. After heavy fighting, the Palmach maintained its precarious hold on part of the city center. The Palmach exchanged fire with soldiers at the police station throughout the night and by the morning of July 13, they discovered that all but one injured fighter in the police station had abandoned the city.

 

Meanwhile, Shmaryahu Gutman, according to his 1948 testimony, had spent two days negotiating with the Arab leaders of Lydda asking them to lay down their arms. They had sent a town crier to announce that all arms were to be placed in the front of the houses.

 

Not a single weapon was handed over. Like the Jews, the Arabs anticipated a counterattack by the Arab Legion and hoped to wait it out. The Palmach, however, had gathered approximately 4,000 men of military age, held in a mosque and a church. Still, the Arabs refused to surrender. Only after the city leaders realized that the Arab Legion forces had abandoned the police station on the morning of July 13, did they agree to make a deal. If the 4,000 men were released, the Arabs would leave the city. And so it was that most, but not all of the Arab residents left Lydda.

 

Shavit’s account rests on two false premises.

 

The first is that the IDF captured Lydda from an unsuspecting civilian population who were easily overtaken. Primary sources, however, indicate that the Arab fighters were wellarmed and vastly outnumbered the Jewish forces. Sela and Kadish estimate that at least 1,000 local fighters and 50 soldiers from the Arab Legion held 25 anti-tank launchers, 20 machine guns, armored cars, submachine guns and rifles.

 

The second false premise is that prime minister David Ben-Gurion issued a top-down order to Yigal Allon, head of the Palmach, to expel the Arab inhabitants. This fallacy is one enthusiastically embraced by those who accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing. Primary sources clearly show that the decision was initiated by the commanders on the ground under fire.

 

These primary sources include Palmach commander Mula Cohen’s reports and telegrams from Lydda, other first-hand accounts, and an official IDF directive issued on July 6, 1948.

 

The directive, found in the IDF archive 2135/50, File 42, on the subject of “Discipline,” orders that: “Outside of active fighting, it is forbidden . . . to expel Arab residents from their villages, neighborhoods, and cities and to displace residents without special permission or the clear instruction from the Defense Minister in each specific case. Anyone violating this order will be tried.” The directive was issued to prevent expulsion, not to provoke it. 

Mula Cohen, however, was unaware of this directive. In his memoirs To Give and To Receive, Mula Cohen writes “Let me be clear: I do not deny that it was I, as head of the brigade, who made the decision, and only after did I receive the permission of the commanders of Operation Dani.” Yigal Allon accepted Cohen’s view that the only way to hold Lydda was to expel the residents. Allon and Yitzhak Rabin, his deputy, argued about it and went to Ben-Gurion. They were perhaps aware of the directive and of the fact that they needed to obtain his permission, since at the time he was also serving as defense minister.

 

What’s missing in Shavit’s books and in most popular histories that are now being written, the elephant in the room, is why the IDF targeted Lydda in the first place.

 

Lydda had been housing both local and foreign fighters who attacked the Jewish convoys during the War of the Roads. Today this war is gradually being written out of popular history and national memory.

 

Operation Dani, which precipitated the mass exodus of the Arabs from Lydda and Ramla, was the first in a series of three initiatives, the ultimate goal of which was to free the road to Jerusalem to feed the 100,000 Jews living there.

 

When I tried to explain this to my Jewish book club, nobody had heard of the War of the Roads, or of the Jewish children who were starving in Jerusalem. I couldn’t forget, of course, because my father was one of those children.

Max Blumenthal’s “Goliath” and the Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism. By Petra Marquardt Bigman.

Max Blumenthal’s “Goliath” and the Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism. By Petra Marquardt Bigman. The Louis D. Brandeis Center, February 17, 2014.

Another Milestone for the Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism: The New America Foundation and Max Blumenthal’s Goliath. By Petra Marquardt Bigman. The Louis Brandeis Center, February 17, 2014. PDF.

Whitewashing BDS and antisemitism in the New York Times. By Petra Marquardt Bigman. Jerusalem Post, February 5, 2014.

In “Goliath,” the Past Is Always Present for Palestinians. By Nadia Hijab. The Nation, February 25, 2014.

Max Blumenthal Discusses Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel at the New America Foundation. NJBR, December 5, 2013.

The Anti-Zionist Civil War on the Left. By Jonathan S. Tobin. NJBR, November 4, 2013.


Marquardt Bigman:

While Blumenthal was perfectly capable to adjust his presentations according to the audience he was addressing, he provided a chilling demonstration of what he hoped to accomplish with Goliath during an event at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was hosted on October 17 by political scientist Ian Lustick to promote his book. Lustick noted at one point in the discussion that Blumenthal showed in Goliath that “Israel is not just a little bit fascist, Israel is a lot fascist,” and according to Lustick, this was the “ultimate delegitimizer,” because after World War II, “nothing fascist can even be allowed to survive.” Referring to the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, Lustick invited Blumenthal to fancy himself in the position of God in order to decide whether there are enough “good people” in today’s Sodom-like Israel to save it from destruction. Blumenthal, who clearly didn’t need convincing that Israel as a Jewish state shouldn’t be allowed to survive, responded by explaining that his first concern was relieving “the suffering of the indigenous people of Palestine.” According to him, the only way to achieve this was by placing “external pressure” – such as the BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) movement is advocating – on Jewish Israelis in order to force them to choose between emigrating and agreeing to “become indigenized” by accepting Arab dominance in political, cultural and social terms.

 

This open call for the demise of the Jewish state and a “Juden raus”-policy for those of Israel’s Jews who would be unwilling to “become indigenized ”after the hoped-for victory of the BDS movement did not remain one of the many barely noticed events staged regularly by so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists, but was reported by the Forward’s J.J. Goldberg. Yet, there were no consequences, which arguably only illustrates the urgent need to fight the alarming deterioration of the debate about Israel on American campuses.

 

When NAF President Anne-Marie Slaughter was notified at the end of November that her organization’s planned event for Blumenthal had been criticized at Commentary as completely inappropriate, she dismissed the criticism by quoting the popular notion that the “best answer for speech is more speech.” Unfortunately, however, there was no attempt whatsoever to counter Blumenthal’s “speech” during the NAF event; instead, as was to be expected, Blumenthal received some mainstream endorsements after the event, most notably from veteran NAF board member James Fallows.

 

With the Research Article published today, LDB is providing the long overdue answer to Blumenthal’s “speech” by documenting that promoting his work on Israel ultimately means to contribute to the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism.

Lessons of World War I. By Victor Davis Hanson.

Lessons of World War I. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, February 18, 2014.

Don’t Expect Abbas to Sign Anything. By Shlomo Avineri.

Don’t expect Abbas to sign anything. By Shlomo Avineri. Haaretz, February 18, 2014.

Abbas and the False Hope of Peace. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 17, 2014.


Avineri:

As prime minister, Ehud Olmert met 36 (or was it 37?) times with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and couldn’t reach an agreement with him. But that didn’t stop him from saying in a recent interview on Channel 2 that he’s certain Abbas is a partner for an accord.

 

Olmert was prepared to go further than any other Israeli leader in meeting the Palestinians’ demands, including on the issues of Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and territorial exchanges; he offered to evacuate 70,000 settlers as well as make a humanitarian gesture allowing 5,000 Palestinian refugees (or their descendants) to return. This underscored his belief in the need for Israel to make a painful compromise, and given his own political past, his courage and determination was especially admirable.

 

But what came out of all that? When Olmert proposed in dozens of meetings that Abbas sign a document containing the Israeli concessions, he refused. Olmert explains this by saying that Abbas did not say either yes or no. This is patently ridiculous: By refusing to sign, Abbas clearly said no.

 

Evidently, Abbas was not ready to commit to anything, but he was able to get Olmert to consent to far-reaching concessions, and then halted the negotiations. The upshot is that when the negotiations resume, the Palestinian side will insist that they must begin “where they left off” – with the starting point being the Israeli positions as set forward in Olmert’s generous proposal, with no concession having been made by the other side.

 

Am I misinterpreting things? This is exactly what happened in 1995 in Yossi Beilin’s talks with Abbas. Then, too, the talks led to extensive Israeli concessions; then, too, the Israeli side sought to put things down on paper and fashion a final accord – and then, too, Mahmoud Abbas refused to sign. There was never any Beilin-Abbas Agreement. There was only a paper laying out Israeli concessions.

 

At Camp David, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton became fed up with this method and, as he ran out of patience, told Yasser Arafat that so far he had rejected every offer. Perhaps you have a proposal of your own, Clinton suggested to Arafat. But no such Palestinian proposal was ever placed on the table.

 

The Palestinians have never outlined their overall vision of an agreement, except, of course, in regard to the territorial issue. But on matters of crucial importance to Israel – forgoing the right of return, some form of recognition of Israel as the Jewish nation-state – the Palestinian leadership has clearly rejected the Israeli position. Though Abbas has stated that he personally has no desire to return to Safed, he has also declared that the Palestinians cannot give up the right of return, saying it is an “individual right.” And both Abbas and Saeb Erekat, his chief negotiator, have outright rejected all calls to accept Israel as the Jewish nation-state, citing the basic Palestinian position that the Jews are a religious community, not a nation.

 

Abbas’ refusal to sign a document with Olmert or Beilin has a clear implication: not that he is no partner for talks, but that he is an excellent partner for talks — as long as they are talks designed to lead Israel to make more and more concessions, and to put them in writing. Then, on one pretext or another, he is unwilling to sign and brings the negotiations to a halt, so they can be restarted in the future “where they left off”: with all the previous Israeli concessions included, and no concessions having been put forward by the Palestinian side.

 

In certain circles in Israel nowadays, having anything positive to say about Ehud Barak is considered heresy. But he did reach the correct conclusion from all this. His statement that he went to Camp David in 2000 to expose Arafat’s true face may be regarded with some skepticism. He went to that summit in the honest belief that his readiness to make major concessions, which endangered his political standing, would bear fruit. But when he saw that the Palestinians were prepared to do nothing but engage in negotiations that would squeeze more and more concessions from Israel, without committing to anything in return, he drew the proper conclusion.

 

One can understand Olmert and Beilin: It’s natural for the people conducting negotiations to fall in love with the process with which they are identified, and to be very eager for it to succeed. But they cannot, or will not, see what any nonpartisan observer is able to see, even if the sight is difficult and uncomfortable. (Full disclosure: This is very difficult for me, since I would much prefer to believe in the optimism of Olmert and Beilin, but it has no basis in reality.)

 

If a similar thing happens in the current negotiations as well, Israel will have to prepare an alternative to the ever-elusive comprehensive agreement: a serious proposal for interim or partial agreements, unilateral moves, a halt to more construction in the territories, and a willingness to acknowledge that even in the absence of a final agreement that officially ends the conflict, there are things that can be done to reduce the friction and bring about significant change – not only in Israel but also among the mainstream of the Palestinian national movement. It’s already happening in Cyprus, Kosovo and Bosnia. Perhaps this is all that’s possible here too – for now.

Disappearing Arab Nations. By Moshe Arens.

Disappearing Arab nations. By Moshe Arens. Haaretz, February 17, 2014.

Arens:

Ninety-eight years ago Sir Mark Sykes for Britain and Francois George Picot for France signed in secrecy the Sykes-Picot agreement dividing parts of the Ottoman Empire into British and French spheres of influence and control, anticipating the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. With Allied victory the Middle East was restructured more or less in accordance with the agreement, creating new Arab states that were to be the birthplace of new Arab nations. Thus were born the Iraqi nation, the Syrian nation and the Lebanese nation.

 

The efforts invested by the French and British in the building of these nations led only to ephemeral success. After decades of political independence, Iraq and Syria, both member states of the United Nations, for many years ruled by a succession of brutal despots, are on the way to disappearing from the roster of nations. Syria and Iraq are in the process of tearing themselves apart, tribal and religious loyalties taking precedence over loyalty to the artificial nations created after World War I, while Lebanon is in danger of following in their footsteps.

 

A part of Palestine, all of which was assigned by the League of Nations to Britain as the mandatory power, in accordance with the Sykes-Picot agreement, eventually became the Jewish nation state, Israel. Here the Jewish nation was rejuvenated on the soil of its ancient homeland. Unlike the artificially created Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese nations, the Jewish nation has struck deep roots, imbued with a national spirit which has provided it with the ability to function democratically, defend itself and to thrive economically.

 

The Palestinian areas east of the Jordan river were gifted by Britain to Emir Abdullah, the son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, and eventually became the Kingdom of Jordan. The population there is roughly 70% of west Palestinian origin and 30% Bedouin. Whether this has given rise to a Jordanian nation is still to be seen.

 

Judea and Samaria were conquered by the Jordanian army in 1948, annexed to Jordan and passed to Israeli control after the defeat of the Jordanian army in 1967. The Gaza Strip was conquered by the Egyptian army in 1948 and passed to Israeli control after the Egyptian defeat in 1967. The Arab population in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, feeling abandoned by the Arab states, began developing a separate national identity, as Palestinians, triggered by the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization under the leadership of Yasser Arafat in 1964. They are now split between the Hamas-controlled Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the Fatah-controlled Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. Whether a united Palestinian nation, separate from the Jordanians, will become a permanent member of the family of nations will only become clear in the future.

 

The present ambivalence of the Syrians and the Palestinians as national entities is problematic for Israel. Whereas, under the dictatorial rule of Hafez el-Assad and later his son Bashar, there presumably was a neighboring nation-state with whom a peace treaty could in principle be negotiated which would put an end to the decades-long conflict between Israel and Syria, there, obviously, is no such partner on Israel’s northern border at the present time. Considering the present state of affairs in Lebanon and the involvement of Hezbollah in the fighting in Syria, a peace treaty with Lebanon also does not seem realistic in the foreseeable future.

 

The dysfunctional nature of the Palestinian political entity creates another problem for Israel. Although Fatah and Hamas, ruling non-contiguous areas of western Palestine, are at present not engaged in fighting among themselves, their relationship is far from friendly, with Hamas denying the right of Mahmoud Abbas to conclude a peace agreement with Israel in the name of the Palestinians, making it impossible for Abbas to commit the Palestinians to end the conflict with Israel. Thus an agreement, if signed by Israel with Abbas, would not end the conflict and would only serve as a jumping-off point for further demands to be made on Israel in the name of the Palestinian nation.

After Decrying Inequality, Obama Golfs at Personal Course of Mega-billionaire. By Thomas Lifson.

After decrying inequality, Obama golfs at personal course of mega-billionaire. By Thomas Lifson. American Thinker, February 17, 2014.

Lifson:

The ultra-rich are not and never will be the real target of Democratic Party rants against inequality. Instead, they reserve their venom for the hard-working entrepreneurial and technical/professional classes who seek to rise from upper middle-class ranks into bourgeois affluence. These strivers are the real enemy because they give the lie to the cant of victimhood and unfairness that mobilizes the Democrat voting base. It is much easier to hate your boss, or the person whose nice house you drive past every day, than it is to hate George Soros, or Larry Ellison, or Bill Gates, whose personal digs are distant, inaccessible, and unthinkably remote in terms of achievement.

 

If ordinary people all across America show that hard work, savings in order to accumulate capital, and focused intellect actually create and then enjoy new wealth, then others may get the notion that they, too, don't really need big government to ensure their shot at happiness. If wealth creation seems a real possibility because you have personally seen others do it in your city or town, that is truly subversive to the vision of a transformed America the Obamas and the Democrats are peddling.

 

So never mind the 1% of the 1% with whom Barack Obama plays. They are not the enemy he demonizes (although he may remind them from time to time that he is the only thing that stands between them and the pitchforks as he shakes them down). His real hatred is for people more visible to the masses –the term dear to Marxists – in their daily lives, whose achievements validate a system that makes the government-as-economic-savior irrelevant.

The Model of Ethnic Democracy. By Sammy Smooha.

The model of ethnic democracy: Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. By Sammy Smooha. Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 8, No. 2 (October 2002). Earlier version at European Centre for Minority Issues.

Can Israel Be Both Jewish and Democratic? By Ruth Gavison. Social Science Research Network, January 1, 2011.

The Jews’ Right to Statehood: A Defense. By Ruth Gavison. Azure, No. 15 (Summer 2003).

Ruth Gavison Offers a Vision of a Democratic, Jewish Israel. By Leslie Evans. UCLA, February 19, 2004.

Jewish and Democratic?: A Rejoinder to the “Ethnic Democracy” Debate. By Ruth Gavison. Israel Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 1999).

The Rise of Secondary States in the Iron Age Levant. By Alexander H. Joffe. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 45, No. 2 (2002).

On the antiquity of ethnic states, going back to around 1000 BC. Ancient Israel, the kingdom of David, was one of the first ethnic states.

Joffe:

“Ethnic states” are not types or stages in an evolutionary scheme. Rather they are novel and historically contingent political systems which appear in the Levant during the first millennium BCE thanks to the confluence of several factors, not least of all the collapse of imperial domination and the longstanding city-state system. New forms of local identity and organization developed during the centuries of relative dislocation, which were later utilized in part by reemergent elites. The phenomenon has recurred periodically in the interstices between larger units such as empires, along the margins, and during periods of collapse. This approach necessarily sees the clustering of certain behaviors, symbols, and historical evidence as indicative of “ethnic” or identity organized groups (contra Jones 1997). The extensive use of symbolism and particular forms of administration make the “ethnic state” archaeologically detectable.

Why Anti-Zionist Jews Are a Minority. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Why Anti-Zionist Jews Are a Minority. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 16, 2014.

A Conflict of Faith: Devoted to Jewish Observance, but at Odds With Israel. By Mark Oppenheimer. New York Times, February 14, 2014.

The Magnes Zionist in the New York Times. By Charles H. Manekin. The Magnes Zionist, February 10, 2014.

Hell freezes over (NYT publishes glowing profiles of anti-Zionists). By Philip Weiss. Mondoweiss, February 15, 2014.

Orthodox Jew? Hate Israel? The New York Times Wants to Interview You. By Yarden Frankl. HonestReporting, February 16, 2014.

Glorifying Fringe Jewish Extremists at the NY Times. By Ronn Torossian. FrontPage Magazine, February 18, 2014.

The Quirkiness of the Israel-Free Jews. By Shmuel Rosner. Jewish Journal, February 18, 2014.

Why Religious Judaism Is Tied to Nationalism. By Liel Leibovitz. Tablet, February 18, 2014.

Replies to Shmuel Rosner and Liel Leibovitz. By Charles H. Manekin. The Magnes Zionist, February 18, 2014.

Zionism without a Jewish state. By Charles H. Manekin. The Magnes Zionist, August 12, 2007.


Tobin:

It is a principle of journalism that news consists of those events that are out of the ordinary. The old cliché is that when man bites dog, it’s news. A dog biting a man is not. Thus, the conceit of the New York Times Beliefs column feature on Friday met that basic standard for newsworthiness. A story about religious Jews who actively oppose the existence of the State of Israel is one in which it must be conceded that the subjects are unusual.

 

The Pew Research Center of U.S. Jews published in October reported that 91 percent of Orthodox Jews, 88 percent of Conservative Jews, and even 70 percent of those who identified themselves as Reform Jews are either very or somewhat emotionally attached to Israel. That means any discussion about observant Jews who are anti-Zionists is, by definition, one about a very tiny minority. But considering that three of the five Jews whose views are featured in the piece seem to fall into the category of Modern Orthodox, of whom 99 percent told Pew they were very or somewhat attached to Israel with one percent saying “not very attached” and zero percent “not at all attached,” the trio constitute a sample of a group that is not merely a minority but one so small that it is statistically insignificant.

 

Once that is understood, it becomes clear that one of the main failings of the article is not only the fact that its author has no interest in challenging their views but that it fails to put that fact in proper perspective. The Orthodox trio and the one Conservative Jew and one Reconstructionist movement rabbi (whose views may not be all that out of the ordinary among that small left-leaning demographic) highlighted are a peculiar minority. But the willingness of the paper to give them such favorable attention illustrates once again the falsity of the notion that it takes courage for Jews to oppose Israel. To the contrary, as was made clear last week by the controversy over two Manhattan rabbis who defied many of the congregants by signing a letter denouncing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), those Jews who publicly denounce Israel can always look forward to the applause of the mainstream media.

 

While this quintet are entitled to their views about Israel and appear to be none the worse for wear for being so determined to flout the views of their co-religionists, two aspects of the article are particularly objectionable. One is the article’s assumption that there is something remarkable about the fact that they are able to go about their business while living in a Jewish community and attending synagogue without much trouble. The second is the failure of the piece to acknowledge that the views their subjects express are inherently bigoted.

 

It should be acknowledged that the article is correct when it states that prior to 1948, support for Zionism was not universal among American Jews. Many Jews, especially those affiliated with “classic” Reform temples, viewed it as a threat to the rights of American Jews to be treated as equal citizens in the United States. The reason the adherents of that view declined from minority status to statistical insignificance is that Israel’s creation did no such thing. To the contrary, the creation of a Jewish state only a few years after the Nazis and their collaborators had killed nearly one third of the Jews on the planet engendered the respect of other Americans as well as enhancing the self-esteem of every Jew in the world whether he or she was religious or a Zionist.

 

Israel gained its independence because the Jews had a right to sovereignty in their ancient homeland and not as compensation for the Holocaust. The sweat and the blood of the Jews who built Israel and fought to defend it earned that independence. But the Holocaust made it abundantly clear, even to those who had never previously given the idea their support, that without a Jewish state to defend them, Diaspora Jews who had not been lucky enough to make it the United States or the other English-speaking countries that had not succumbed to the Nazis would always be at the mercy of violent anti-Semitism. That was just as true of Jews who lived in Muslim and Arab countries (who were forced to flee their homes after 1948) as it was of the Jews of Europe. Theodor Herzl’s understanding of the inevitable fate of a homeless Jewry—a thesis that he adopted after seeing Alfred Dreyfus being degraded in Paris as a mob shouted, “Death to the Jews”—was sadly vindicated by the events of the first half of the 20th century.

 

Though their neighbors and fellow congregants treat them with the toleration that Israel’s foes do not extend to the Jewish state, the common failing of the five anti-Zionist Jews in the Times story is their failure to account for this basic historical lesson that the rest of their community understands. One need not support every action of the government of the State of Israel or have no sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians to understand that not only does Israel have a right to exist but that its fall would endanger the lives of its people and, by extension, Jews everywhere. The notion put forward by one of the subjects that “non-statist Zionism” would succeed was exploded several decades ago by the refusal of Arab opponents of the Jewish presence in Israel/Palestine to accept Jews on any terms.

 

Nor does the article ask its subjects why the Jews, of all peoples, should be asked to forgo the right to their own country when no other nation is required to do so. Cynthia Ozick famously wrote that universalism is the parochialism of the Jews. But it takes a particularly perverse kind of universalism to say that Jews should have fewer rights than other peoples.

 

But what is particularly disingenuous about the Times article is the unwillingness to hold its subjects accountable for the thinly veiled anti-Semitism that often masquerades as anti-Zionism in contemporary debates. Groups like Jewish Voices for Peace—which is supported by one of the quintet—aren’t content to support liberal Israelis or to criticize Israel’s government. Instead it seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel in order to destroy it. If the only imperfect state that is seen as worthy of such a fate is the one Jewish one—rather than the many others founded on national or religious principles—then it is clear that the driving force behind anti-Zionism is prejudice and not concern about human rights. Websites like Mondoweiss, to which one of the five contributes, similarly trades in anti-Jewish stereotypes in its campaign against Zionism.

 

What the overwhelming majority of Jews know that these five people and their adoring audience at the Times don’t is that opposition to Israel’s existence—as opposed to criticism of it—is taking a stand against the right of the Jewish people to life. While there is a portion of the ultra-Orthodox community that also holds to anti-Zionism because of their own bizarre interpretation of Judaism (which strangely goes unmentioned in the article), non-Haredim who do so are fighting common sense, history, and the basic principles of fairness. If those who adopt such positions are a minority, it is not due to any resistance on the part of the majority to ethics or concern for others but because of the implausibility of their beliefs.


Oppenheimer:

There is no question that Charles H. Manekin is a rarity. Not because he is an Orthodox Jew who keeps the Sabbath, refraining from driving, turning on lights, even riding in elevators on Saturdays. Rather, this philosophy professor at the University of Maryland is rare because he believes that his Orthodox faith calls him to take stands against Israel.

 

Professor Manekin, 61, became Orthodox in college and became an Israeli citizen in the 1980s. Yet in an interview this week, he denounced Israel’s “excessive reliance” on military force, its treatment of Arab citizens and its occupation of the West Bank. Although not a member of the American Studies Association, he was pleased when the group voted in December not to collaborate with Israeli academic institutions — the “academic boycott.” He is “sympathetic” to B.D.S., as the global movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel is known.

 

“As a religious Jew,” he said, “I am especially disturbed by the daily injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians.”

 

The vast majority of Jews consider themselves supportive of Israel. They may quarrel with various Israeli policies, but since the state’s founding in 1948, and especially since the 1967 war, Zionism has been a common denominator of world Jewry.

 

And while there have always been anti- or non-Zionist Jews, today they cluster on the less observant end of Judaism, among secular or religiously liberal Jews. In such a world, Professor Manekin — a modern Orthodox Jew in a skullcap whose religion moves him to oppose Israel — is exceedingly rare.

 

Zionism was not always the norm among American Jews. Nevertheless, those committed to Jewish practice but openly at odds with Israel are now likely to find themselves at odds with their friends and family. In the past couple of months, events like the American Studies vote and the endorsement by the actress Scarlett Johansson of a seltzer-maker in the occupied West Bank have multiplied the opportunities for tense family dinners.

 

Professor Manekin spends about half the year in Israel, where his children and grandchildren live, so he is hardly boycotting the country with his own dollars (or shekels). But since 2007 he has regularly offered criticisms of Israel on his blog, The Magnes Zionist. It is named for Judah L. Magnes, an American rabbi who, until his death in 1948, argued that a Jewish return to the Middle East did not require a nation-state.

 

“People look at ‘non-statist Zionism’ as the type that lost,” Professor Manekin said this week, referring to Rabbi Magnes’s philosophy. “But I found a lot of what they were saying resonated today, and a lot of their predictions about endless war had come to pass.”


Manekin [The Magnes Zionist in the NYT]:

The piece says my religion leads me “to  oppose Israel.” That’s ambiguous; it could mean “oppose Israel’s policies” (yes) or “oppose  how the Jewish state was envisioned and came into being” (yes), or “oppose the very idea of a Jewish state” (that depends). No, I am not opposed to any Jewish state. As my colleague, Jerome Slater, has said, I don’t have a problem with a Jewish state – it’s this Jewish state I have a problem with. I can imagine Israel  evolving into a liberal state of all its citizens, a state that fosters both Hebrew culture and a connection with the Jewish people, and a state that sees its non-Jewish citizens as belonging with the Jews to the Israeli nation – a Hebrew (and Arabic) Republic, to use Bernard Avishai’s phrase. I can also see Israel/Palestine evolving into a binational state or a federation, or whatever. What I insist upon is that both peoples – the Israeli and the Palestinian – have maximum self-determination, maximum security, and maximum opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  And that cannot be done, in my opinion, within the framework of the current ethnically-exclusivist state that is mired in nineteenth religio-ethnic nationalism. Rightly called by Oren Yiftachel an “ethnocracy,” Israel presents itself to the world and to itself as a liberal democracy.  In fact, it is marching backward and not forward.

 

My idea of a Jewish state is a state that Jews and Palestinians can be proud of, and that incorporates in its public space and public support elements of the Jewish and Palestinian cultural past.  With over five million Israeli Jews, I am not looking to de-Judaize the culture of the state of Israel. But I would separate religion and state, and when the Palestinian Israeli writer Sayed Kashua writes a column in Hebrew in Haaretz,  I, as an Israeli, celebrate my fellow Israeli as an Israeli writer, a member of the Israeli people. But the  phrase the Israeli people is one you will never hear in Israel – it’s only Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. And I don’t want a nation-state of the Jewish people in that sense.

 

But don’t the Jews have a right, like other peoples, to a state of their own? No they don’t, and neither do other peoples. Self-determination, yes; statehood, that depends – and never at the expense of other people’s rights, in this case, the natives of Palestine.