israel/palestine
21 May 2008
Weapons of Mass Instruction
The Australian media are far more willing to discuss the Palestinian catastrophe than the American press, says visiting Palestinian-American writer Ali Abunimah in an interview with Antony Loewenstein
Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations are over. Hardline British Zionist commentator Melanie Phillips hopes that Israel or America will now bomb Iran. Israel complained to the UN about its use of the word "Nakba" to describe the Palestinian experience. US President George W Bush told the Knesset that "one of Israel's greatest leaders", Ariel Sharon, "a man of peace", should still be present with the Jewish State's "best friend in the world".In Australia, NSW Premier Morris Iemma told more than 700 guests last week that, "Israel endures ... and longs for nothing more than peace". Unreported were the ham-fisted and ultimately futile attempts by the local Zionist lobby to cancel the commemoration of the Nakba at the NSW Parliament on the same night as Iemma's speech.
In Palestine, Palestinians and their supporters tried to mark the solemn occasion but were physically assaulted by the Israeli Defence Force. Some Israelis also wanted to show their solidarity with a people whose existence and history was denied throughout the anniversary. Some American Zionists - unlike in Australia, where the sycophancy towards the Jewish State knew no bounds - at least acknowledged that the illegal settlement program in the West Bank was leading to the country's destruction.
A leading Israeli commentator, fearful of a global campaign to allow every Palestinian the vote in elections (what an indictment of mainstream Zionism that the concept of true democracy for all Israeli and Palestinian citizens is viewed as a threat to "Jewish democracy") now calls for "unilateral" withdrawals from occupied territory.
These last weeks, Australia has experienced a voice and political position all-too-rarely heard in the mainstream. Palestinian-American writer Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website and irregular columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, has travelled around the country speaking about the one-State solution. His article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 May was a rare opportunity for the one-State argument to be advanced. His book, One Country: A Bold Proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, is a considered examination of the reasons why a bi-national State, with full rights for all and an end to Israeli rejectionism, is the only humane way to resolve the struggle.
Remarkably, Israel's 60th anniversary saw a flurry of news articles around the world explaining this argument, a sure sign that the two-State solution has been dead and buried by Israel's addiction to the colonisation project (despite leading local Zionist lobbyist Mark Leibler dishonestly arguing in the Melbourne Age last week that "Israel is not building any new West Bank settlements, and has not for many years"). Even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told an American Jewish audience in early May that, "increasingly the Palestinians who talk about a two-state solution are my age".
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is coming under increasing pressure from his own Party to abandon the fruitless talks with Israel and America and demand a single state. His officials recently told the Jerusalem Post that Israel's current proposals, including keeping many illegal colonies in the West Bank, were "completely unacceptable".
"If the Israelis and Americans think that they will ever find a Palestinian leader who would accept less than the 1967 borders", one said, "they are living under an illusion."
The underlying agenda, articulated by Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, is that the Israeli and Palestinian establishment have neither the interest nor desire for true peace.
Hass told Salon.com: "You can't talk about 60 years of Israel without talking about the Nakba, the Palestinian disaster. Neither Israel nor the Palestinian elite, with their vested interests in maintaining the status quo, are interested in peace. One of the Palestinian negotiators has a son whose company supplies materials for building the border wall. The wall is making him rich. Both [Mahmoud] Abbas and [Ismail] Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, are playing Israel's game. The only purpose of the negotiations is to lead to more negotiations. What it's all about is a people refusing to give up its privileges."
The Los Angeles Times ran two major pieces in the last weeks, outlining the compelling reasons why an ethnically-exclusionary nation, today's Israel, is anti-democratic by definition. The country's blatant racism against Arabs and Palestinians is only growing.
Abunimah, speaking exclusively to newmatilda.com, says that the Australian media was far more willing to discuss the Palestinian Nakba and the cost of Israel's birth than the American press. Since his book was released in 2006, he is "more convinced that it's right" - during the writing process he felt it was a "difficult" argument to make in the mainstream. Back then, in 2005-6, Abunimah thought that, "within three to five years they'd be widespread recognition that the two-State solution is finished." The growing international movement only confirms this thesis. The "moral" argument for a one-State solution - "equal rights for all is simply more just" - should be posited against the "comforting illusion" of two-States.
Despite this realisation, "people are still clinging on to the two-State solution because it's all they know" - for example, Jewish establishment Australian leftist Philip Mendes has spent decades mouthing platitudes about two-States yet fails to acknowledge the impossibility of now achieving it.
Abunimah was determined to express in his book "empathy" towards Zionists but wanted to assert that the vast majority of Israelis and American Jews wouldn't "give up power voluntarily". Therefore, he supports sanctions, boycotts and divestment against Israel to generate international action.
Abunimah, who become a regular acquaintance of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in Chicago in the 1990s, now speaks critically of the senator. Despite once articulating positions that supported Palestinian rights, Obama has been thoroughly bought by the Zionist lobby, to the point where he recently denied a quote provided by Abunimah about his compassion towards the occupied people.
Although Abunimah acknowledges that people are "desperate for a change" in US politics, he doesn't believe that Obama has the interest or power to seriously change his country's relationship with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. "Two words for you," he says. "Kevin Rudd."
Abunimah warns people against "overestimating the power of a President" to affect real change. Powerful interest groups will first need to be addressed. "Governments will not lead the way" on bullying Israel, he says. Outside forces will have to be harnessed. Likening the struggle to the anti-apartheid movement against South Africa, civil society was a key constituency in convincing the major powers that the country had to shift.
When one of Israel's leading historians, Benny Morris, wrote on Israel's 60th anniversary of a "[Arab] demographic threat that threatens Jewish dominance", alarms bells should be ringing around the world. Is this truly the Zionist dream? Tragically, it is - a desire to maintain a Jewish majority and still claim the "democracy" tag.
As Abunimah argued on the 60th birthday: "Official projections show that by 2025, Palestinians, due to their much higher birth rate, will exceed Israeli Jews in the country by two million and though few in the international community have woken up to this reality, a surgical separation between these populations is impossible."
The two-State solution has been made redundant by Israel's belligerence and settlement project. The one-State equation will inevitably take its place.
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I would be interested to hear Ali Abunimah’s comments on the Media Watch story (http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2249539.htm) about self-censorship by one of our flagship newspapers.
The most heartening thing about this tragic conflict is that public opinion is changing, and beginning to change quite rapidly and this offers far more hope for the future than relying on any government interference.
It is becoming commonplace to hear Israel compared with Apartheid South Africa and quite rightly so. It is also becoming commonplace to hear talk of one state with equal rights for all which was probably the most sensible solution in the first place.
Interestingly, and ironically, the Israelis and their supporters have destroyed any hope of a Jewish State themselves simply because of their refusal to countenance any sort of justice for the Palestinians and their continuing policy of dispossession and colonisation.
Israel, like South Africa, is morally bankrupt and because the ‘facts on the ground’ now make it virtually impossible for a Palestinian state to be established there can be only one outcome: One secular state with equal rights for all regardless of race or creed.
Sadly, this means the Israelis have also doomed any future for an Israeli State because it is highly likely that a non-Jewish majority would vote to change the name back to what it was, Palestine. One can only hope that in the new State the citizens will find a name which is neither Palestine nor Israel and therefore fair to both sides and representative of a new beginning.
It is now not only a matter of if the Israeli apartheid state will end but when.
After reading this article and listening to Ali Abunimah last week, I actually believe that through sheer numbers and respect for the Palestinian people’s rights and freedom of expression, they will end up merging back with the Israelis into a One-state solution.
However, it doesn’t, or shouldn’t matter too much what name this state has, because you would think the latinised Palestine is a far less suitable name than Israel to people who are all essentially Semitic.
This name respects the Semitic and Jewish origins of the region.
Because now the Knesset will now have to expand its political representation to include ALL of the Palestinian people’s interests from the Parliament.
Only Israel has the infrastructure to accommodate such a merger.
And the Jews will just have to allow the secular democratic process to take place, even if it does mean they are a minority in a land that was once all theirs.
Huh? When was Palestine "all theirs"
To some it may be ancient history, but in the greater scheme of things it was just yesterday -before the time of the Greek and Roman occupations and the subsequent anti-Zionist occupations since Biblical Times (which also included occupation by the Baylonians, and Persians) then the Byzantines and Ottomans - all of them anti-Zionists, all of them attempting to hold back the inevitable - the return of the Jewish people to the original birthplace of their ancestors and their faith.
It wouldn’t matter if it was on the moon - somebody would complain about Jewish apartheid and occupation in Palestine - even if it was on land never before occupied, not bought, claimed or challenged by another people or ideology, that’s the nature of Judaism.
This is because it is the pre-cursor to the whole gamut of monotheistic denominations that have sprouted all over the world - all connecting back to Judaism and specialising in the open rejection of the original jewish identity (God) and ideology - as espoused in the Old Testement.
Although the Old testament has now been appropriated by the Christians as a large part of their Bible and subsequently critiqued and rejected by them and by the Muslims in the Koran.
Judaism may be the original monster, but it has spawned two even greater monsters - a son (Christianity) and a daughter (Islam) that have grown and blossomed into enormous ideological minefields that sometimes have diametrically opposed ideologies to each other eg. they believe in different versions of God to the Jewish people and each other.
And so this leaves the Jewish Zionists caught up in a spiral of wished -for -homelessness by huge numbers of those of other more recent faiths in the area - many more converted others - whose spiritual security lies not in controlling Jerusalem and the Holy Lands, but by not allowing the Jews to control it.
Sorry, Denise, but to me you are still living in La-La Land. The only possible hope for peace in the Middle East is for the israelis/Jews to accept that they will have to give up their religious demands of a totally Jewish State, and accept that a One People State, comprising all the people who want to remain there, or return there, Palestinians included, MUST live without religious nuttery. And that includes the Muslims. Fundamentalist beliefs are the enemy of all common sense.
Whatever they call it, it must be a land for all people who share a cultural bond with the country. Forget the bloody (and I use this word advisedly) religious nutters, send them to America or somewhere where they can be swallowed up with the rest of the Fundamantalist Nutters who live there. Although their access to power and weapons will have to be totally circumscribed, until the die out for lack of oxygen.
Dazza.
Dazza, you’ve just identified the main thorn in the side of any real chance of peace negotiations (at the moment) or any short-term solution by an attempt at creating a truly democratic, non-religious Greater state in the Holy Land. And you think that because of this I’m living in La La Land!
This is the very place where religious fervour for all of the major (and minor) monotheists from the Abrahamic tradition began! What nonsense to expect Israel and Palestine of all places to immediately behave in a purely democratic and secular way. What - without any reference to God or any religious doctrine whatsoever? I don’t think so, not yet anyway!
This region is the very of heart of religious nutters and this is the very place they should ALL be congregated and hopefully the fundamentalists will do as you suggest eliminate each other, so finally the moderates, those who want secular rule for the region (and the entire world) will succeed.
The main thing to realise is that the elimination of fundamentalist (totalitarian) rule (internationally) is in the best interests of mankind; whose endeavour should be for a democratic rational rule of law, without any interference from fundamentalists, especially those who want to convert everyone to their way of thinking through violence and force.
Denise, the Israeli zealots won’t be content to live in the territory their tribe may have perched on for some time thousands of years ago. They want all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. I’m not knowledgeable on the topic of pre-christian tribes in what we call the middle east, but I suspect there was an enormous amount of fluidity in territories and regimes, to the point where at least 2,000 years of occupation by the Palestinians must give them a pretty good case for laying claim to the place. The thing that makes the problem of Israel intractable is that it is, uniquely, a state based on race and therefore can’t accept the notion that non-Jews might have equal rights there. Even South Africa, even Nazi Germany, based their societies on the exclusion of some races. There were Jews in South Africa, along with other white people from all over the world, and as long as you weren’t a Jew, a Gypsy or a homosexual, you were welcome in Germany. Israel, alone, bases its society on the exclusion of all races except Jews. How can a one-state solution be acceptable to a society like that? Israel’s calculations put Jewish lives, currently, as being worth 8 or more Palestinian lives. More, really, because the impression one gets from reading reporting from that part of the world makes it clear that the current ratio of at least half a dozen dead Palestinians to one Israeli is grossly unfair and unbalanced. Should it be a hundred to one? A thousand? Or is there simply no comparison, Palestinian lives being worthless?
peterbest neither the Israeli zealots nor the Palestinian zealots will have their way, both are far too extreme and unrealistic.
Firstly in their ability to incorporate both peoples into an integrated whole, the ultimate aim of autonomy, especially for all of those who believe in the absolute purity and supremecy of the secular, democratic society above their religious faith.
As soon as the autonomous stage of Palestine has been reached and their institutions properly established (within their remaining territories), they can then consider the implications of the reintegration of both autonomous states, negating the need for a Jewish religious state by protecting Jewish rights in the new Palestinian Constitution.
So, in other words until the Palestinians can show that they know how to run their own affairs in a democratic and lawful manner, they will not have a snowflake’s chance in hell of initiating negotiations around reestablishing or gaining control of any of their own historic and cultural institutions that remain in Israeli territory.
That is unless they are prepared to fight and die for them, which so far they have proved they are prepared to do in ever greater numbers.
And unfortunately, with this attitude they run the chance of sacrificing too many lives and annhilating both themselves as a people and their chance of establishing a truly great democratic and secular Palestinian nation.
Denise. You’ve got it backwards. Nobody could expect a coherent state to be formed by a people who have been booted from their houses, booted from their land, then herded into Bantustans cut by freeways they’re not permitted to use, blocked by Israeli checkpoints from mixing with the rest of the world, unable to work or sell what little goods they produce, their health and education systems so underfunded that they’re at the point of total collapse. And when they exercise their right to democracy and vote for Hamas the Israelis and Americans refuse to accept what independent observers describe as "free and fair" elections. How much faith should they have in democracy after that? Give them something that can be genuinely called a state, with the borders that existed before the 1967 war, borders that a United Nations resolution still says must be respected, though it’s flaunted by the US and Israel. Give them the opportunity to elect whomever they wish, to trade with the rest of the world, to live in their own nation, not an arbitrary patchwork of Israeli design, and then see how they go. How can you integrate into a whole the brutal jigsaw with a thousand pieces missing that Israeli has created in its determination to grab all of Palestine?
I agree peterbest if a final integration back into a secular state of Palestine is to eventuate they have to start with some decent land, basic human rights and some help for building up their economic infrastructure with freedom to move and trade like everyone else.
I also suggest that if Hamas and Fatah reallly want the Israelis to allow or give them this freedom they should have a ceasefire for at least six months and both Hamas and Fatah should acknowledge the right of Israel to exist in peace (even if they know and believe it to be a temporary state) now.
This would begin to ease tensions amongst all of the different peoples and a gradual trust could be built up, until the border checkpoints could be opened up completely with duel citizenship for everyone.
Next the kilometres of walls woud be knocked down and then once again all peoples, of all religious persuasions could share the land as they once did.