Simon Jones - The one state solution as the liberation
struggle for the Jews
Simon
Jones is a North American journalist/ translator living in
Uzbekistan. He has written articles about 911, the (post) Soviet
Union, Judaism, Uzbekistan, and the peace movement for
Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, YellowTimes and other online
alternative media. He welcomes your comments at sj958@yahoo.com
My
own road to Damascus concerning the one-state solution has been a
long one. While always a critic of Israeli expansionism, I went
along with the conventional wisdom that somehow the suffering of
Jews in WWII justified at least the existence of the state of
Israel, that there was nothing to be done about what from the word
«go» was an injustice, so ‘Let’s support the attempts to
create a Palestinian state, even a rump one « get over it, move
on, etc.’
It
was only with Slick Willy’s Oslo ‘accord’, backed by the «peace
movement» of Israel, but which did nothing to stop more and more
settlements from sprouting in occupied territory, and which made
no restitution to a half century of dispossessed and murdered
Palestinians, that what was really afoot began to dawn on me. «Hey,
Jews are getting billions in reparations for persecution by the
Nazis. What about the Palestinians?» I thought. Oslo was
understandably rejected by the Palestinians and then resoundingly
by the Israelis (though Slick Willy still stoutly defends it on
CNN). It finally became clear to all except US presidents that
Israeli politicians of all stripes have NEVER had ANY intention of
allowing a Palestinian state, even a rump one, to be set up.
Sharon’s
cynical march onto Temple Mount further made clear for even the
most naive well-wishers (again excepting US presidents) that the
real political agenda of Israel is nothing less than Greater
Israel and the driving of all Palestinians « Muslims and
Christians « out of Palestine. Ben Gurion’s «It doesn’t
matter what gentiles say; it only matters what we do» became
Sharon’s «It doesn’t matter what WE say; it only matters what
we do.» Road maps and peace processes continue to be touted -
yes, the dog barks, but the caravan moves on.
911
merely drove the point home. Whether or not Mossad was behind it
all, Israel is no longer just a wart, a minor irritation which
could be tolerated and hopefully would go away or at least not get
worse. It is a cancer, growing more lethal by the day to the
entire world, the engine of WWIII against the Muslim world. So the
only solution is to oppose the very existence of Israel as a
racist state, to fight to bring it down, just as the Muslim world
has demanded from the start. Sorry for taking so long, guys!
Confronting
the Jewish century
How
naive we liberals, socialists, goys, even so-called anti-Zionist
Jews were. But then we are the product of the Judaic secular
culture which has triumphed in the West. As the enthusiastic
reviewer of Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Century (Princeton
University Press 2004) claims in a NYRB ad, «the Modern Age is
the Jewish Age - and we are all, to varying degrees, Jews.»
According to him, not only have Jews adapted better than many
other groups to living in the modern world, they have become «the
symbol and standard of modern life everywhere.»
Of
course. Capitalism and psychoanalysis are, after all, our alpha
and omega. Doyen of Israeli journalism Amos Elon said in a recent
interview, «German Jewry was the secular elite of Europe. They
were the essence of modernism - leaders who made their livelihood
from brainpower and not from brawn, mediators and not workers of
the land. Journalists, writers, scientists. There hadn’t been
anything like it since the Renaissance.» http://www.counterpunch.org/shavit12272004.html
So this claim of cultural hegemony is neither new nor especially
controversial, though for the American academics to boast about it
so openly (also fresh from Princeton U, Jews and the American Soul
by Andrew Heinze sporting the Statue of Liberty clutching a
menorah) certainly marks a new boldness in the Jewish agenda.
If
we assume there is more to life than acting out the role of
shabbas goy, we must confront this in-your-face Jewish cultural
hegemony, which it can be argued includes not only control of
intellectual commanding heights, but less prettily, holocaust
worship, denial of the spiritual dimension in humanity and the
rule of money. For Jews, it means radically rethinking their very
identity as Jews whatever cabbage leaf they might have been born
under.
And
for the rest of us, the Zionist plan for a world Knesset in
Jerusalem (as recently announced by the Israeli president) is
about as acceptable as the much reviled Comintern, and underlines
the danger to host countries of these powerful citizens with dual
loyalties. Which leads inexorably to the conclusion that this is
wrong, in fact treasonous, and must be stopped. Jews of France
should be French. Likewise, Jews in the US should be first and
foremost American. And AIPAC is indeed the agent of a foreign
power. And THAT leads to the
conclusion that Jews in Palestine should become Palestinians.
It
is not necessary to convert to Christianity, the traditional way
that Jews have assimilated. However it is essential for diaspora
Jews to end their dual loyalty, or rather their loyalty to Israel
above loyalty to their host countries. And what is this about «host
countries», a term in fact coined by diaspora Jews? Enough
already. They are your/ their countries every bit as much as they
are for the goys that live down the street, who protect the
borders, fight the wars and pay the taxes.
Jewish
Israeli, not Israeli Jew
This
reassessing of Jewish identity is already underway in Israel.
Hundreds of Israelis have petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel
demanding their «Jewish nationality» being stricken out and
replaced by «Israeli» or «Palestinian». Two million Israeli
citizens « Palestinians, Russians and Ethiopians « already are
not considered «Jews» by the Jewish state and do not wish to be.
Many more (largely from the former Soviet Union) are considered «Jews»
but nevertheless want to give up their Jewish exclusivity. They
want to be first Israelis, or Palestinians « not Jews.
As
Israel Shamir states in «Not Cricket» (www.israelshamir.net
), «the Israeli soul is the scene of struggle between two forces,
between two loyalties: that to the land and that to the world-wide
Jewish People. The loyalty to the land can eventually form a basis
for complete unity with the native Palestinian people. The loyalty
to world Jewry (Am Israel) is the basis of our xenophobia, of the
Wall, of the apartheid state.» The Palestinians are denied equal
rights in order to sustain the «Jewish character» of the state,
and the murder and displacement of Palestinians is done in the
name of the Jewish People.
It
is the very Jewish character of Israel that is the source of the
problem and must be done away with. Jews are not a nation, though
Israelis could be, but only by cutting the umbilical cord with the
Jewish Lobby abroad. Removal of the special ties between
Hebrew-speakers in Palestine/Israel and the Jews abroad is, in a
way, a true declaration of Israeli independence. Only when all
Israelis are treated the same will the state of Palestine/ Israel
be a nation, governed by the principle ‘one person, one vote’,
with basic human rights guaranteed for all. Yes, Israelis will
fear retribution for their half century of plunder, murder and
duplicity. But when you treat Muslims with dignity and respect,
they reciprocate. In any case, Israeli Jews will just have to take
this risk. There is no other solution. Israel has made its bed and
must lie in it.
Beware
half measures
There
can be no half measures such as the «replacement of the Jewish
state of Israel by an Arab-Jewish democratic, secular Palestine»
as proposed by some. «Arabs» and «Jews» are not two nations.
«Arabs» are a linguistic and cultural group of peoples which
includes Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians of all religions, the
Jews are a religious caste, «class-people» as Abram Leon has
termed them. There is no way around it: Israelis should be de-Judaised,
i.e., de-linked from the Jewish People overseas, so that they can
assimilate with the native Palestinians.
This
is just recapitulating Marx in «On the Jewish question», which
predates Zionism, but which is as timely as ever. When he states
that «the emancipation of the Jews is, in the last analysis, the
emancipation of mankind from Judaism» he is referring to the
historical caricature of the selfish, vengeful, racist tribe of
the Jewish diaspora, which was a lightning-rod for prejudice, and
is calling on Jews to assimilate into their societies and disown
their identification with these negative human traits. Shylock is
to be condemned for embracing the caricature, not empathized with,
as in Hollywood»s latest soft-pedaling of our cultural heritage.
Similarly, Zionism and Greater Israel must be rejected, not
condoned.
Jean
Daniel’s The Jewish Prison argues that Zionism was viewed early
on as an «escape from the stifling closure and ghetto
constriction» of Jewish family life, a secular vision of Jewish
liberation without Marx. Moses Hess, an erstwhile ally of Marx,
envisioned this, not assimilation, as the road to liberating both
Jew and mankind. But the result «Israel” has proved to be just
another closed system, this time, not the family or shtetl, but a
state. Zionism replaced one hell with an even worse one, merely
spreading the misery around. Just as Marx’s formula remains
valid, so does the adage «You can take the Jew out of the ghetto,
but you can’t take the ghetto out of the Jew.»
And
just as traditional anti-Jewish sentiment was based on resentment
of the unwillingness of Jews to assimilate, growing anti-Jewish
sentiment today is a result of the world Jewish Lobby actively
supporting Israeli crimes in the Middle East and claiming Jewish
loyalty first and foremost to Israel.
When
universities, the Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches try to
take a moral stand against Israeli crimes, even such supposedly
peace-loving groups as Rabbis for Human Rights decry divestment as
an act of «anti-Semitism» or like Noam Chomsky say it isn’t
‘effective’, and Jewish terrorists threaten to burn
Presbyterian churches. But disinvestment in Israel is not a policy
against Jews, despite the frantic attempts of the Jewish Lobby and
RHR to portray it as such. It is directed against Israeli crimes.
It is this age-old refusal to assimilate, now compounded by
conflation of the interests of diaspora Jews with the crimes of
Israel, that is the cause of anti-Jewish sentiment, not some
mental aberration peculiar to goys. End this identification,
assimilate, and you cut the anti-Jewish hydra off at the neck.
Like
the logic of disinvestment, this compelling logic of assimilation
is met with cries of «You marry this shikse and you help finish
off what Hitler tried to do!» But as Elon says, «If people want
to assimilate to the point that they disappear within the general
society without a trace» that’s their right. I don’t think
it’s a tragedy. It’s not the end of the world.» Then we have
the pseudo-assimilationists: «But I am a good American. I am
assimilated.» This Slezkine-style «assimilation» is like that
of the aliens in the sci-fi cult movie «They live!» (1988), who
look for all intents and purposes like natives (only of course
superior), and slowly colonize Earth, taking control of the
economy, politics and culture. They can only be detected with
special sunglasses. Of course the hero sees through this ruse and
the goys (oops, I mean earthlings) triumph, in the Hollywood
tradition.
Happy
ending
Oivey!
Where is there such a magic bullet in real life! There isn’t;
however, the break-up of world Jewry will be a wonderful
development precisely for Jews. The vast majority will be able to
become just Americans, or just Brits, or just French; a small
unthreatening ultra-Orthodox Jewish community will remain with us
like the Amish or other tiny observant minorities. Palestine will
be united, the native Palestinians restored to their natural
position and those Jews who decide to stay will strike real roots
in the soil of their adopted land.
The
ex-Israeli psychotherapist Avigail Abarbanel argues that Israeli
identity is built upon fear, that it is a political construct that
has been used to create a paranoid identity. Ex-Israeli writer and
musician Gilad Atzmon goes further, calling the Israel identity a
form of schizophrenia. Yes, there is the pressing need to convince
Jewish Israelis that they won’t be annihilated as many were in
WWII (along with communists, homosexuals and Roma), and we must
support those enlightened Jewish Israelis who see integration with
the native Palestinians as their own liberation struggle,
liberation from the lethal racist core of Judaism.
In
biblical terms, Jews must come to grips once and for all with
their ‘chosen people’ status - meaning they must give it up.
That is the real meaning of ‘chosen’. In the spirit of Buddha
and Jesus, spiritual fulfilment is achieved through renunciation
rather than racism and war. Now that the «Jewish century» is
behind us, we can say that Jews were ‘chosen’ by history (God,
whatever) to lead the way to universal hegemony of the spirit over
matter. The brilliance of Jewish scientists, capitalists,
philosophers, etc. is justly recognized. However, the two secular
solutions to ‘the chosen people achieving liberation’ tried in
the Jewish century « utopian communism and racist Zionism»
proved to be tragic failures for both Jews and gentiles. In
practical terms today the solution requires signing off on such
wild schemes, renouncing the flesh-and-blood Jewish state and
embracing the one-state solution. Only by receding from the
world’s headline news and trying to blend into societies
wherever they find themselves can Jews be liberated from their
tragic history, and find genuine integration with the human race
as equals.
I
cannot emphasize enough: Jews who wish to remain in Israel will
have to become first of all citizens of Palestine (a rose by any
other name smells sweet), renouncing the mythical blood ties with
Jewish citizens of other countries. The longer Israelis continue
to dispossess and murder the native population in pursuit of a
perverse dream of Greater Israel and the hegemony of world Jewry,
the less likely any integration of Jews in Palestine will be
possible and the more anti-Jewish sentiment will grow everywhere.
I’m
not at all sure that this radical transformation is even possible.
If it is, in addition to assimilation of diaspora Jews into their
societies it will mean a new nationalism in Palestine, presumably
with a hearty dose of universalism a-la Canadian
‘nationalism’. Unfortunately, change will require, as in South
Africa, external pressure and unrelenting criticism of the
apartheid that Zionism implies, but «good cop, bad cop» we must
help both Israelis and diaspora Jews understand that, as in South
Africa, both master and slave benefit from ending injustice. Long
live a united Palestine!
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