Ladies, gentlemen, and children of all ages. No samples, keyboards or synthesizers were used in the scripting of this draft. Funambulism was performed sans net by an unseasoned professional. Do not attempt at home, work, school, incarceration block, or preferred house of worship. Certainly not in front of anyone with whom you’re acquainted.
Do you support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction movement (BDS) for Israeli colonialism on land they’re extralegally annexing? Do you fail to support U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or New York’s 1st district congressman Lee Zeldin (R)? Do you find yourself uncomfortable when President Trump decrees to all American Jewry that they’re either abysmally misinformed or a traitor to Israel if they vote Democrat? Have you voted Democrat in any U.S. elections (as 71% of Jews have in elections since 1968)? Do you feel that Palestinians have been treated unfairly in the Gaza Strip, being subject to detention, torture, deportation, or assassination while also being shorted freedom of movement, adequate access to health care, education, clean water, fuel, power, and other amenities their Israeli neighbors enjoy? Do you feel they are becoming redundantly supersaturated in underfunded, ghettos? Does Bibi Netanyahu’s four fold increase of commercial and residential development over the green line border between Israel and disputed West Bank territories (after he’d bulldozed Palestinian settlements in those same zones of Area C during his three consecutive terms) trouble you? Did you feel the U.N. was justified in excoriating Israel’s prime minister’s progressive occupation of West Bank to build up industrial office space? Do the potential consequences of the current White House occupant’s choice to relocate Israel’s U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem concern you? Do you believe former’s President’s Obama’s Iran treaty was a good faith effort to delay the refinement and weaponization of fissile materials? Do you feel his prerogative to file abstention for the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 wasn’t necessarily a bad idea?
Well, I bear bad tidings. Those opinions are contemporaneously anti-Semitic. They’re what’s now known as “Left Wing” anti-Semitism. You’re a bigot. You know. Like a tiki torch white supremacist or separatist or whatever “Right Wing” anti-Semitic group you care to conjure up. Pick your poison and choose your own stigmata. Jews, the world over, feel the pressure from right and left wing anti-Semitism like a vise. I know. I read it in many more than one of the many articles I’m tasked to proofread. Jews have it hard. Harder than most. In fact, Jews are the only marginalized group that catches hell from both the left and right wings. African Americans don’t suffer like this demographic segment. Similar to Stephen Colbert I read this from a source way more reliable than any book. Namely, my gut, and that’ good enough for me. Obama was a Kenyan, Islamic, communist, anti-Semite if you didn’t know. That’s the worst kind there is. I grant he maintained an allocation of approximately $13 billion in defense funding to the Promised Land (and Netanyahu curiously accepted it from this Qur’an aficionado) per term, but it was Jew-hating money. There’s a swastika on the memo line of every year’s check. Look it up. In your gut, naturally, where I did.
I work as a newly hired copy editor for a local Jewish newspaper I won’t out it because I’m the new guy, and need to pay bills like everyone else there. I mind syntax, detangle word salad, and expunge the same Oxford comma I shamelessly use in this copy. While I’m Jewish in pedigree I don’t embrace the religion anymore than Slenderman, teleporting unicorns, or the Loch Ness monster. Sure, I’d be fibbing if I didn’t acknowledge some Ashkenazi acculturation, but I’m American a priori.
And I’ve taken recent notice to a distinction between “Right Wing” and “Left Wing” anti-Semites that has been underscored by my paper, it’s competition, and in higher profile periodicals. I’d like to draw up the Anti-Defamation League’s 2019 article “Response To Common Inaccuracy: Israel Critics are Anti-Semites.”
“Inaccuracy: Jews unfairly label anyone who criticizes Israel an anti-Semite.”
Response:
“Certainly the sovereign State of Israel and its government can be legitimately criticized just like any other country or government in the world. Criticism of particular Israeli actions or policies – even harsh and strident criticism and advocacy — in and of itself does not constitute anti-Semitism.
“However, it is undeniable that there are those whose criticism of Israel crosses the line into anti-Semitism. It is also undeniable that criticism of Israel is considered socially acceptable, thereby providing a pretext for some whose criticism masks deeper anti-Jewish attitudes.
“How can one distinguish between criticism of Israel that is within the bounds of legitimate political discourse, and that which crosses the line into anti-Semitism? Therein the writer references Natan Sharansky, an Israeli leader and former Soviet “refusenik” identifies “3 D’s” to determine when anti-Israel criticism crosses over into anti-Semitism: demonization, delegitimization and when Israel is held to a double standard.”
I’m moved by this article. Surely the Jewish religion is one that invites debate. Once slavery was an acceptable (if regulated) endeavor. Stonings for children who were disrespectful to their parents was warranted. Women and men were segregated. Now (at least in some reform sects) women can actually be rabbis, right? Conversely, Islam encourages the subjugation of women. Girls are barred from education and freedom. It deems homosexuality as a capital offense and transsexuality an abomination. To this, we’ll return.
One at a time: demonization. Sharansky: “One way is to recognize when those who criticize Israel invoke traditional anti-Jewish references, accusations and conspiracy theories. A clear cut example is when Israelis are depicted using Nazi-era Der Stürmer-like stereotypes: i.e., hooked noses; bent over, dark, ugly, demonic figures. Or when Israelis are accused of crimes that are reminiscent of age-old anti-Jewish conspiracy theories – i.e. alleged Israeli/Jewish influence over governments and media and public thought; that a Jewish cabal (elders of Zion) is behind Israel’s strength or behind foreign policy that is favorable to Israel, or allegations of Israeli actions that are eerily similar to medieval blood libel (the deliberate killing of Palestinian babies by IDF soldiers etc).”
I have no truck with his characterization of such demonization. I support what he’s saying. Stereo-typing is coating an entire people with a rolling brush, and, while there may be some truth behind some stereotypes, it is the bigot who dismissively paints an entire people with so broad a brush. However, Sharansky ignores a glaring phenomenon growing in a Palestine flirting with modernity. Just as 40% of Israeli jews are secular, so such a segment grows amongst the Palestinians. However Palestinians, Arabs, and Persians are so often lumped in as Muslims. Some are Christians. Some are Zoroastrians, and many in this dawning new age embrace no deist beliefs whatever. Yet, a large segment of Jews see their Palestinian neighbors as an existential threat to their nation, often because the land’s former occupants do not embrace the Israeli state religion. Could it be that that some small segment of them take issue, not so much with their neighbors’ faith, but rather with the fact that the land of their grandmothers and fathers was aggressively occupied by foreigners who squeezed them out, hence barring them reentry from their fugitive status?
In America we have no state religion. We have the freedom to believe whatever we want. Now, I’m not saying even though Judaism is Israel’s state religion that Israel persecutes Muslims for observing their religion. But the opportunities available to Ashkenazi Jews are not the same for Arabic (Sephardic) or Ethiopian Jews. These are 2nd class citizens. Muslim or Christian Arabs or Palestinians who live in this state are 3rd class citizens and Palestinians sequestered in Gaza are persona non grata. Outcastes. Also, regarding demonization, consider: www.haaretz.com/...
Don’t misunderstand me. Many Palestinians absolutely demonize Jewish Israelis. The curriculums of their schools have been admonished by a myriad of alphabet soup agencies, hardly all of them biased Jewish agencies. However this article above was published by Israel’s periodical of record Ha’aretz. And if you read closely (and better still, Google it) you’ll see it isn’t only the Palestinians who monopolize demonization. But I guess this is one area that Israel is allowed to have a double standard. Look it up. Again, in your gut.
Moving on: delegitimization. Sharansky: “Another common theme is when Israelis are compared to Nazis and Hitler. This comparison between the Jewish state and those who perpetrated the greatest and largest act of anti-Semitism in world history is not an impartial or dispassionate accusation. It is a charge that is purposefully directed at Jews in an effort to associate the victims of the Nazi crimes with the Nazi perpetrators, and serves to diminish the significance and uniqueness of the Holocaust. To make such a comparison is an act of blatant hostility toward Jews and Jewish history.”
This entry of delegitimization feels a little anemic to me, so please indulge my amendment. Recently, New York (17th District) Congressman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D) had the gall to draw a comparison between the Nazi concentrations camps wherein Jews, Russian, Poles, Gypsies, and other marginalized groups suffered with the those happy internments endured by those immigrating through Mexico’s northern border, mostly Hondurans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans (and now, some Venezuelans). AIPAC and other agencies suggested to AOC that she visit a Holocaust museum so that she can compare and contrast the distinctions. They certainly have AOC there. If you scrutinize the comparison she’s been grossly unfair. Separating Guatemalan tots from their parents and quarantining them in fenced enclosures with no toothbrushes, soap, blankets, beds, or pillows for often weeks at a time is Coney Island next to what the Holocaust survivors had to endure. AOC should watch her tongue when she advocates for these asylum seekers who fled drug cartel gang violence, constant threat of pederasty, rape, and forced gladiatorial battle with one another. Really, Ms. Ocasio Cortez. Gauche. “At long last, Congressman, have you no sense of decency?” Fortunately for us, non anti-Semitic types don’t make these similar equivocations. When Congressmen Ilhan Omar made her “anti-Semitic hate-speech” regarding AIPAC’s lobbying pressure upon American and Israel’s policy these were judged vastly different than the good-natured Iowan House Rep Steve King’s statements and actions:
{In a January 2019 New York Times interview, King asked, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?"}
{King displayed the Confederate flag on his office desk in 2016, although Iowa was part of the Union during the American Civil War.}
{In July 2015, referencing HUD secretary Julian Castro's remarks on how poorly the Republican Party was doing with Hispanic voters, King responded, "What does Julian Castro know? Does he know that I'm as Hispanic and Latino as he?" King is neither Hispanic nor Latino by either family history or ethnic definition.}
{In July 2013, speaking about proposed immigration legislation, King said of undocumented immigrants: "For every one who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds—and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert."}
{In 2006, King called for an electrified fence on the US border, commenting that such fences were successful in containing livestock.}
But King has said that he is not a racist, so, I’m sure that when American right wing congress-folk shout for Omar’s censure over opinions of American/Israel policy, those aren’t being equivocated in any fashion with the Hawkeye State’s star House Rep’s behavior. Apples and oranges, right?
But moving on to “double standards”, Sharansky, you have the floor. In the tradition of Bill O’Reilly, please, “Play us out”: “Deeper bias against Israel and Jews may also be evident when Israel is held to a different standard than any other country in the world. Such an example is when critics of Israel question or deny Israel’s right to exist. No one questions France or China or Iran’s right to exist, simply because there is disagreement with their policies. Why then should it be acceptable for only the Jewish state’s legitimacy, or Jewish nationalism to be a subject for discussion? Similarly, questions of motivation arise when Israelis singled out for criticism for actions or policies that nations around the world engage in with impunity.
A more complex manifestation is when critics of Israel advocate policies which would effectively lead to the demise of the Jewish character of the state – such as calls for a “one-state solution’ for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or demand the unqualified right of return for all Palestinian refugees. These measures potentially affect all Jews who have a religious, spiritual or nationalist connection to the Jewish homeland and would lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Although some advocates may not appreciate the destructive consequences of these policies, these policies are anti-Jewish in their impact.
Finally, it should be noted that even if strident anti-Israel activism is not motivated by anti-Semitism, at times, these campaigns create an environment which make anti-Semitism more acceptable. As then President of Harvard Lawrence H. Summers said in 2002 in reaction to an anti-Israel divestment campaign on campus, such advocacy is “anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent.”
About that: Israel’s “right to exist” and how an Israeli concession interfaces with the Palestinian peace stipulation of allowing it’s seven or so million refugees to return to the lands from which they were exiled. Israel won’t entertain this for at least two reasons. A. In the event of a two-state solution were struck, Israel would likely not be able to as easily defend their settlements in the West Bank or East Jerusalem (to say nothing of their burgeoning commercial developments) and B. In the less likely event of a one-state solution — even though Israeli Jews would maintain their primacy, the concern is that Palestinians would multiply faster than the Jewish population over time and force them out by fiat, democratically or tyrannically. Problem is whether the Israeli Jews are correct or not about that, they will never be right, flouting the Palestinian “right to exist.” Both have that existential right. Both can be true. And the international community would protect both communities existential rights if one deigned to threaten the others existence. If the Palestinians were to somehow overpower their current landlords BDS would surely be leveled against their people just as it’s been leveled against Israel. The world would be easily moved and mobilized to support the nation or people that demonstrated the most moral high ground in such a conflict. It’s why Israel is currently and incrementally losing support now. They compromised themselves morally by defying international law.
Also, notice how immaterial it is to Sharansky that Palestinians have religious, spiritual, or nationalist connection (Muslim or otherwise) to their own homeland. I grant many (at least 90%) of Palestinians are indeed Muslims, and indeed, I find much of Muslim culture anathema to my American sensibilities. Muslim orthodoxy doesn’t exactly provide equal opportunity to woman (or gay people) and in fact significantly demeans the gender in comparison with other world religions, but women don’t share parity with men in the Jewish faith either. Certainly not in its orthodoxy where women are themselves segregated and subjugated, as compared to secular culture. And I wonder: why is it that Sharansky feels that the Palestinian’s who’ve endeavored to repatriate is subordinate to Jews connection? I’ve heard many Jews invoke the Old Testament and argue it was their land first. The Palestinians were merely keeping their seats warm. The following shamelessly plugs a short story of mine (Desanctified), but if I may quote its costar, Lucifer, “The International Criminal Court had gathered in the Hague. The most momentous trial in centuries was to commence: the Palestinian Authority vs. the State of Israel after it had annexed the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There was a six-month-old girl named Claudine. Vocal but hardly verbal. I possessed her, and the jurists heard me as she, laying in her stroller, acted as my medium. Israel’s attorneys thought I’d turn state’s witness, but I reminded the jurists that the Old Testament was written thousands of years ago. It’s focus, Samuel II 24:24-25, had been transcribed, re-transcribed, edited, re-edited, and was otherwise a shadow of its former self. Had it all been unadulterated gospel, King David’s ‘purchase’ still had no valid receipt, since no one could interview Samuel to authenticate his motives nor soundness of mind when he’d documented the event. Ergo, it had to be adjudicated void.
“Further, I explained that the land of Israel couldn’t, as suggested in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Ezekiel, King I, or Chronicles, be solely owned by the Jews for similar reasons. But also because Jacob’s offspring included lost tribes, some of whom’s issue became ‘Palestinians’. I concluded, ‘It’s neither the Jews nor the Palestinians who own the Temple Mount nor Israel; rather it’s Israel and, ipso facto, the Temple Mount which owns these two peoples.’”
My chief concern with Sharansky’s statement is one of falsifiability. This doctrine, courtesy of Carl Popper, was a factor that enabled the scientific community to determine whether of not a hypothesis was sound according to scientific method. If one cannot establish falsifiability it also distends credulity. If a person argues that Palestinian refugees should be able to return to their homeland as decreed by international law a Zionist will argue that they will return in such numbers that it will change the character of region from being a Jewish state. If you argue that it doesn’t need to be an exclusively Jewish state to be a sanctuary nation for Jews they argue that if it isn’t an exclusively Jewish state you are advocating for the eradication and destruction of that Jewish state. You see how Sharansky’s argument that one can argue about Israeli policy — even stridently — without invoking anti-Semitism doesn’t hold water? What policy argument was he in favor of entertaining? Parking violations? Marijuana legalization? Anything, it seems, other than the elephant in the room.
BDS is a peaceful movement taking one serious exception to Israel occupying land not in their coordinates. It doesn’t bomb. It doesn’t murder. It’s never thrown so much as a stone or broken a thumb. It embraces the tactics of Mahatma Ghandi, MLK, and Nelson Mandela to address injustice with collective acts of civil disobedience, yet the paper I work for (as well as it’s competitors) characterizes it as an anti-Semitic edifice. Alan Dershowitz (allegedly having never canoodled with one of Jay Epstein’s many underaged sex slaves) characterizes it as an “evil movement”. I argue the movement wouldn’t exist if Israel kept its putz to itself, but Israel isn’t keeping its putz to itself because it’s become corrupted by its American ally, idolizing capitalism. “It’s all about the Benjamins,” Congressman Omar? No, my dear. That’s Old Glory of whom you’re thinking. Israel just got swept up in its BFF’s greed. Consequentially, it’s moving right on in to develop Israeli-owned corporate entities. Israel used to embrace of more socialist values enshrining the kibbutz, but the Capitalist Manifesto have turned these into a mockery and Israel into a bastardized parody of its once sanctified culture.
The Birthright tours exemplify this (e.g. with shopping malls nearly within eyeshot of Mt. Masada) while simultaneously avoid an embarrassing truth about the Israelites, namely their distant Palestinian cousins. Very few Arabs are encountered during these tours, the bedouins being about the only non-Jewish representatives, and they’ve become a humiliated Sherpa to the Israeli tourism industry. There are nearly half a million Israeli residents in the West Bank today. Zionists have become more vocal about BDS than they were about violent anti-Semitic activity. I’m of the opinion this is because A. It’s working more effectively than hijacking airplanes ever did. B. BDS is building international support to invest in Area C Palestinian communities without delegitimizing its efforts by physical harming others. C. It’s taking economic support from Israel, starving its motor, while fueling the motor of Palestinian causes, and D. There’s simply less P.A. inspired violence, largely, thanks to A through C.
As I said, America doesn’t have a state religion. That’s what having freedom of religion amounts to. We take issue only with conduct. Not belief. You can believe whatever you want (including nothing). Israel doesn’t roll that way, yet America allies itself with a nation that differs with us on such a fundamental right, and this puzzles me. How can you call yourself a democracy when you’re ignoring 25% of your constituency. Minorities don’t enjoy the same rights. “But Arabs can vote in Israel,” you may reply. Yes, they can. And, once again, to my knowledge Israel doesn’t molest or otherwise oppress Muslims for publicly bowing low to Mecca five times a day. However, how do Israelis feel about it when their government imposes sanctions on Palestinians? How many Israeli’s “invest” in Muslim/Palestinian owned businesses? Shop in Muslim owned grocery stores? How many of them advance or even hire Arabs, Palestinians or Muslims? Do they have (or enforce) a federal Equal Opportunity Employment policy? A Google search would not confirm it. Is this not Israeli Jews BDS imposed upon Israel’s gentiles for some seven decades now? Is it not hypocrisy when what’s good for the good isn’t good for the gander?
Shoe on the other foot, a failure to support of the Palestinian franchise amounts to their own existential problem. The Birthright project has to defend against this argument every day of every year, and I don’t see how they achieve it without propaganda. “Be our friends.” “Meet your brethren” “Just come here and see if you still feel the way you feel about...” What? Democracy? Funny how morality all of a sudden becomes a grey area when you’re the one implementing sanctions. When you’re the occupier. When you’re stuffing your deplorables in overcrowded ghettos. When you’re the one doing the “selecting” that so horrified your grandparents in Nazi Germany.
Now, I’m aware there are some unpalatable barnacles clinging to the BDS ship. Some, the likes of David Duke, are rightwing bigots in leftwing clothing, and it is totally regrettable. But if you don’t support BDS, you can’t simply shrug when I say, “Fine. BDS is tainted tough love. Provide a more palatable solution to an oppressed people with just as much right to national sovereignty as any other people.” And while I don’t disagree that BDS shouldn’t be used exclusively on Israel when indeed there are other world actors who have hands dirtier than Israel’s, I’d feel a lot more comfortable implementing the strategy once I’ve cleaned up my side of the street. That way I retain the moral high ground in comparison with those other bad actors. Otherwise I’m immersed in hypocrisy. Why would I want that?
Meanwhile, if the Jewish constituency would support what they claim to have — a democracy — they’d let the Palestinians repopulate, take down fence-work, and let the chips fall where they may. Does anyone really think that’s inviting Jewish genocide post WWII? Do Jews really believe acting in accordance with international law will amount to the democratic dissolution of their crib? That the chosen people really believe the Palestinians they let back in will just — what? — vote them out of existence? No. There are 6.7 million Jews in Israel (est.) There’s about 7.2million refugee Palestinians (est.) if they were allowed to return. It’s a democratic Mexican stand-off, even if Palestinians had that endeavor after a majority of Israeli representative ratified acting in accordance with international law. Were Palestinians to return all at once in these overwhelming numbers and gain majority leadership they’d still have to come back to a democratic nation, one who’s parliamentary procedures involve the filibuster which protects the minority. Israeli (or ANY) Jews actually believing democracy wouldn’t protect their segment should just own tyranny now. But then the U.S. would have some backpedaling to do.
And though the idea of a “one-state” solution is viewed as shoe-horning the liquidation of the Jewish State Israel needs to place it’s faith in the democracy every day for it to work, not only on the days it favors the Jewish segment. That’s what Israel signed up for 70 some odd years ago. It sucks for us too sometimes. Look who’s running our nation right now. But just because Jews had undergone genocide by virtue of early 20th century German empiricism they appear to feel this entitles them to colonize and displace a people whom had lived on their middle eastern real estate for centuries. Israel has been sacked and occupied by the Babylonians, the Romans, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Turks, and the British Empire before the Ashkenazi Jews got back their turn at bat to argue they were the legitimate deed holders, “Go on. Read it and weep. It’s right here, here, and here in the book we wrote.” If the Israeli’s were to follow international law by allowing Palestinian refugees right to return, as guaranteed by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1949, yes, they may actually have to worry that their vote might not count as heavily in the Knesset. But you think that means expulsion and extinction? Going through post traumatic disorder isn’t an aegis from wrong doing. It doesn’t entitle a people to project their trauma on others no matter how awful the crisis or how little regard they may have for the other upon whom they’re projecting. Palestinians and Arabs may not read the same book you do, and maybe the ways they act offend you. That doesn’t give you license to throw them out of their house illegally. There are proper channels and the P.A isn’t the only one who’s historically acted in “bad faith.” Netanyahu’s unholy matrimony with capitalism does not give him license to evict and bulldoze whole neighborhoods and then plant the Star of David on every front yard. Do you think France really hates Israel and its Aveda soap so much that they’d encourage their citizens to boycott its exports for laughs?
It’s not 1949 anymore. It’s not 1967 anymore. It’s not 1992 anymore. The world’s growing secular, and if Jews were legally ousted from their holy ground there would be an international uproar that would make BDS look like a college clambake. When African American slaves were emancipated the resolution our nation made wasn’t to remand them all to reservations or the state of Florida and say, “You can have the Everglades, and we’ll take these 49 other paltry states.” We integrated, at very least, the schools. There was a long awkward period of generational ennui, but, as one generation matured into the next, races came closer to blending, communicating, and appreciating the other. To sharing and overlapping cultures. And our nation became comparatively stronger for it, whatever the Steve Kings of the nation think. “Miscegenation” is only a dirty word (like the word “liberal”) because propagandists have turned it into one. Sure, its got way further to go. Few communities in the U.S.A. are close to fully integrated, but the ones that are experience a pittance of crime and racial discord next to what many forecast. Indeed, integrated communities are among the most culturally rich and least dangerous municipalities in our nation. I’ve lived in a few of these and traveled to many more. They’re healthier places as close to Utopian as you can find anywhere on Earth.
Additionally, I’m aware, as an American, our ancestors were also occupiers. With guns, germs and steel we decimated the aboriginal population, and hence decimated that segment. Native American’s make up only 02% of the U.S. population now, and many of them live on reserved land to this day. Speaking as an American I realize I come at this issue without moral authority, but I’m not only an American. I’m also a world citizen, and as one I’m able to see from a modern point of view, especially after the world’s most recent and notorious act of barbarism personified in Nazi Germany (who’s very leadership studied American history and law to achieve much of that very barbarism — refer to www.theatlantic.com/...), I am duty-bound to call it out when I see it. I know some segment of Israeli Jews are in accord with me on this.
Israel has a unique role on this planet. The majority of its denizens do indeed come from Ashkenazi heritage. Many in the past died off from Tay Sachs disease (some have even speculated that might be the reason Jews have a higher average Stanford Binet IQ, the ethnic malady having thinned out weaker elements in the gene pool nymag.com/...). We are hereditarily linked. But we also play an interesting role as a nation. Melanie Kaye (as observed and quoted by graphic novelist Sarah Glidden): “Some of us experience Israel as a crazy uncle...Someone over whom we have no control, but whose behavior we’re all somehow responsible for. ‘To publicly reject him would expose our own family’s shame.’” America is certainly a relative of that cousin. As is England, and, for that matter, Germany. And Israel’s not unique as the “crazy uncle”; Saudi Arabia is practically a half brother.
I actually have a few suggestion here that could, and in all likelihood, would make a one-state solution a less dangerous concept. It would involve moderation. I don’t think anyone would suggest Israel open the floodgates and let seven million refugees to pour into Israel’s borders all at once. Besides being infeasible for even the Palestinians it’s implausible such a return would happen over night. It would take many years. But if it were instituted Israel would be acting in accordance with international law, and the international community would applaud it. The umbrage Israel is burgeoning with countries likening its’ national behavior with pre-‘90’s South African apartheid would turn into admiration and, yes, adoration. It would be as if China finally freed Tibet. Sanctions would lift. Boycotts would end. Nations would no longer consider Israel a liability for investment. Divestiture would dissipate and trade would bloom. Israel would become the jewel of the Middle East once again and enjoy more security from approving allies world wide. Israel’s most vocal enemies would need to drink a tall glass of caffeine-free Shut the F%#$@ Up. Think that naïve? Allow me to disabuse you all on your naivety: stepping on a bump in a rug and not expecting two smaller ones to pop up where it was just displaced. Palestinians are multiplying at a slightly faster rate than Israeli Jews. Just under 3%, but that’s statistically significant over a decade and will be markedly significant in just one year, as you’ll discover before the end of this essay. The Palestinian is not a bump that can be stepped on without him/her multiplying, and s/he cannot be swept under it either.
I’m a big believer in John Kerry’s opinion “You can have a Jewish state or a democracy — you can’t have both.” It appeals to the American sensibilities of cultural justice, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I’m aware this isn’t the way Israeli’s are likely to favor, but if we exported democracy to Iraq should be not expect our greatest friend to be the beacon for freedom in that region? Or would it prefer to be outpaced in this regard by Iraq? By Egypt? By Saudi Arabia? Israelis…think. Would you rather lead here? Or follow? Many of you still won’t see past the potential of bloodshed, so allow me to expand on my vision of a workable (if slightly more expensive) two-state solution.
Donald Trump has embraced an economical remedy to a moral problem. This has been advocated by others as well: give Palestinians the opportunity to emigrate elsewhere by providing them with something American’s never provided the ancestors of the Transatlantic slave trade (or, for that matter, the American natives), i.e. reparations, amounting to somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 - 350K for every Gazan family, relocating them to another location. www.tabletmag.com/... And where should they go? Here’s a thought: How about the West Bank? And by that I mean the entire West Bank. Palestinians are already getting multiple millions in funding from European interests to build “illegal settlements” in parts of the Area C, rich btw, these being “illegal.” Israel hasn’t been shy about occupying portions of Area C that spill over from the Israeli green line boarder. How about this? Give the Israeli’s the office space they’ve occupied already and redraw the green line just beyond that. Then they owe the Palestinian’s a land swap, don’t they? My proposal? The Israelis’ fork over the entirety of Area C legally, pull their troops out of Area B, and stop invading Area A under any circumstances short of a Palestinian pre-emptive act of war? Let the Palestinians have that and an unadulterated East Jerusalem so that the Muslims have their anointed holy ground. In the bargain, room has been made for their refugees to return from the fringes of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, as well as finally depressurize Gaza. You can even keep the Golan Heights since its a tactical military asset.
But what about all the Israeli development in the West Bank? Well, with Gaza emptied out y’all can bulldoze the holy hell out of it, rebuild their industrial sectors, set up low income housing, heck, gentrify it if you feel like it. Again, Israel eliminates Palestinian hard feelings by uniting their peoples and enabling the refugees to come back to their own sovereign state with some sponsorship and investment from the nation that disenfranchised them. Israeli’s need no longer to worry about rockets, flaming kites, or Molotov cocktails. There. A two-state solution courtesy of a guy who never went to even a non-Ivy League graduate school.
Now you can explain to me how a two state solution is “not that simple”, even though the Israeli government supposedly pulled Jews kicking and screaming from the Gaza Strip just so this slum section could sequester Palestinians refugees into rapidly dilapidating ghettos.
According to Wikipedia, under the long-term blockade, the Gaza Strip is often described as a "prison-camp or open air prison for its collective denizens". The comparison is done by observers, ranging from Roger Cohen and Lawrence Weschler to NGOs, such as B'tselem, and politicians and diplomats, such as David Cameron, Noam Chomsky, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, David Shoebridge and Sir John Holmes. In 2014 French President François Hollande called for the demilitarization of Gaza and a lifting of the blockade, saying "Gaza must neither be an open prison nor a military base."
An Israeli analyst speaking in anonymity has described it "Israel's Alcatraz". While Lauren Booth, Philip Slater, Giorgio Agamben compare it to a "concentration camp". For Robert S. Wistrich, Philip Mendes, Philip Seib those analogies were “absurd” and “designed to offend Jews,” further claiming that the critiques arose from “sources like Al Jazeera and statements by Arab leaders.”
Observe closely reader: over 90% of the water in Gaza is not drinkable. 53% of the women of child bearing age and 44% of children are anemic. 18% of children 6 to 60 months are malnourished. 70% of the Palestinian population (1,295,000 people live in 8 refugee camps, and average of 161,875 each) and that same figure lives without food security. There’s a scarcity of doctors and health care facilities. 30% of the arable land is blockaded off by Israeli enforced buffer zones. 1.8 million Palestinians live in a sector that’s 141 square miles. That’s 13,020 people occupying every square mile (ignoring the buffer zone square mileage, which is hardly insubstantial). By 2020, the population is expected to increase to 2.1 million — almost 14,900 per square mile — According to the U.N., “…unless remedial steps are taken to repair the basic infrastructure by 2020, with a further demographic increase of 500,000 and intensified housing problems, the Gaza Strip will become effectively uninhabitable.” It is the 3rd densest population on the planet.
I realize the Israeli government isn’t exclusively to blame for these conditions. Egypt shares a longitudinal border, and the Hamas government also plays a role. I don’t blame Israel exclusively for this catastrophe, but Israel has the largest border and the most influence in being able to repair it, and John Stewart Mill would argue that the party who has the most capability is also the most fain to act. You can call these factoids anti-Semitic, but they’re verifiable. Wiki Gaza. I grant Wikipedia is rewritable, but it’s not a site known to owe the P.A. any favors and there are certainly other sources.
Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement just passed for Jewish calendar year 5780. A relative of mine remarked on her FB page, “The Jewish philosophy on atonement: atonement between a person and God cannot happen unless that person has already atoned for sins committed against other people. Like, God doesn’t even want to hear ‘I’m sorry’ until you’ve said it first to the people you’ve hurt. From the haftorah, what is the fast that God wants? It’s not starving your body, dressed in sackcloth, covered in ashes. ‘It is to share your bread with the hungry, And to take the wretched poor into your home; When you see the naked, to clothe him, And not to ignore your own kin.’ It’s all about how you live and treat other people.” What can I say to that, other than I whole-heartedly agree?
I know how harsh my “left wing anti-Semitic” perspective may seem to Jews who feel Zionist pride, and surely to many (perhaps a few of my friends and relatives) I may sound like a self-hating Jew, but I’m an Earthling first and an American close second. If Judaism indeed embraces debate it must accept that there is spectrum of compromises. Not a binary choice of existence vs. extinction. I reject this false choice, just as I reject non-falsifiability. I grew up like most Jews, feeling a sense of pride in my heritage. Only 0.2% of the world’s population — a fleck — we horde about 23% of the Nobel prizes because Jewish culture prioritizes education over much else. Like many sharing my heritage, I wanted to believe that, not only were the Jews a race of survivors but also a race that favored the highest moral standard. Misogynist as this sounds, “I was raised to believe we were one of the ‘good guys.’” If my critique sounds anti-Semitic understand it’s not because I hate my creed, but rather, because I hold it to a higher standard. I can see how holding a group to a double standard is wrong, but holding oneself a higher standard? That’s beyond the pale? I’m not likening the Israelis to Nazis, however I fail to see how the Gaza Strip can be compared to anything short of concentration camp. It’s actually eight camps clustered together in a place 8.6 times smaller than Rhode Island. That sounds to me pretty concentrated. And it’s difficult for me to fathom how Israeli (really any) Jews — globally renown prefects of “guilt” — can sleep well at night being even partially responsible for maintaining, let alone abetting, one right next door.