[News] Why Israel cannot be called a democratic state
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Mon Aug 26 10:39:42 EDT 2019
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-israel-cannot-be-called-democratic-state?fbclid=IwAR3HPGqnpE-JzYX4TKcMn47ZtI6-awUuSnyOUVsvfyJX10q5Tub5oBcYgJo
Why Israel cannot be called a democratic state
Joseph Massad - August 23, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Israeli elections last spring were seen in the Western press and
among some Western politicians as confirmation that Israel is becoming
less democratic, and more racist and chauvinistic.
This we are told is undermining Israel as a “Jewish and democratic
state”. The New York Times reported: “To the left
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/world/middleeast/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-election.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share>,
Israeli democracy is on the defensive. To the ethnonationalist right,
which succeeded last year in enshrining Israel’s self-definition as the
nation-state of the Jews
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/middleeast/israel-law-jews-arabic.html?module=inline> in
a basic law, it is in need of an adjustment.”
The general celebratory line that Israel has been able to balance its
two important ideals and core principles - namely, that it is “a Jewish
and a democratic
<https://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic4_eng.htm> state” -
has shifted recently with some now lamenting that this alleged balance
has been offset by the country’s “recent” right-wing tilt.
Commitment to ethnic cleansing
The major fact that such a depiction deliberately ignores is that
“democracy” in Israel was established for Israeli Jews after the
Zionists expelled 90 percent <https://jps.ucpress.edu/content/38/3/259>
of the Palestinian population when Israel was founded in 1948, making
themselves a majority overnight in the ethnically cleansed country.
They opted for liberal democratic governance for the colonial Jewish
majority, while instituting a legal apartheid system for the
Palestinians they could not expel, including dozens of racist laws
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771>.
This commitment to ethnic cleansing and Jewish supremacist rule has been
an ideological cornerstone of the Zionist movement since its inception.
Theodor Herzl
<https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl>,
the father of Zionism, devised plans on what to do with the native
Palestinians. In his 1896 foundational pamphlet /The State of the Jews/,
he cautioned against any democratic commitments and advised that “an
infiltration [of Jews into Palestine] is bound to end in disaster. It
continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels
itself threatened, and forces the [existing] government to stop further
influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless based on an
assured supremacy.”
The so-called formula of a 'Jewish and democratic state' ... was
always based on an arithmetic of Jewish supremacy and ethnic cleansing
The Jewish colonists, Herzl wrote in his diary, should “try to spirit
the penniless <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/03/israel1>
population across the border by procuring employment for it in the
transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country …
"The removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and
circumspectly. Let the owners of immovable property believe that they
are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we
are not going to sell them
<https://books.google.ca/books?id=5v-iBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=%22Let+the+owners+of+immovable+property+believe+that+they+are+cheating+us,+selling+us+things+for+more+than+they+are+worth.+But+we+are+not+going+to+sell+them+anything+back.%E2%80%9D%22&source=bl&ots=EedZsT0n6e&sig=ACfU3U2pIAku-EO4ArVYCy3B7owvhiGo9A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_npjk8pTkAhVBIjQIHRxkAyIQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Let%20the%20owners%20of%20immovable%20property%20believe%20that%20they%20are%20cheating%20us,%20selling%20us%20things%20for%20more%20than%20they%20are%20worth.%20But%20we%20are%20not%20going%20to%20sell%20them%20anything%20back.%E2%80%9D%22&f=false>
anything back.”
As Jewish colonies multiplied, so did the expulsion of Palestinians.
Polish agronomist and colonist Chaim Kalvarisky
<https://books.google.jo/books?id=XvT8CWv2DakC&dq=tom+seven+one+palestine+complete&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjh--j50YHkAhUQMuwKHVy3CQ4Q6AEIJjAA>,
a manager of the Jewish Colonization Association, reported in 1920 that
as someone who had been dispossessing Palestinians since the 1890s, “the
question of the Arabs first appeared to me in all its seriousness
immediately after the first purchase of land I made here. I had to
dispossess <https://electronicintifada.net/content/future-nakba/24236>
the Arab residents of their land for the purpose of settling our brothers.”
Kalvarisky complained that the “doleful dirge” of those he was forcing
out “did not stop ringing in my ears for a long time thereafter”.
Categorical opposition
Zionists’ fear of universal democracy, and their commitment to ethnic
cleansing, was so strong that after the First World War, when the
British - concerned with overextending themselves - wanted to ask the US
to assume part of the responsibility for Palestine, they opposed it
categorically.
The World Zionist Organization (WZO) objected vehemently to US
involvement: “Democracy
<https://books.google.jo/books?id=XvT8CWv2DakC&dq=tom+seven+one+palestine+complete&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjh--j50YHkAhUQMuwKHVy3CQ4Q6AEIJjAA>
in America too commonly means majority rule without regards to diversity
of types or stages of civilization or differences of quality … The
numerical majority in Palestine today is Arab, not Jewish.
Qualitatively, it is a simple fact that the Jews are now predominant in
Palestine, and given proper conditions they will be predominant
quantitatively also in a generation or two,” the WZO stated.
“But if the crude arithmetical conception of democracy were to be
applied now or at some early stage in the future to Palestinian
conditions, the majority that would rule would be the Arab majority, and
the task of establishing and developing a great Jewish Palestine would
be infinitely more difficult.”
Note that the WZO ignored the fact that Native Americans and African
Americans, among others, were not included in the US version of “democracy”.
In the same year, Julius Kahn
<https://mideastanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/a-protest-to-president-woodrow-wilson-against-a-zionist-state.pdf>,
a Jewish US Congressman, delivered a statement endorsed by around 300
Jewish personalities - both rabbis and laymen - to then-president
Woodrow Wilson, whose administration supported Zionists.
The statement denounced Zionists for attempting to segregate Jews and
reverse the historical trend towards emancipation, and objected to the
creation of a distinctly Jewish state in Palestine as contrary “to the
principles of democracy”.
'Compulsory transfer'
Herzl’s foundational fear of democracy was adopted by his Zionist
followers. On the right, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, Vladimir
Jabotinsky <http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/ironwall.htm>,
argued in 1923 against the Zionist Labor “left” who wanted to expel the
Palestinian population through trickery, explaining that there was no
escape from the violent formula that Jewish colonisation and expulsion
of the Palestinians were one and the same process.
“Any native people … will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master,
but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs,” Jabotinsky noted.
“Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are
some kind of fools who can be tricked … [and] who will abandon their
birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains. I flatly
reject this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs.”
In the 1920s and 1930s, Zionists strategised plans for the ethnic
cleansing (what they termed “transfer”) of Palestinians. Concurring with
Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion
<https://books.google.jo/books?id=UIFtAAAAMAAJ&q=nur+masalha+expulsion&dq=nur+masalha+expulsion&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmg7qF1oHkAhVQDuwKHS_GCw0Q6AEIKDAA>,
the Labor Zionist leader of the colonial settlers, declared in June
1938: “I support compulsory transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it.”
His statement followed the policy adopted by the Jewish Agency, which
set up its first
<https://books.google.jo/books?id=UIFtAAAAMAAJ&q=nur+masalha+expulsion&dq=nur+masalha+expulsion&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmg7qF1oHkAhVQDuwKHS_GCw0Q6AEIKDAA>
“Population Transfer Committee” in November 1937 to strategise the
forceful expulsion of the Palestinians. Two additional committees
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/2013416134034777609.html>
were established in 1941 and 1948.
Enemies of Palestinians
Chaim Weizmann, head of the WZO, entertained in 1941 plans to expel one
million Palestinians to Iraq and replace them with five million Polish
and other European Jewish colonists. He told his plans to the Soviet
ambassador in London, Ivan Maisky
<https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300180671/maisky-diaries>, in hopes
of obtaining Soviet support.
When Maisky expressed surprise, Weizmann replied with a racist argument,
not unlike that used by fascists against European Jews in the same
period: Palestinians’ “laziness and primitivism turn a flourishing
garden into a desert. Give me the land occupied by a million Arabs, and
I will easily settle five times
<https://books.google.ca/books?id=84d2CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA331&lpg=PA331&dq=%E2%80%9Claziness+and+primitivism+turn+a+flourishing+garden+into+a+desert%22&source=bl&ots=X_b0QKyiFb&sig=ACfU3U0QIoz0TkOLlOfPpYe6TzwVeVV2zw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwivyrzS7pbkAhUI11kKHcyyAbgQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Claziness%20and%20primitivism%20turn%20a%20flourishing%20garden%20into%20a%20desert%22&f=false>
that number of Jews on it.”
Other settler colonies were able, after centuries of ethnic
cleansing, to institute white demographic supremacy
The so-called formula of a “Jewish and democratic state”, which so many
of Israel’s apologists fear may now be in peril, was always based on an
arithmetic of Jewish supremacy and ethnic cleansing - not unlike the
white supremacist liberal democracies established after ethnic cleansing
in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But while the other settler colonies were able, after centuries of
ethnic cleansing, to institute white demographic supremacy - although
the current anti non-white-immigration policies in the US show how
delicate this balance has become - Israel’s colonial Jewish population
went back to being a minority facing a Palestinian native majority.
That majority continues to resist ethnic cleansing and Jewish
supremacist rule, which Israel’s supporters
<https://www.cfr.org/article/democratic-candidates-israeli-palestinian-conflict>
and the enemies of Palestinians celebrate as “a Jewish and democratic
state”.
/The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye./
--
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