Responds to The Defenders of Zionism
the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, all refugees
of all wars have an inalienable right of return. Its a right
that no party can negotiate away. It cannot be traded for relocation
or reparations. Palestinians are not just refugees of Gaza, the
West Bank, and Jerusalem. Their homes once stood in nearly every
plot of earth now controlled by Israel. While the idea of total
return may currently lie only in the realm of political fantasy,
the weight of the demographic and historical facts has enormous
implications for the only democratic country in the Middle
East and a lasting peace.
Shockingly, all I ever hear is the total absence of empathy for
Palestinians. Some people point out that they lost the 1948 and
1967 wars, and demand that the surrounding nations absorb their
natural kin. Others lament that Israel is forced to make life
if one can call the systematic brutalization under the boot of the
occupation living difficult for the
Palestinians. Do the defenders and apologists of Zionism really
believe that might makes right?
My skepticism about the justice of a Jewish State in Palestine is
very old. Over the years some have accused me of being a self-hating
Jew (I suspect this letter will encourage renewed insults).
And once again some people are equating criticisms of a state with
anti-Semitism. As if loving Jewish history, Jewish intellectual
and artistic accomplishments, Jewish difference in a Christian civilization,
and embracing a Jewish identity requires allegiance to a nation
which is utterly chilling in its similarity to brother racist, colonial
and apartheid regimes.
There are signs of hope. Last I read there are 404 refuseniks in
the Israeli Defense Force (The Nation, April 29, 2002). In the December
24, 2001 edition of The Nation, Robert I. Friedman reported a poll
taken in Israel claiming that due to the violent hopelessness of
the situation 35 percent of Jews between ages 25 and 34 said
they wanted to depart [Israel for America]. According to the
2001 edition of the CIA World Fact Book, almost a third of Jewish
Israelis were born in America or Europe. Only 21 percent of Israeli
Jews were actually born there, almost the same percentage of the
population that are Israeli Arabs.
Based on these facts Id like to add my ideas for action to
the arsenal of the peace movement. In addition to economic and military
divestment, we need popular divestment. Given the demographics and
the dissatisfaction Israelis are starting to feel with a seemingly
unsolvable problem, we as individuals all have the power to engage
in a most direct and perhaps unprecedented form of activism. We
can speak directly to the Israeli people who since the Al-Aqsa Intifada
began are considering ethnic cleansing in despair (poll by Maariv).
We can tap into this despair and offer them a way out of this nightmare.
To facilitate an Exodus the U.S. and the EU should offer them asylum.
A very large percentage already holds dual citizenship with the
US. What would happen to the occupation if 10 percent of Israelis
came back to the US? If 30 percent did? Maybe the choice could be
forced with a movement to deny the right of dual citizenship
forcing them to decide.
Since the fall of 1999, each incoming freshman class at Oberlin
has been progressively more Jewish than the last (see the Office
of Institutional Researchs Common Data Set on Oberlin Online).
This fall 13.2 percent identified Jewish as their religious
affiliation, the largest affiliation besides none at
45.8 percent. That means that at least one out of 10 students on
this campus is Jewish. One may assume a good portion of our campus
has friends, relatives and loved ones involved. By living in Israel
or fighting for it, they are not only in physical danger, but also
morally responsible for Israels cruelty. Even under
siege they are direct benefactors of the inherently undemocratic
Zionist project (maintaining the Jewish majority). We need to write,
telephone, e-mail, and otherwise talk to Israelis and their supporters,
and ask them to abandon Palestine before its too late. Because
despite their mistakes, we still love them, want them safe, and
recognize their human right to a life free of violence.
Palestinians cannot continue to suffer for the privilege of American
Jews who want to live out a romantic nationalist fantasy. A Jewish
state could potentially be acceptable if there truly were a land
without a people for a people without a land. But 54 years
of facts on the ground do not earn Israelis the unquestioned
right of lebensraum. Unless Jews are willing to live in one united,
multiethnic, secular, democratic, anti-apartheid state in true cooperation
with Palestinians and their refugee kin, then Jews have no right
to that so-called Promised Land. It does not and cannot belong to
them alone. And since Palestinians are not likely to forget the
humiliation they, their parents, their grand parents, and their
great grand parents have been forced to suffer, Jews might as well
leave now. Otherwise they forgetful victims of genocide
will be condemned to fight a genocidal war until there are no more
Palestinians to starve, bulldoze, shoot, check, control, unemploy,
taunt, humiliate, curse, rob, ghettoize, and then throw out from
their squalid besieged homes.