|
printable version
- js reader version
- view hidden posts
- tags and related articles
by The Institute for Middle East Understanding
Thursday, Nov. 16, 2006 at 3:54 PM
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (http://www.imeu.net) is submitting this on behalf of the author.
Good one.
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (http://www.imeu.net) is submitting this on behalf of the author.
Former President Jimmy Carter’s new book, which slaps the “apartheid” label on Israel, comes out this week. Before the book hit the stands though, members of his own party rushed to distance themselves from his allegations. While the label makes supporters of Israel uncomfortable, there is ample evidence that Israel practices institutionalized discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens. Israel, in fact, goes further than South Africa. While whites in South Africa sought to control non-whites, Israel has since its establishment pursued various means of getting rid of its non-Jewish population altogether.
The addition of Avigdor Lieberman’s party to Israel’s ruling coalition — and the appointment of Lieberman himself as Minister in charge of “Strategic Threats to Israel” — has also occasioned some discomfort among Israel’s most earnest supporters. But Lieberman’s ascent to deputy Prime Minister should give pause to those who so vigorously chided Carter for using the term “apartheid” to describe Israeli policies.
We are told that Lieberman is unhelpful; that he is the wrong partner for the current Prime Minister; that he is unlikely to facilitate peace with the Palestinians; that he is unrestrained and irresponsible — and even (according to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz) that he is a strategic threat himself.
This consensus is not a reaction to Lieberman’s insalubrious background — though former nightclub bouncers rarely rise to national office in any country — but rather to the fact that he is willing to dispense with diplomatic niceties and to express Israel’s ambitions in their crudest and most unapologetic form.
Lieberman wants an Israel free of the land’s indigenous population.
His party’s declared aim is to eject Israel’s Palestinian minority — now approaching a quarter of the population — and to annex the parts of the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem with heavy Jewish settler populations.
The irony here, of course, is that Lieberman was born not in Israel but in a remote province of the former Soviet Union. He moved to Israel as an adult.
Because he is Jewish, he was eligible for instant citizenship under Israel's law of return.
But it was evidently not enough for Lieberman that, as a Russian-speaking immigrant fresh off the plane, he was instantaneously granted rights and privileges denied to Palestinians born in the very country to which he had just moved (not to mention those expelled during the creation of Israel in 1948). The very presence of an indigenous non-Jewish population in Israel was, in effect, unacceptable to him.
So he wants the non-Jews out. And he says so bluntly.
It is Lieberman’s blunt racism — rather than the policies he stands for — that makes Israel’s advocates, particularly the liberal ones, feel so uncomfortable.
For the only significant differences between Lieberman and other mainstream Israeli politicians are matters of style rather than substance.
All Israeli politicians are committed to preserving Israel’s Jewishness. They have to be. It’s the law.
As the state of the Jewish people, Israel is, after all, the only country in the world that expressly claims not to be the state of its actual citizens (who include a million non-Jews), let alone that of the people whom it actually governs (half of whom are Palestinian Arabs).
Most of Israel’s land, for example, is the property not of the Israeli people, but of Jewish people everywhere. As non-Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel are barred from access to state land, even though the land used to be Palestinian.
Israel’s newly revised nationality law, similarly, prohibits Palestinian citizens of Israel from marrying Palestinians from the occupied territories and living with their spouses in Israel. The same law does not apply to Jewish Israelis who marry Jewish settlers living in the occupied territories. Interestingly, similar legislation had been proposed in South Africa at the peak of Apartheid, only to be rejected by that country’s supreme court. Israel’s nationality law, however, was endorsed by Israel’s High Court just this year.
There is nothing new in all this, however. The simple fact of the matter is that non-Jews have always been, at best, an impediment to Israel's Jewishness.
This is why, when Palestinian citizens of Israel demand that their state become the state of all its citizens, they are denounced for imperiling the Jewish nature of the state. It’s also why Israel repeatedly demanded the renunciation of the Palestine National Charter as a prelude to negotiations with the PLO. The longstanding Palestinian call for a democratic and secular state — a state for both Arabs and Jews — has always been regarded as a direct threat to Israel’s Jewishness.
To citizens of the advanced Western democracies, the concept of a democratic and secular state — a state of all its citizens — seems elementary. To Israel, however, it is anathema.
The only thing that distinguishes Avigdor Lieberman from run of the mill politics in Israel is that he is willing to take Israel’s vision of itself to its logical conclusion. Rather than tolerating non-Jews as second or third class citizens, he wants them out altogether.
The issue, then, is not that Lieberman is more racist than other Israeli politicians. It is, rather, that he shamelessly utters what most of his peers dare not say aloud.
***
Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on the Middle East.
http://imeu.net/news/article003560.shtml
Report this post as:
LATEST COMMENTS ABOUT THIS ARTICLE
Listed below are the 10 latest comments of 16 posted about this article.
These comments are anonymously submitted by the website visitors.
TITLE |
AUTHOR |
DATE |
Says it all |
Great quote |
Thursday, Nov. 16, 2006 at 3:55 PM |
re: "Says it all" |
eeYUPP-pah |
Friday, Nov. 17, 2006 at 12:38 PM |
And Kahane's spiritual brother |
was Yassar Arafat |
Friday, Nov. 17, 2006 at 12:50 PM |
An open honest hater |
just like TW? |
Friday, Nov. 17, 2006 at 12:55 PM |
I enjhoy it |
Debunking myths |
Friday, Nov. 17, 2006 at 3:13 PM |
|
|
|
Local News
GUIDE TO REBEL CITY LOS ANGELES AVAILABLE
A12 5:39PM
lausd whistle blower
A10 11:58PM
Website Upgrade
A10 3:02AM
Help KCET and UCLA identify 60s-70s Chicano images
A04 1:02PM
UCLA Luskin: Casting Youth Justice in a Different Light
A02 11:58AM
Change Links April 2018
A01 11:27AM
Nuclear Shutdown News March 2018
M31 6:57PM
Join The Protest Rally in Glendale on April 10, 2018!
M29 7:00PM
Join The Protest Rally in Glendale on April 10, 2018!
M29 6:38PM
Spring 2018 National Immigrant Solidarity Network News Alert!
M19 2:02PM
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project Shows Shocking Eviction Trends in L.A.
M16 5:40PM
Steve Mnuchin video at UCLA released
M15 12:34AM
Actress and Philanthropist Tanna Frederick Hosts Project Save Our Surf Beach Clean Ups
M06 12:10PM
After Being Told He's 'Full of Sh*t' at School Event, Mnuchin Demands UCLA Suppress Video
M02 11:44AM
Resolution of the Rent Strike in Boyle Heights
M01 6:28PM
What Big Brother Knows About You and What You Can Do About It
M01 3:30PM
Step Up As LAPD Chief Charlie Beck Steps Down
F14 2:44PM
Our House Grief Support Center Hosts 9th Annual Run For Hope, April 29
F13 12:51PM
Don’t let this LA County Probation Department overhaul proposal sit on the shelf
F13 11:04AM
Echo Park Residents Sue LA Over Controversial Development
F12 8:51AM
Former Signal Hill police officer pleads guilty in road-rage incident in Irvine
F09 10:25PM
Calif. Police Accused of 'Collusion' With Neo-Nazis After Release of Court Documents
F09 7:14PM
Center for the Study of Political Graphics exhibit on Police Abuse posters
F07 9:50AM
City Agrees to Settle Lawsuit Claiming Pasadena Police Officer Had His Sister Falsely Arre
F04 3:17PM
Professor's Study Highlights Health Risks of Urban Oil Drilling
F04 12:42PM
Claims paid involving Pasadena Police Department 2014 to present
F04 10:52AM
Pasadenans - get your license plate reader records from police
F03 11:11PM
LA Times Homicide Report
F03 1:57PM
More Local News...
Other/Breaking News
What does the Quran Say About Islamic Dress??
A21 4:15PM
Biodiversité ou la nature privatisée
A20 11:22AM
The Market is a Universal Totalitarian Religion
A20 7:14AM
Book Available about Hispanics and US Civil War by National Park Service
A19 5:52PM
The Shortwave Report 04/20/18 Listen Globally!
A19 4:01PM
The Republican 'Prolife' Party Is the Party of War, Execution, and Bear Cub Murder
A19 11:48AM
Neurogenèse involutive
A18 9:21AM
Paraphysique de la dictature étatique
A16 10:13AM
Book Review: "The New Bonapartists"
A16 3:45AM
The West Must Take the First Steps to Russia
A14 12:25PM
Théorie générale de la révolution ou hommage à feu Mikhaïl Bakounine
A14 3:30AM
The Shortwave Report 04/13/18 Listen Globally!
A12 3:50PM
“Lost in a Dream” Singing Competition Winner to Be Chosen on April 15 for ,000 Prize!
A12 3:48PM
The World Dependent on Central Banks
A12 4:43AM
Ohio Governor Race: Dennis Kucinich & Richard Cordray Run Against Mike DeWine
A11 9:40PM
March 2018 Honduras Coup Again Update
A10 10:52PM
Apologie du zadisme insurrectionnel
A10 3:33PM
ICE contract with license plate reader company
A10 1:14PM
Palimpseste sisyphéen
A09 11:23PM
Black Portraiture(S) IV: The Color of Silence...Cuba No...Cambridge Yes
A09 5:32AM
Prohibiting Micro-Second Betting on the Exchanges
A09 4:18AM
Prosecutors treat Muslims harsher than non-Muslims for the same crimes
A08 10:33PM
Amy Goodman interview on cell phone safety
A08 10:29PM
Mesa, Arizona police officer kills unarmed white man
A08 9:50PM
Israeli leaders should be prosecuted for war crimes
A08 9:48PM
Paraphysique de l'autorité
A08 12:11AM
Two Podcasts on fbi corruption
A06 10:13PM
Fbi assassins assault & try to kill DAVID ATKINS
A06 7:29PM
More Breaking News...
|