-Caveat Lector-
Yardbird wrote:
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0830-01.htm
>
> Published on Thursday, August 30, 2001 by Ted Rall
>
> The End of Apartheid, Redux
> ===========================
> A Peace Plan for Post-Israeli Palestine
> by Ted Rall
>
> DAYTON, Ohio -- The trouble with Israel is that nobody -- least of all
> the Israelis -- knows what it is. Is it a theocracy or a secular
> state? Is it a parliamentary democracy or a police state? Is it the
> military occupation of local Arab lands by ex-pat Europeans or the
> settlement of peaceful colonists in a previously barren land? Israel
> is all, and none, of these things. And while it's worth noting that
> this is what happens when countries are designed by committee, casting
> blame does nothing to address a grim state of affairs -- a vicious
> cycle of retribution for grievances both real and imagined.
This is drivel. The author doesn't have a clue. But he does have an opinion.
Almost all of it is wrong.
J2
>
> When statesmen and diplomats debate Middle East peace, the elephant in
> the room is Israel's fundamental founding flaw. On the one hand, it's
> a Jewish state, its citizenship granted to any Jew regardless of birth
> nationality. But neither Israel's biggest backer -- that would be us
> -- nor many of the secular Jews who fought the British during the '40s
> wished to see an Israel ruled by rabbinical law.
Drivel. Israel was founded as a secular state. A Jewish secular state.
> Following the example
> of postwar Europe, Israel became a parliamentary democracy.
>
> It's been a demographic war ever since. As the population growth of
> Palestinian Arabs continues to outpace that of Jewish families, it's
> obvious that true democracy will lead to Israel joining the Arab
> world,
Drivel. The Muslims would never allow things to get that far. The Jews
would be dead long before that point.
> with Jews living as a beleaguered minority. Successive Israeli
> governments have employed various means of combating the demographic
> threat, most notably refusing Arabs living in Lebanese refugee camps
> the right to return to the homes they fled in 1948.
They lost. They're gone. It's time to move on.
>
> A democracy without equal voting rights is no democracy at all.
> Similarly, few Jewish Israelis want to convert the place into the
> Talmud equivalent of Taliban-run Afghanistan. The only way to
> deradicalize the vast majority of Palestinians is to fully enfranchise
> them into the current Israeli system.
Drivel. It's not the ONLY way to radicalize them.
> But won't numerically dominant
> Muslims immediately use their newfound political majority status to
> oppress Jews? Wouldn't genocide necessarily follow?
I think so.
>
> Not if recent history is any guide. The closest analogy to Israel, a
> modern second-world state run by an ethnic minority, was apartheid-era
> South Africa. (It was also Israel's closest military ally.) After
> decades of political repression, violent acts of terrorism and status
> as a global pariah, white South Africans got sick of the whole thing
> and turned over power to Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.
> White rightists, and not a few foreign observers, warned that South
> Africa's long-repressed black majority would rise up and murder their
> former oppressors, but no such thing happened.
It aint over yet is it?
> Most whites remained in
> the country.
There was an exodus of whites from SA. And, as SA continues to dis-
integrate, there continues to be.
> They became a minority in parliament, but the
> socioeconomic order stayed in place: Black people are still poor,
> white people well-off. To be sure, there have been some isolated
> incidents of violence and retribution, but nothing close to the
> wholesale slaughter expected by so many cynics.
It aint over yet is it? Why not look at Zimbabwe while were at it too?
>
> A truly democratic Israel would likely undergo a similar process. A
> tiny minority of Jews remembered for extreme right-wing behavior --
> settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, for example -- might be
> well-advised to relocate after the advent of a Palestinian majority
> government. But for the most part, Arabs are like people anywhere --
> they're far more interested in earning a living than waging jihad. The
> only reason so many are throwing rocks at Israeli troops is because
> they feel hopelessly disenfranchised under what they consider a form
> of apartheid. Remove that injustice, and they'll be too busy enjoying
> their commutes to jobs no longer cut off by army checkpoints to worry
> about getting even.
This is SUCH TOTAL BULLSHIT. What was their excuse prior to 1967???
How about prior to 1948?
>
> More to the point, Palestinians know that huge numbers of Jews oppose
> their government's extremism, just as many whites opposed apartheid in
> South Africa.
Wrong! This is simply wrong. Israel is getting more Jewish support now
than it has in the past 25 years. Just see what happens in the upcoming
rally to support Israel in September. That is planned to send a message
to guys like this.
> It's this common ground that will lay the groundwork for
> peace in what is today Israel.
>
> Of course, there is another alternative. The Israelis could
> systematically execute and/or deport every single Arab now living
> within their borders. This would perfectly resolve the battle over
> demographics. It might not make for such a great democracy, though.
I think if it comes to that, survival outweighs democracy. I say this
as a devout proponent of democracy.
J2
>
> Ted Rall, 38, is a syndicated cartoonist and columnist for Universal
> Press Syndicate.
>
> Copyright 2001 Ted Rall
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