We are all Settlers Now

What ambassador Michael Oren had described as a historic low point in US-Israel relations seems already to be fading from public attention. People are beginning to wonder if perhaps it was just the storm in the Teacup Washington later made it out to be. Even at the time what most observers on the Israeli side primarily focussed on was the Obama administrations over reaction. Some claimed it was a purposefully instigated attempt to cause a rift between America and Israel so that Obama could win favour with the Arab world. Yet it is not the extent of US castigation that should be so concerning, but rather the issue over which all this erupted.

By attacking Israel for building in one of its East Jerusalem neighbourhoods the Obama administration was sending out the message that it saw no difference between Israel being allowed to build in its Capital and Israel building on the remotest of Hilltop outposts in the West Bank, both were now strictly prohibited in its opinion. Never mind that Netanyahu is a democratically elected leader of a sovereign State possessing the right to determine its own destiny, it now seems Obama has decided he is entitled to dictate to Israel on the most intricate of domestic policy details.

During all past negotiations it had always been understood that Israel would continue its civilian activities in East Jerusalem while negotiations went ahead, this had never seemed to have caused difficulties in the past. And as Bill Clinton had put it during the Camp David talks in 2000 ‘what is Israeli will stay Israeli, what is Palestinian will stay Palestinian’ which was understood to mean that the Jerusalem’s Jewish neighbourhoods would remain part of Israel while its Palestinian neighbourhoods would be governed by the Palestinians. Ramot Shlomo, the neighbourhood that this diplomatic debacle is centred around, is not a small enclave of hard-line rightwing Jewish fundamentalists situated in the heart of a built up Arab area but rather a large Israeli neighbourhood, just over the green line and adjacent and contiguous with West Jerusalem’s other Jewish neighbourhoods. Legitimate and well inside the Israeli consensus if you will.

Furthermore the Obama administration had itself given Israel the green light to continue construction in East Jerusalem when it commended Netanyahu for his announcement freezing the growth of Jewish communities in the West Bank but not in Jerusalem. Now it seems that because the intransigent Palestinian leadership still won’t come to the negotiating table this US understanding has been duly rescinded.

This eroding of Israel’s rights in its own Capital, a city that has had a Jewish majority since the mid-19th century, has been an on going process and one that goes far beyond the whims of the Obama administration. In Europe for instance even the mainstream media has been casting doubts on the Jewish State’s legitimacy in the holy city.

A piece in the Guardian last week implied that Israel would ultimately have to relinquish control over the entire city when it wrote of Netanyahu: 'Jerusalem was not a settlement, he said, it was the capital of Israel. These are not the words of a government prepared to negotiate what all Israelis know is a central demand of final status negotiations - Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state.'

This questioning of Jewish rights in Jerusalem even extends to the city’s ancient Jewish quarter. Look at the information of any online organization monitoring Israel’s Settlements and you will find Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter listed as one such illegal community. Even a short stroll through the Jewish quarter’s winding lanes often reveals graffiti accusing its residents of being colonists and illegal settlers. These ignorant insults are left behind by the anarchist youth who come from Europe to enjoy their summer touring the sufferings of the Palestinian people.

When Israeli’s find themselves accused of having acted illegally or of sabotaging the peace process simply for choosing to live in their country’s Capital they naturally feel the entire world is treating them unreasonably. That those in Washington seem not to be able to discern the difference between the West Banks most radical messianic Settlers and the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem tells the Israeli government that there is no point making hard concessions that threaten to topple its coalition because America will punish and pressurize them no matter what they do. All of this only serves to push the Israeli public to the right and into the arms of the most politically hard line elements.

When Jews are told that they are forbidden to live in their most holy city we have to say ‘we are all Settlers now!’

There are no Self-Hating Jews

As protests and opposition groups against Israel have become more prevalent in recent years so too has the presence of Jews within them. Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein are too of the world’s most famous anti-Israel academics while in Britain the Politician Gerald Kaufman, the Comedian Alexi Sale and the activists of ‘Jews for Justice’ and ‘Independent Jewish’ voices are all Jewish figures committed to condemning Israel. And Israel itself has produced several key academics who at the very least denounce the Zionist project. Bewildered by these individuals the Jewish community tends to label them ‘self-haters’, yet in reality they are anything but.

In there own defence these people insist that as human beings and specifically as Jews (observing the high level of morality Judaism demands of them) they must speak out in defence of the venerable and oppressed. And indeed they should. Yet the latest independent population estimates suggest that there are less than three million Palestinian Arabs living in the Gaza strip and West Bank. This relatively small group of people has countless international NGOs, U.N bodies and foreign governments that champion their cause and send significantly large amounts of money to assist them, unfortunately much of it never benefits the people its intended for because of Palestinian Authority corruption, mismanagement and the tendency to funnel finances into terror. With all of these people concentrating on assisting this relatively small group of people along with the international media’s heavy criticism of Israel, are Jews really needed to join in? And if they really do feel so very heavily moved by their conscience to help the worlds needy then what of the people of Darfur, Tibet, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe as well as countless other oppressed groups across the Middle East, not to mention its minority Jewish populations? Why of all the oppressed people of the world have these Jews decided that first and foremost it is the cause of the Palestinians that they should champion against their own fellow Jews living in Israel?

It quickly becomes apparent that these people are clearly disinterested in the plight of other Jews and more concerned with the cause of a group that are attacking their coreligionists. In doing so they essentially set themselves apart from their Jewish brethren who are under attack from the world and side with these very same critics. They undertake an act that dissociates themselves from the attacked group and places them amidst the dominant group, safely out of harms way they hope. So it is possible to see how far from hating themselves for being Jewish their act is one of self cherishing, they become applauded and seemingly accepted by the non-Jewish anti-Israel host populations, who are only too pleased to wheel them out at their protests and functions to demonstrate that being anti-Israel can’t possibly be anti-Semitic because there are Jews that are also anti-Israel.

Anti-Zionist Jews reject claims that they are betraying their own people, rather they retort that Zionism is a threat to all Jews because of how it increases anti-Semitism (as they see it) and so are always eager to use every opportunity to voice the fact that they are Jewish (albeit often openly ashamed of being so) but still opposed to Israel. This they hope will break the connection non-Jewish society sees between Israel and their Diaspora communities, so they hope sparing them the hatred Israeli Jews face. From the very beginning of anti-Zionist Jewish thought fears of anti-Semitism were the driving force. When the British government made its Balfour declaration in 1917, giving its support to the creation of a Jewish national home as a haven for East European Jews fleeing bloody pogroms, the assimilated and socially ambitious British Jewish elites wrote a letter condemning this, fearing that it would threaten their privileged position by calling into question their loyalty to Britain. Indeed their first thought was not the well being of the East European Jewish masses. Similarly the Reform Jews of Germany were also initially strongly opposed to Zionism as the Reform movement there had the primary aim of achieving social acceptance by becoming as German as possible. Nothing has really changed since then, anti-Zionist Jews still claim Israel stirs up anti-Semitism and fear that being Jewish and therefore associated with Israel will jeopardise their own ambitious assent into non-Jewish society. These Jews are after all on the whole very much estranged from Judaism, attending the major anti-Israel rallies always held on the Jewish Sabbath and so while they eagerly claim to speak as Jews they are in reality simply the descendents of Jewish ancestors.

To this some may point to the loudly anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox groups, who are not assimilated or divorced from Jewish practice and culture. Yet they represent a tiny radical fringe, often presented as official Orthodox voices by Israel’s opponents. Their radical anti-Secular ideology and obscure reading of certain Jewish texts has made them aggressively anti-Israel, but they too focus a great deal on how Israel represents a rebellion against non-Jewish rulers, so antagonising hatred against the Jewish people, which they argue is forbidden by Jewish law. While anti-Israel groups may place a great deal of emphasis on these people they represent such a minor radical sect that they can’t really be taken into overall consideration.

Ironically assimilated and secular Jews who have little relationship or sense of connection to the land of Israel and the Jewish people actually regain part of that strong relationship by attacking those very things. Reading up on Israeli history, obsessing over Zionist ideology and sometimes reading up on relevant sections of Jewish theology becomes one of the few Jewish things they do. And it’s as though if they can’t have a positive relationship with these things then they can’t simply accept them, they must instead work to destroy them, so re-justifying their own lack of involvement and adherence to them. So the assimilated Jewish critic of Israel can say ‘no I’m not religiously observant, no I don’t make the effort to visit Israel or help its people, but that’s not because I’m a bad Jew, it’s because I categorically reject these things on moral grounds’.

To defend Israel, to adopt greater Jewish observances becomes the more difficult thing to do when these people who enjoy all the benefits of assimilation realise it might set them apart from their much admired fellow non-Jews, from whom they desire ultimate acceptance. Instead the easier thing to do is to abandon and attack their own in the hope that it will demonstrate the full extent of their loyalty to non-Jewish society’s beliefs, opinions and values.

This isn’t about Self-Hatred but a self love that is so all consuming that individuals are prepared to put from mind the suffering of what are essentially their own people so as to advance their personal standing and sense of moral superiority and justification. Their worst fear is that they will be recognised as Jews, associated with Israel and suffer the same fierce criticism Israel receives from non-Jews.
They are like the slightly different child in the school playground that fears being picked on by bullies so ensures that they’re at the forefront of the gang, beating up another child that’s different so as to ensure that they’re not the one on the receiving end.

Reactions to Netanyahu’s Speech - Avoiding Peace at all Costs

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been going on for nearly two decades now, ever since the start of the 1990s, and yet any permanent final status agreement still seems extremely far off. Worse still; at the moment what’s being argued about is not the conditions under which peace would be finalised but the conditions under which negotiations would resume. So what has been going on for twenty years that means no agreement has been reached?

Often negotiations have looked extremely promising, particularly with Oslo which set up a system where by territory was gradually transferred into Palestinian control with a timetable for final status agreements. There had been some disagreements over partitioning Jerusalem, but in 2000 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was prepared to make the painful and unpopular concession in the hope of achieving peace. Perhaps Arafat had never really expected the Israeli’s to accept this demand because during the Camp David summit a new even more seemingly unmeetable demand was made by the Palestinians. After having never previously mentioned the demand at any earlier negotiation, including Oslo, the Palestinian delegation now insisted that in return for the end of hostilities Israel must accept into its midst millions of Arabs who claimed to either have once lived in what is now Israel or to be their many descendants. Such a move would have turned the country’s demographic upside down ending Israel’s existence as the world’s only Jewish state and haven for Jewish refugees fleeing persecution. The demand took the Israeli and American negotiators totally by surprise and while they agreed to dividing Jerusalem and giving the Palestinians Israel’s disputed territories for a sovereign state the Israeli’s couldn’t agree to their own destruction.

As is now known the Intifada that raged in the first years of the new millennium, in which over 1000 Israelis were killed in terror attacks, was initially preconceived by Arafat as a means by which to put pressure on the Israelis to make ever greater concessions. Finally as Ehud Barak’s time in power approached its end and in desperation to try and stop the escalating violence in the series of negotiations around 2000/2001 Barak agreed to turning over the equivalent of 100% of the disputed territories to the Palestinians and crucially to gradually over a number of years absorbing the Palestinians claiming refugee status back into Israel. This was not what Arafat had expected, indeed he had made the demand because he’d assumed the Israelis would never agree to it. Realising that he was now in a position where he had to accept Israel’s offer and make peace he abruptly called an end to the conference and on his way out famously told the press that the Israeli’s could ‘go to hell’. There was nothing more that could be done and Israel entered its bloodiest and most threatening period since its war of independence.

For Arafat acceptance of a peace deal would have meant an end to his very reason for being; using terror to fight Israel, it was from this activity that he derived his power. A final agreement would have meant an end to Palestinian grievance, an end to terror, an end to world sympathy and an end to the large donations from supporters around the world. It would have meant the beginning of the far more serious and difficult activity of state building. For the Palestinian leadership and terrorist operatives there was never any question over which of the two scenarios they preferred.

Little has changed since then, actually hurrying into bringing the creation of a Palestinian state into being seems extremely low down the list of the Palestinian Authorities set of priorities right now. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas insisted he would not enter into any final status negotiations unless Netanyahu first accepted the creation of a Palestinian state, something he reckoned Netanyahu would never do. But with pressure from Obama and much to Abbas’ horror, a few days ago in his major policy address that’s exactly what Netanyahu did. The Palestinian spokes people quickly went into reaction and went ahead and delivered exactly the same speeches they’d prepared in the event of the Israeli Prime Minister not accepting a Palestinian state. They claimed that Netanyahu had ‘slammed shut the door’ to any peace negotiations, when clearly in reality he had fulfilled the very pre-conditions the Palestinians had laid down for such talks to begin.

The Palestinians have claimed that their grievance is over Netanyahu insisting any future Palestinian state could not be heavily militarised and that the Palestinians must accept Israel will be the Jewish state and theirs the Palestinian state. There is nothing new in this, Arafat was supposed to have recognised Israel’s right to exist before negotiations back in the early 1990s and as an obligation of Oslo was supposed to have amended the PLO charter so that it no longer called for Israel’s destruction, something they have still failed to comply with. As far as demilitarisation of the Palestinian state goes this was made clear as part of Israel’s acceptance of George Bush’s U.N backed Road Map back in 2003. Indeed there is nothing new about the games Abbas is playing, when he first became Palestinian Prime Minister during the time of the Sharon government he would often respond to Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners by cancelling his meetings with Sharon, claiming they’d expected larger numbers of terrorists to be released.

This is a reminder that Israeli good will gestures have more often than not been met by even more outrageous demands, protest and refusal to cooperate. While time and time again Israel has made difficult and dangerous concessions, offering just about everything in their power for peace, the Palestinians seem to have worked equally as tirelessly to avoid making peace at all costs. For the moment it seems that just as Israeli’s fear a Palestinian state will threaten their country’s existence the Palestinians fear a final peace agreement will weaken their campaign to destroy Israel.

Blaming the Jews – from the Black Death to Iran

The claim that Jews have been persecuted throughout history because down the ages they have been easy scapegoats is just about the most commonly heard explanation going, no doubt most of us first heard it from our history teachers when studying the rise of Nazis or similar. And most of us soon dismissed this view just as soon as we had read on enough to suspect that the matter is far more complex than that. Yet at the same time, whether we’ve found a more satisfactory explanation or not, isn’t it simply the case that the Jews always have been and always do get blamed? Indeed if we look at the international political scene in our own time the Jews really are still occupying that same blame position they always seem to have.

From being blamed for killing Christ to being accused of polluting the racial purity of European blood, or from being blamed for causing the black death by poisoning wells to being accused of inciting internal communism and revolution, or from being blamed for keeping the poor poor as money lenders to being accused of starting world wars and then specifically ensuring Germany lost them, or from being blamed for causing economic crisis through their control of the money markets to being accused of derogating wholesome Christian culture through their control of entertainment and mass media. The list is extensive as societies throughout history have rushed to blame the Jews for which ever particular crisis of the moment it happens to be. And this is still not yet a habit that the world has kicked.

In just the last few decades we have seen western politicians, journalists and academics accuse the Jews and their state (Israel) of antagonising and radicalising Islamic terrorism both world wide and in their own countries, the claim being that brutal Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people has fanned the flames of fundamentalist hate against the west. The latest strain of this particular trend of Jew blaming is being championed and lead by the American President who in recent weeks has essentially argued that it is Israel’s Jewish communities in its disputed territories that are pushing Iran to nuclear armament.

Most reasonable people don’t have much trouble dismissing the many illogical accusations historically made against Jews as outlined in the paragraph above, yet when it comes to Israeli settlements and Iranian nukes they seem to abandon logic just as rapidly as the blood libellers and Aryan racial theorists did before them. What after all do a few small Jewish villages on hilltops set in the heart of the Jewish peoples spiritual and historical homeland have to do with Iran needing nuclear weapons? Just what a false issue created by Israel’s opponents this is becomes clear when it’s considered that barely sixty thousand Jews live on the other side of Israel’s security fence, hardly enough to alter the demographic there, unlike the Palestinian Authorities insistence that several million Arabs must be transferred into the Jewish state before they think about making peace with it. And yet the American President insists that only once Israel has resolved its conflict, specifically by ethnically cleansing all Jews from those areas of the greatest importance to Israel historically, militarily and religiously, only then will Iran abandon its pursuit for nuclear weapons.
Such a claim barely holds little more logic than arguing that Jews should light fewer candles at Chanukah because they cause global warming.

And so given the record it’s probably only a matter of time before the Jews are blamed for the melting of the polar icecaps. But the scapegoating that is observable throughout history is actually the opposite of what it is usually presented as. That is to say usually the argument goes that people need someone to blame and the Jews are an easy target. However what is really the case is that people need to blame the Jews and so find something to pin on them, usually whatever they see as the worst and most serious problem of their times. And so if hatred of the Jews isn’t motivated by the mistaken belief that they are behind which ever particular calamity is closest at hand then the only conclusion can be that the Jews are not hated for what people arbitrarily decide they have done but for who they are on the most fundamental inescapable level, that is the values they stand for and the truths and the notions that they have brought to the world.

However my purpose here is not to carry out a detailed or indepth exploration of Judeophobia and its causes but rather to demonstrate that westerners are repeating the very same prejudices against the Jews that they always have done in the past, however much they claim this isn’t about Jews but about bringing in a new era of harmonious world peace; just as so many 19th century theorists believed that if only they could remove the deviant influence Jews were having over gentiles then a new glorious Christendom would blossom.
‘The horrifying threat of a nuclear Iran could be avoided if only Israel would back down a little’ becomes ‘All our problems would be over if the Jews were gone’.

Why Taking Away Freedom of Speech Won’t Help Israel

With the likes of Avigdor Lieberman holding one of the top positions in the Israeli government it should probably hardly be surprising that all manner of authoritarian measures are being proposed, but these proposals aren’t just dangerous because of the way in which they threaten freedom of speech, but because of the way in which they take up the energies and attentions of politicians who should be focussing on far more crucial issues.

Before the elections earlier this year many people were aware of Lieberman’s proposals concerning withtracting Israeli citizenship from the Arab sections of the population and trying to stop Arab political parties from standing in the 2009 Knesset elections but it seems that there has been little softening of attitude on Lieberman’s part since then. Recently we’ve seen calls for the banning of Nakba day, the Arab day of rioting and mourning the creation of Israel and in the past days proposals to punish the advocation of the dismantling of the Jewish state with prison sentences.

This of course will do nothing to take away internal opposition to Israel in real terms and will no doubt only serve to make Israeli Arabs feel even more alienated and restricted within Israeli national life. The opposition may for a time become less visible but when it finally erupts again it will almost certainly be more intense due to the frustration caused by the lack of expression that will have been inflicted upon it. And of course such measures will only serve to increase international condemnation of Israel as undemocratic, authoritarian and racist, and for once there will be a grain of truth in what these critics say.

Meanwhile as Israel’s politicians on the right focus on these proposals who will be speaking out on behalf of the important issues that they usually concern themselves with?
And what will any of these attempts to crush freedom of speech do to prevent militant Iran from attaining nuclear weapons? What will these motions do to help combat the world’s largest terrorist base that Hamas has created in Gaza? And are these reactionary moves supposed to be some sort of substitute for right-wingers to make up for the destruction of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (West Bank)? Indeed shouldn’t the people advocating these policies be focussing their time on trying to save the homes of Jews slated for demolition by Defence Minister Barak as part of his attempts to oppose a leftwing agenda on the people of Israel who clearly voted against such policies just a few months ago in the country’s national elections.

Instead of worrying about what the Arabs are saying the Israeli politicians proposing these measures should be worrying about what Jews are doing. Instead of trying to stop Israeli Arabs from calling for the destruction of the state they should be working to stop Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran from making dangerous moves that are actually aimed at bringing an end to Israel. And instead of worrying about Arabs mourning the creation of Israel they should be ensuring that Jews don’t find themselves mourning the destruction of their homes, synagogues and communities in some of the most historically and spiritually weighted regions of their homeland. The only response to such anti-Israel sentiments to push ahead in practical terms with the Jewish national programme; strengthening the Jewish state and continuing the process of returning the Jewish people to living in their country. Trying to stop Israeli Arabs from calling for Israel’s destruction and lamenting its birth is a fruitless task, a policy that even at its most successful would still do nothing to strengthen Israeli society from within or make Jews feel any more connected to their nation. Pursuing these aims are the distractions and obsessions of madmen whose focus is on struggling with marginal opponents on issues of national ‘honour’ rather than on combating real enemies or taking immediate actions to better the lives of Jewish people.

Little can be done to change what Israeli Arabs think about Israel, but this doesn’t really matter because we should not be trying to alter the landscape of the Arab mind but rather the landscape of the Jewish national home.

Seeking New Solutions

A week or so on from Lieberman’s rejection of the Annapolis process for a two state solution other government ministers have now also spoken out against negotiations based on a two state solution. While Lieberman argued Annapolis not to be binding upon the new administration for technical reasons, and strictly speaking he is quite right, both Lieberman and the government ministers have rejected this proposal because of its consistent failure to bare fruits.

Ever since the early 1990s and right up until the end of the Olmert administration in 2009 Israeli governments have been offering negotiation based upon the principle of ‘two states for two peoples’. Yet consistently the Palestinian leadership has failed to reciprocate the necessary compromises to make these negotiations successful and this has been demonstrated most clearly when, in recent weeks, the ruling Palestinian party Fatah announced that it doesn’t recognise Israel and indeed never has done. Of course as well as this unwillingness for coexistence politically terrorism has also consistently derailed attempts for a two state solution.

Back in 2000 when Israel offered the Palestinians essentialy exactly what they were demanding and they rejected the proposal (demonstrating that the Palestinians could have their own State by now if they really wanted it) the Palestinians didn’t offer a counter proposal but unleashed the second intifada. More recently Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Gaza has been seen as an act of weakness rather than as gestures for reconciliation and from both these places Hizbollah and Hamas rained rockets down on Israeli civilians. And if that record weren’t enough just a few weeks ago a terrorist attack in Haifa that would have killed hundreds was averted at the last minute. Yet this attempt wasn’t carried out by groups from Gaza or militants acting in solidarity with the Palestinians of the West Bank but rather by a group calling for the ‘liberation of the Galilee’. This of course is a region of Israel that is situated within its pre-1967 borders and where Arabs enjoy full citizenship along with the right to vote and stand for election and receive full welfare benefits. However the Arabs living here, who would be part of Israel even under the most generous of two state solutions, still reject being part of Israel and insist on waging war upon it.

These are the reasons why so far a two state solution hasn’t come about. Yet there are much more important and deep reasons why there should never be a two state solution. While there may be two peoples demanding two states there are not two lands to give them and states are dependent upon territory. Not only is there a real lack of space for two viable states but there is also a lack of many other things. For instance the area that constitutes pre-1967 Israel is 60% desert and Israel gets much of its water supply from beneath the Judean hills which are situated in the West Bank. Equally on the other side the West Bank and Gaza strip constitute a tiny and discontiguous territory. And while Gaza is desperately overcrowded much of the West Bank is also predominantly desert or rocky hills unsuitable for agriculture or significant population. At the same time both countries would insist upon having Jerusalem as a capital. Cities have been divided before, as seen with Berlin, but this was hardly a preferable or long term arrangement. Furthermore Jerusalem, which has had a Jewish majority for over 160 years, would predominantly go to Israel, the proportion given to a Palestinian state would be negligible but would occupy key Jewish religious/historic sites as well as major strategic positions.

The West Bank and Gaza strip do not offer the potential of a viable Palestinian state meaning any state created there would be a failed one. Such a state would no doubt build on existing radicalism that refuses to recognise Israel’s right to exist and would almost certainly continue demands for the descendants of those claiming to be refugees to relocate to Israel, reversing its Jewish character and acting as a hostile population from within. It is also probable that because of its territorial problems this state would demand territory transfer to the lines of the proposed UN 1946 partition plan, or at the very least the annexation of the areas of the Galilee with Arab populations. Either way it is ridiculous to claim that these two states would peacefully coexist side by side. Israel’s new borders would be indefensible, both from any terrorist attacks that would go unprevented by a weak or indifferent Palestinian government or more likely by a radical Islamic administration backed by Iran. From the West Bank hills Israel’s coastal strip, just nine miles across at its narrowest point, would be fully reachable by missile attack. The country’s primary population centres and industrial heartland as well as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ben Gurion Airport would all be in the firing line. Arguments that this time Palestinians would finally relinquish attacking Israel because now they’d have something to lose fall short considering what has already happened in Gaza and the fact that once this second state is created the decision could never realistically be reversed. This new state would become a second Gaza, where Islamist militants seized power and without Israeli military forces to intervene rapidly turned the whole area into a terror training centre and missile launch pad.

The Ministers of Transport and the Interior who have joined Lieberman in rejecting the futile Annapolis process and called for an abandonment of the two state solution have apparently realised the reality of the above scenario. Clearly then alternative solutions need to be explored but like Netanyahu and many others all these Ministers have so far proposed is the ‘Economic solution’; the argument that greater economic independence and improvement for the Palestinians will some how end the conflict. Yet not only will trying to improve the Palestinian economy fail to end Palestinian grievance or satisfy any of their demands it will also only increase their ability to fund terror and lessen the likelihood of any real Palestinian emigration.

Meanwhile one Labour MK has denounced these opinions because of how it may antagonise Europe and America, arguing that the whole world supports the Annapolis process. Yet Israel is not the communal property of the whole world but a sovereign state with a democratically elected government and the legitimacy to determine its own destiny. Just because the rest of the world has failed to notice the tiny area of territory it proposes carving into two countries or the reality of Israel’s situation in favour of a quick fix solution, doesn’t mean Israel should be bound to foreign dictates.

Love Jews, Hate Zionism?

In the last few days America’s governing administration has taken steps to demonstrate just how pro-Jewish it really is. A few days ago the president’s wife attended a tour of Prague’s Jewish quarter and now the President himself will be taking part in a Seder and has wished the Jewish people a happy holiday and heaped praise on the Passover story. This is much like his trip to Israel and the Western Wall in the run up to his election. It’s all part of a loud message saying ‘I’m not anti-Jewish’ in preparation for policies that will no doubt potentially upset America’s Jewish community. And this is reminiscent of what many of Israel’s critics have done, perhaps most overtly seen with the statements of Jewish British M.P Gerald Kaufman, who began his commons speech during which he compared Israel to Nazis by stating his credentials as the descendant of Holocaust victims who was raised an Orthodox Jew. It’s all part of a message that you can be anti-Israel with out being anti-Jewish, Anti-Zionist without being Anti-Semitic and that the Jewish people and the state of Israel are two very separate entities.

But with just over half of the worlds Jewish population being Israeli, Israel being the worlds only Jewish state and the wide support that Israel still has from almost all Jews all over the world, how credible can this claim really be? On the most basic level throughout its short history Israel has acted as a haven for Jews across the world fleeing real danger and seeking refuge. In opposing the existence and security of the Jewish state those doing so are at the very least showing a callous indifference to Jewish wellbeing and survival. Westerners, in whose countries Anti-Semitism is still relatively low assume that the Jews could quite happily live somewhere other than Israel and as a small religious group needn’t have their own country. They still act under the impression that Israel was created purely for Holocaust survivors, a one off event that is long in the past and many argue that Arabs shouldn’t have to pay for something Europeans did. This shows ignorance of the fact that around 50% of Israel’s population are actually descended from the 1.million Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were forced to flee or were even expelled from their communities during and shortly after WW2 as rioting and violently anti-Jewish feeling spread throughout the Arab world. The other large demographic are Jews from ex-eastern bloc countries. Again most westerners are ignorant to the great hostility they experienced from the Soviet regimes and eastern European culture in general. And of course countless other smaller Jewish groups such as the Ethiopians have also fled for refuge in Israel. If you’re a Jew seeking refuge then Israel is the one place you’re guaranteed an open door and a haven.

The other issue concerns the claim of being able to be anti-Israel/Zionist without being anti-Jewish. Yet Israel and returning to living in its land aren’t modern ultra-nationalist ideas, they are essential parts of the fabric of Judaism. Not only does Jewish scripture overtly command the Jews to live in Israel but Jewish law even allows individuals to divorce their spouse to move to Israel. Furthermore many Jewish observances are only fulfilable from within Israel and just about every Jewish prayer links the Jews to the land and talks of their return; the prayer after eating, the prayer before going to bed, the three prayer services said every day, also at Yom kippur and Passover when Jews famously pledge their desire to next year be in Jerusalem and even at Jewish weddings when the blessing talks of hearing the bride and groom’s laughter over the hills of Judea. The Jewish religion is overtly Zionist and views life outside of Israel as a shameful exile and only allows the fullest Jewish life to be lived from within Israel. Nothing that anyone can say can change the fact that Jewish tradition is based first and foremost around monotheism and the land of Israel. In being anti-Zionist you can’t avoid being anti-Jewish because Judaism is itself intrinsically Zionist.

If you said you liked French people but hated France as a country, or if you acknowledged that Mecca is the holy city of Islam but denied the Muslim right to have control over it people would know that really you had an anti-French or anti-Muslim agenda. Yet somehow it’s alright to hate the Jews as a nation but still not be considered anti-Jewish. Anyone who’s been to Israel or knows even a little about it knows what a strongly Jewish country it is; its people, its culture, its national symbols, its geography, its history and much of its laws are all Jewish.

As the biggest concentration of Jews in the world it is not possible to oppose the state of Israel or to advocate policies that will in reality bring an end to it as a Jewish or viable state without simultaneously advocating an overtly anti-Jewish policy. The new agenda seems to be to try and divorce the two, to demonstrate that they’re not one and the same and therefore save ones name from accusations of anti-Semitism. Perhaps even more sinister than that is an attempt at divide and rule, to get the Jewish communities in the Diaspora away from their loyalty to Israel, to tell them that they’ll be accepted as Jews but not as Zionists and that in supporting Israel they are inviting what amounts to anti-Semitism against themselves. If Jews across the world would stand strong against this argument being made by some non-Jews and a small minority of radically anti-Zionist Jews, then this argument would immediately lose credence. But as long as large sections of the Jewish community allows itself to be wood by the sort of gestures being made by the American president so they add legitimacy to the growing claim that you can respect Jews while simultaneously calling for the destruction of the nation that represents the height of their culture in modern times and the best hope for their survival in the future.