The June 10-23 Issue of the New York Review of Books included a report entitled: “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” by Peter Beinart. The report tackles the steady decline in the number of liberal Zionists, with a corresponding increase in the number of conservative orthodox Zionists. The writer refers to a survey of young Jews in the United States which showed that the liberals among them, who are always the majority among Jewish Americans, are not interested in Israel, as they did not mention it until they were asked about it, and used ‘them' to talk about Israelis and not ‘us', and hence, they have no commitment to it. Perhaps I will return to the subject of American Zionism on day. However, I will suffice myself today with one column of the 3-page report, each page containing four columns. In other words, I will focus on 8.5 percent of the published material, and I have no credit in the matter except in what concerns selection and translation, in order for the reader to understand the extent of the current Israeli government's extremism and the racism of its cabinet members. Effi Eitam, a former minister and a known warrior, proposed in 2006 the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on the basis of expelling them from the West Bank, and removing the Palestinians of 1948 from the Israeli political system. Eitam then merged his small Ahi Party into the Likud in 2008. During the academic year 2009-2010, Eitam became Netanyahu's special emissary abroad for debates on university campuses. He visited dozens of schools and colleges under this capacity in a tour organized for him by a group called the ‘Caravan for Democracy'. Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign Minister, shares the same views with Eitam even if he appears to have changed...He had joined the banned Kach party which calls for the expulsion of Arabs from Israeli soil. Lieberman then started calling for revoking the citizenship of the Palestinians of 1948 if they do not swear a loyalty oath to Israel. He also tried to prevent two Arab parties from running candidates for the Knesset, and said that the Arab Members of Knesset who met with Hamas must be executed. He also wants to imprison the Arabs who do not celebrate Israel's independence and instead commemorate al-Nakbah, and calls for preventing the Arabs abroad who marry Israeli women (including the Palestinians of 1948) from obtaining the Israel citizenship. Netanyahu is even more extreme than the above. In his book ‘A place among the nations' published in 1993, he rejects the idea of a Palestinian state, and denies the existence of a Palestinian people to begin with, like Golda Meir before him. Netanyahu equates the Palestinian demand for a state with Nazism. He claims that if Israel withdraws from the West Bank, Israel will become a ghetto with Auschwitz borders, as taking the West Bank out of Israel's control is tantamount to Hitler's seizure of the Sudeten district from Czechoslovakia in 1938. Netanyahu even claims that Israel made painful concessions, and it is not acceptable to ask for further concessions. What are these concessions? He says that Israel stopped demanding to annex Jordan, which he considers to be a part of the Jewish state. I do not need to continue with Shas here, the other partner in the government, as this religious party is even worse than all the above. My translation of a simple part of the report, which deserves to be translated and published entirely, ends here. But I want to comment with the following two points: First of all, extremism causes counter extremism. I will not go very far and will speak only about myself: In the nineties, I accepted a Palestinian state on 22 percent of Palestine only, and helped Abu Ammar in his bid for a state as I am helping Abu Mazen at present. But when I hear the Israelis saying that they want to keep the entire land, I turn to demanding for Palestine from the sea to the river, and for the return of the Khazari Jews back to whence they came. I will not recognize Israel in the Palestinian territory until the independent and geographically continuous Palestinian state is established. Second of all, the article's writer is Jewish. There are a thousand Jews like him who recognize the rights of the Palestinians and are seeking to end the conflict. For every Netanyahu or Lieberman, there is a hundred James Wolfensohn or Noam Chomsky, and in Israel alone there are a few dozen Jewish groups that support the Palestinians and record assaults against them. Also, the report which was written by Beinart includes a photo showing the Israeli writer David Grossman leading a demonstration in protest of the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. In line with objectivity, morality and honesty, we must give credit to the peace advocates as we attack the warmongers, and we must work for peace for it to prevail in the end. [email protected]
