The very fact that the extreme right-wing Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is part of the Netanyahu government is an insult to the Palestinians and the Arab nations of the region. More troubling, however, is the question of whether his often racist pronouncements come from his own skewed vision of the world or if they represent Israeli policy. Just as peace talks are restarting, Israel's Foreign Minister makes public a proposal that the borders of two states, Israel and Palestine, should be drawn so as to encompass all Jewish-occupied land into the state of Israel and that land inhabited by Palestinians be made part of a new Palestinian state. The gist of the proposal is essentially to expel Israeli Arabs, a long-cherished goal of Lieberman who rejects citizenship for Israeli Arabs, whose loyalty he questions as he says they reject any idea of Israel being the “homeland of the Jewish people”. Israel, of course, has been pretty much of a racist entity ever since its inception. And there is more than just a little irony in the fact that Israel was unjustly carved into existence after the Jews themselves were subjected to unjust racism during WWII. Which is just one of the reasons that recognizing Israel as a Jewish state – especially one that has expelled its native non-Jewish population – is impossible to do. The idea that purity of race would determine the appropriateness of citizenship harks frighteningly back to the very Third Reich that targeted Jews and others in Europe for being non-Aryan. The idea that Israel can simply claim predominance and expel people who have every right to call where they live their home, regardless of their ethnic make-up, is both preposterous and dangerous. __
