[WCUSP] "Israel's Right To Be Racist" by Joseph Massad

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

Israel's right to be racist

By Joseph  Massad*

Al-Ahram Weekly
15-21 March  2007

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/836/op1.htm

Israel's struggle  for peace is a sincere one. In fact,
Israel desires to live at peace not only  with its
neighbours, but also and especially with its own
Palestinian  population, and with Palestinians whose lands
its military occupies by force.  Israel's desire for peace
is not only rhetorical but also substantive and  deeply
psychological. With few exceptions, prominent Zionist
leaders since  the inception of colonial Zionism have
desired to establish peace with the  Palestinians and other
Arabs whose lands they slated for colonisation  and
settlement. The only thing Israel has asked for, and
continues to ask  for in order to end the state of war with
the Palestinians and its Arab  neighbours, is that all
recognise its right to be a racist state  that
discriminates by law against Palestinians and other Arabs
and grants  differential legal rights and privileges to its
own Jewish citizens and to  all other Jews anywhere. The
resistance that the Palestinian people and other  Arabs
have launched against Israel's right to be a racist state
is what  continues to stand between Israel and the peace
for which it has struggled  and to which it has been
committed for decades. Indeed, this resistance is  nothing
less than the "New anti- Semitism".

Israel is willing to do  anything to convince Palestinians
and other Arabs of why it needs and  deserves to have the
right to be racist. Even at the level of theory,  and
before it began to realise itself on the ground, the
Zionist colonial  project sought different means by which
it could convince the people whose  lands it wanted to
steal and against whom it wanted to discriminate to  accept
as understandable its need to be racist. All it required
was that  the Palestinians "recognise its right to exist"
as a racist state. Military  methods were by no means the
only persuasive tools available; there were  others,
including economic and cultural incentives. Zionism from
the start  offered some Palestinians financial benefits if
they would accede to its  demand that it should have the
right to be racist. Indeed, the State of  Israel still
does. Many Palestinian officials in the Palestinian
Authority  and the Palestine Liberation Organisation have
been offered and have accepted  numerous financial
incentives to recognise this crucial Israeli need.  Those
among the Palestinians who regrettably continue to resist
are being  penalised for their intransigence by economic
choking and starvation,  supplemented by regular
bombardment and raids, as well as international  isolation.
These persuasive methods, Israel hopes, will finally
convince a  recalcitrant population to recognise the dire
need of Israel to be a racist  state. After all, Israeli
racism only manifests in its flag, its national  anthem,
and a bunch of laws that are necessary to safeguard  Jewish
privilege, including the Law of Return (1950), the Law of
Absentee  Property (1950), the Law of the State's Property
(1951), the Law of  Citizenship (1952), the Status Law
(1952), the Israel Lands Administration  Law (1960), the
Construction and Building Law (1965), and the  2002
temporary law banning marriage between Israelis and
Palestinians of  the occupied territories.

Let us start with why Israel and Zionism need  to ensure
that Israel remains a racist state by law and why it
deserves to  have that right. The rationale is primarily
threefold and is based on the  following claims.

Jews are always in danger out in the wide world; only  in a
state that privileges them racially and religiously can
they be safe  from gentile oppression and can prosper. If
Israel removed its racist laws  and symbols and became a
non-racist democratic state, Jews would cease to be  a
majority and would be like Diaspora Jews, a minority in a
non-Jewish  state. These concerns are stated clearly by
Israeli leaders individually and  collectively. Shimon
Peres, for example, the dove of official Israel, has  been
worried for some time about the Palestinian demographic
"danger", as  the Green Line, which separates Israel from
the West Bank, is beginning to  "disappear ... which may
lead to the linking of the futures of West  Bank
Palestinians with Israeli Arabs". He hoped that the
arrival of  100,000 Jews in Israel would postpone this
demographic "danger" for 10 more  years, as ultimately, he
stressed, "demography will defeat  geography".

In December 2000, the Institute of Policy and Strategy  at
the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre in Israel held its
first of a  projected series of annual conferences dealing
with the strength and security  of Israel, especially with
regards to maintaining Jewish demographic  majority.
Israel's president and current and former prime ministers
and  cabinet ministers were all in attendance. One of the
"Main Points" identified  in the 52-page conference report
is concern over the numbers needed to  maintain Jewish
demographic and political supremacy of Israel: "The  high
birth rate [of 'Israeli Arabs'] brings into question the
future of  Israel as a Jewish state ... The present
demographic trends, should they  continue, challenge the
future of Israel as a Jewish state. Israel has  two
alternative strategies: adaptation or containment. The
latter requires  a long-term energetic Zionist demographic
policy whose political, economic,  and educational effects
would guarantee the Jewish character of  Israel."

The report adds affirmatively that, "those who support  the
preservation of Israel's character as ... a Jewish state
for the  Jewish nation ... constitute a majority among the
Jewish population in  Israel." Of course, this means the
maintenance of all the racist laws that  guarantee the
Jewish character of the state. Subsequent annual  meetings
have confirmed this commitment.

Jews are carriers of Western  civilisation and constitute
an Asian station defending both Western  civilisation and
economic and political interests against  Oriental
terrorism and barbarism. If Israel transformed itself into
a  non-racist state, then its Arab population would
undermine the commitment to  Western civilisation and its
defence of the West's economic and political  interests,
and might perhaps transform Jews themselves into a
Levantine  barbaric population. Here is how Ben Gurion once
put it: "We do not want  Israelis to become Arabs. We are
in duty bound to fight against the spirit of  the Levant,
which corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve  the
authentic Jewish values as they crystallised in the
[European]  Diaspora." Indeed Ben Gurion was clear on the
Zionist role of defending these  principles: "We are not
Arabs, and others measure us by a different standard  ...
our instruments of war are different from those of the
Arabs, and only  our instruments can guarantee our
victory." More recently, Israel's  ambassador to Australia,
Naftali Tamir, stressed that: "We are in Asia  without the
characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin  and
slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia
and Israel  are not -- we are basically the white race."

God has given this land to  the Jews and told them to
safeguard themselves against gentiles who hate  them. To
make Israel a non-Jewish state then would run the risk  of
challenging God Himself. This position is not only upheld
by Jewish and  Christian fundamentalists, but even by
erstwhile secular Zionists (Jews and  Christians alike).
Ben Gurion himself understood, as does Bill Clinton  and
George W Bush, that: "God promised it to us."

It is important to  stress that this Zionist rationale is
correct on all counts if one accepts  the proposition of
Jewish exceptionalism. Remember that Zionism and  Israel
are very careful not to generalise the principles that
justify  Israel's need to be racist but are rather vehement
in upholding it as an  exceptional principle. It is not
that no other people has been oppressed  historically, it
is that Jews have been oppressed more. It is not that  no
other people's cultural and physical existence has been
threatened; it  is that the Jews' cultural and physical
existence is threatened more. This  quantitative equation
is key to why the world, and especially  Palestinians,
should recognise that Israel needs and deserves to have
the  right to be a racist state. If the Palestinians, or
anyone else, reject this,  then they must be committed to
the annihilation of the Jewish people  physically and
culturally, not to mention that they would be  standing
against the Judeo- Christian God.

It is true that Palestinian  and Arab leaders were not
easily persuaded of these special needs that Israel  has;
that it took decades of assiduous efforts on the part of
Israel to  convince them, especially through "military"
means. In the last three decades  they have shown signs of
coming around. Though Anwar El-Sadat inaugurated  that
shift in 1977, it would take Yasser Arafat longer to
recognise  Israel's needs. But Israel remained patient and
became more innovative in its  persuasive instruments,
especially its military ones. When Arafat came to  his
senses and signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, he finally
recognised  Israel's right to be racist and to legally
discriminate against its own  Palestinian citizens. For
that belated recognition, a magnanimous Israel,  still
eager for peace, decided to negotiate with him. He,
however,  continued to resist on some issues. For Arafat
had hoped that his recognition  of Israel's need to be
racist inside Israel was in exchange for Israel ending  its
racist apartheid system in the occupied territories. That
was clearly  a misunderstanding on his part. Israeli
leaders explained to him and to his  senior peace
negotiator Mahmoud Abbas in marathon discussions that
lasted  seven years, that Israel's needs are not limited to
imposing its racist laws  inside Israel but must extend to
the occupied territories as well.  Surprisingly, Arafat was
not content with the Bantustans the Israelis offered  to
carve up for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and
Gaza around  the Jewish colonial settlements that God had
granted the Jews. The United  States was brought in to
persuade the malleable leader that the Bantustan  solution
was not a bad one. Indeed, equally honourable
collaborators as  Arafat had enjoyed its benefits, such as
Mangosutho Gatcha Buthelezi in  Apartheid South Africa. It
was no shame to accept it, President Clinton  insisted to
Arafat at Camp David in the summer of 2000. While Abbas
was  convinced, Arafat remained unsure.

It is true that in 2002 Arafat came  around some more and
reaffirmed his recognition of Israel's need for  racist
laws inside the country when he gave up the right of
return of the  six million exiled Palestinians who, by
virtue of Israel's racist law of  return, are barred from
returning to the homeland from which Israel had  expelled
them while Jewish citizens of any other countries  obtain
automatic citizenship in an Israel most of them have never
before  seen. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times,
Arafat declared: "We  understand Israel's demographic
concerns and understand that the right of  return of
Palestinian refugees, a right guaranteed under
international law  and United Nations Resolution 194, must
be implemented in a way that takes  into account such
concerns." He proceeded to state that he was looking  to
negotiate with Israel on "creative solutions to the plight
of the  refugees while respecting Israel's demographic
concerns". This however, was  not sufficient, as Arafat
remained unpersuaded of Israel's need to set up its  racist
apartheid in the occupied territories. Israel had no
choice but to  isolate him, keep him under house arrest,
and possibly poison him at the  end.

President Abbas, however, learned well from the mistakes
of his  predecessor and has shown more openness to Israeli
arguments about its dire  need to have a racist apartheid
system set up in the West Bank and Gaza and  that the
legitimacy of this apartheid must also be recognised by
the  Palestinians as a precondition for peace. Abbas was
not the only Palestinian  leader to be beguiled. Several
other Palestinian leaders were so convinced  that they
offered to help build the infrastructure of Israeli
apartheid by  providing Israel with most of the cement it
needed to build its Jews-only  colonies and the apartheid
wall.

The problem now was Hamas, who, while  willing to recognise
Israel, still refused to recognise its special needs to  be
racist inside the Green Line and to set up an apartheid
system inside  the occupied territories. This is where
Saudi Arabia was brought in last  month in the holy city of
Mecca. Where else, pondered the Saudis, could one  broker
an agreement where the leadership of the victims of
Israeli racism  and oppression can be brought to solemnly
swear that they recognise their  oppressor's special need
to oppress them? Well, Hamas has been resisting  the
formula, which Fatah has upheld for five years, namely to
"commit" to  this crucial recognition. Hamas said that all
it could do was "respect" past  agreements that the PA had
signed with Israel and which recognised its need  to be
racist. This, Israel and the United States insist, is
insufficient  and the Palestinians will continue to be
isolated despite Hamas's "respect"  for Israel's right to
be racist. The condition for peace as far as Israel  and
the US are concerned is that both Hamas and Fatah
recognise and be  committed to Israel's right to be an
apartheid state inside the Green Line as  well as its
imposition of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza. Short
of  this, there will be no deal. The ensuing summit between
Condie Rice, Ehud  Olmert and the exalted PA President
Abbas was spent with Olmert interrogating  Abbas on how
much he remains committed to Israel's need for apartheid
in  the occupied territories. A minor replay summit was
concluded on the same  basis a few days ago. Abbas had
hoped that the two summits could coax Israel  to finalise
arrangements for the Bantustans over which he wants to
rule,  but Israel, understandably, felt insecure and had to
ensure that Abbas  himself was still committed to its right
to impose apartheid first.  Meanwhile, ongoing "secret"
Israeli-Saudi talks have filled Israel with the  hope and
expectation that the Arab League's upcoming summit in
Riyadh  might very well cancel the Palestinian right of
return that is guaranteed by  international law and affirm
the inviolability of Israel's right to be a  racist state
as guaranteed by international diplomacy. All of  Israel's
efforts to achieve peace might finally bear fruit if the
Arabs  finally concede to what international mediation had
already conceded to  Israel before them.

It should be clear then that in this  international
context, all existing solutions to what is called  the
Palestinian-Israeli "conflict" guarantee Israel's need to
maintain its  racist laws and its racist character and
ensure its right to impose apartheid  in the West Bank and
Gaza. What Abbas and the Palestinians are allowed  to
negotiate on, and what the Palestinian people and other
Arabs are being  invited to partake of, in these projected
negotiations is the political and  economic (but not the
geographic) character of the Bantustans that Israel  is
carving up for them in the West Bank, and the conditions
of the siege  around the Big Prison called Gaza and the
smaller ones in the West Bank. Make  no mistake about it,
Israel will not negotiate about anything else, as to do  so
would be tantamount to giving up its racist rule.

As for those  among us who insist that no resolution will
ever be possible before Israel  revokes all its racist laws
and does away with all its racist symbols, thus  opening
the way for a non-racist future for Palestinians and Jews
in a  decolonised bi-national state, Israel and its
apologists have a ready-made  response that has redefined
the meaning of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is no  longer
the hatred of and discrimination against Jews as a
religious or  ethnic group; in the age of Zionism, we are
told, anti-Semitism has  metamorphosed into something that
is more insidious. Today, Israel and its  Western defenders
insist, genocidal anti-Semitism consists mainly of  any
attempt to take away and to refuse to uphold the absolute
right of  Israel to be a racist Jewish state.

* The writer is associate professor  of modern Arab
politics and intellectual history at Columbia  University.
His latest book is The Persistence of the  Palestinian
Question; Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians .





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