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Indybay Feature
Jewish state idea mired in confusion
Since the collapse of the Oslo accords nearly five years ago, Israeli leaders have been demanding that the Palestinian Authority recognise Israel as a Jewish state in any prospective settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Some Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, have even used the concept of "state of the Jewish people", with the connotation that Israel belongs not only to its citizens, but to Jews all over the world, including potential future converts.
The idea, Israeli academics and intellectuals say, occupies "centre-stage" in Israel's Zionist collective thinking.
Last year, former Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu openly called for the adoption of policies aimed specifically at reducing or at least neutralising Arab demographic growth in Israel.
The growing demographic weight of Israeli Arabs, who constitute up to 20% of Israel's overall population, was more serious and more dangerous for Israel than threats posed by the Palestinians, he said.
Netanyahu's remarks triggered no outcry in Israel.
Three opinions
But what exactly is meant by "Jewish state" in practical terms, and what are the long-term ramifications for a Palestinian and Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state?
This question was put recently to three intellectuals: an Israeli professor, an Arab Knesset member and a Palestinian political scientist.
Palestinian advocates argue that given what they consider Israel's discriminatory policies, the world, let alone the Palestinians and Arabs, are under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in Israel than it was to maintain apartheid in the Republic of South Africa.
The concept of Jewish state (or, for that matter, Christian state) has no origin in international law.
This is the view of Azmi Bishara, an Arab legislator in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and an outspoken critic of Israeli treatment of its large Arab minority.
Israel, he said, wants the Arabs to recognise Israel's political legitimacy but also "Zionism's moral legitimacy".
Historical score
"Israel is interested in settling a historical score with the Palestinians and the Arabs. They want the Arabs to recognise Zionism and all that it did retroactively," Bishara told Aljazeera.net.
He cited two main reasons for Israel's insistence that the Palestinians recognise it as a Jewish state:
First, the negation and cancellation of the Palestinian right of return on the ground that Israel is a Jewish state, and since the estimated 4.5 million Palestinian refugees are not Jews, they have no right to return to their hometowns from which they were expelled or forced to flee amid war when Israel was created in 1948.
Second, a formal recognition of the Jewishness of Israel would lend "legitimacy" and "legality" to institutionalised policies and measures aimed at maintaining a Jewish majority.
These policies and measures, Bishara says, include encouraging Israel's Arab citizens to emigrate, preventing them for intermarrying with Palestinians, and seeing to it that their numbers remain within the "safe zone".
Asked if Israel would ever contemplate expelling at least some of its non-Jewish citizens in order to maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority, Bishara said Israel would first seek to exhaust all other "non-dramatic means".
Most Israelis, save probably a few marginal leftist intellectuals such as Illan Pappe of the University of Haifa, don't see any fault in insisting that their state be recognised as a Jewish state, rather than just merely another "nation state".
No special status
"We have been a Jewish state since 1948. This is reality. We are also a state for all its citizens, just as Jordan is an Arab state and a state for all its citizens and France is a French state," argues Ira Sharkansky, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Sharkansky argues that Israel should not be treated as any other normal nation state because of the Holocaust.
"I don't want to play the Holocaust card, but it is clear that the 'Jewish state' is viewed as a sort of guarantee against the recurrence of the Holocaust."
This is strongly rejected by Bishara, who argues that the "Jewishness" of Israel doesn't correspond to the "Americanness" of the US or the Frenchness of France.
"France, for example, is a state for all its citizens. France doesn't define itself as a Catholic state or the US as Protestant state. Israel can't be Jewish and democratic at the same time. The two are oxymoron."
Palestinian political scientist Atef Odwan, a professor of political science at Gaza's Islamic University, believes that Israel's insistence that other nations recognise it as a "Jewish state" is attributable first and foremost to undeclared Israeli designs against its sizeable Arab minority.
"Zionism has two sides - settling Jews in Palestine and uprooting non-Jews from it. Israel's long-term strategy is to ethnically cleanse and deport its non-Jewish citizens," he says.
Doomsday scenario
Odwan says: "They don't say this now because it is politically incorrect and the timing is wrong, but at one point in the future, they will tell the Arabs of Israel 'we are a Jewish state, you are not Jews, therefore you should leave'."
Odwan believes racist policies are adopted by successive Israeli governments. "Look at what they are doing to the Palestinians in the West Bank, where every act and every move is calculated to benefit Jews and harm non-Jews."
Sharkansky strongly rejects this "doomsday scenario", arguing that while there are indeed Jewish racists, the vast bulk of Israelis won't allow the occurrence of such a thing.
"Listen, we had Meir Kahane (the American rabbi founder of the extremist Kach group which advocates the collective deportation of Palestinians), and we outlawed his party. I would say Israel deals with its racists much more stringently than the Palestinians deal with their racists."
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3D4F81BB-D9A4-4085-B7D3-658B6D0D9FE3.htm
The idea, Israeli academics and intellectuals say, occupies "centre-stage" in Israel's Zionist collective thinking.
Last year, former Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu openly called for the adoption of policies aimed specifically at reducing or at least neutralising Arab demographic growth in Israel.
The growing demographic weight of Israeli Arabs, who constitute up to 20% of Israel's overall population, was more serious and more dangerous for Israel than threats posed by the Palestinians, he said.
Netanyahu's remarks triggered no outcry in Israel.
Three opinions
But what exactly is meant by "Jewish state" in practical terms, and what are the long-term ramifications for a Palestinian and Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state?
This question was put recently to three intellectuals: an Israeli professor, an Arab Knesset member and a Palestinian political scientist.
Palestinian advocates argue that given what they consider Israel's discriminatory policies, the world, let alone the Palestinians and Arabs, are under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in Israel than it was to maintain apartheid in the Republic of South Africa.
The concept of Jewish state (or, for that matter, Christian state) has no origin in international law.
This is the view of Azmi Bishara, an Arab legislator in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and an outspoken critic of Israeli treatment of its large Arab minority.
Israel, he said, wants the Arabs to recognise Israel's political legitimacy but also "Zionism's moral legitimacy".
Historical score
"Israel is interested in settling a historical score with the Palestinians and the Arabs. They want the Arabs to recognise Zionism and all that it did retroactively," Bishara told Aljazeera.net.
He cited two main reasons for Israel's insistence that the Palestinians recognise it as a Jewish state:
First, the negation and cancellation of the Palestinian right of return on the ground that Israel is a Jewish state, and since the estimated 4.5 million Palestinian refugees are not Jews, they have no right to return to their hometowns from which they were expelled or forced to flee amid war when Israel was created in 1948.
Second, a formal recognition of the Jewishness of Israel would lend "legitimacy" and "legality" to institutionalised policies and measures aimed at maintaining a Jewish majority.
These policies and measures, Bishara says, include encouraging Israel's Arab citizens to emigrate, preventing them for intermarrying with Palestinians, and seeing to it that their numbers remain within the "safe zone".
Asked if Israel would ever contemplate expelling at least some of its non-Jewish citizens in order to maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority, Bishara said Israel would first seek to exhaust all other "non-dramatic means".
Most Israelis, save probably a few marginal leftist intellectuals such as Illan Pappe of the University of Haifa, don't see any fault in insisting that their state be recognised as a Jewish state, rather than just merely another "nation state".
No special status
"We have been a Jewish state since 1948. This is reality. We are also a state for all its citizens, just as Jordan is an Arab state and a state for all its citizens and France is a French state," argues Ira Sharkansky, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Sharkansky argues that Israel should not be treated as any other normal nation state because of the Holocaust.
"I don't want to play the Holocaust card, but it is clear that the 'Jewish state' is viewed as a sort of guarantee against the recurrence of the Holocaust."
This is strongly rejected by Bishara, who argues that the "Jewishness" of Israel doesn't correspond to the "Americanness" of the US or the Frenchness of France.
"France, for example, is a state for all its citizens. France doesn't define itself as a Catholic state or the US as Protestant state. Israel can't be Jewish and democratic at the same time. The two are oxymoron."
Palestinian political scientist Atef Odwan, a professor of political science at Gaza's Islamic University, believes that Israel's insistence that other nations recognise it as a "Jewish state" is attributable first and foremost to undeclared Israeli designs against its sizeable Arab minority.
"Zionism has two sides - settling Jews in Palestine and uprooting non-Jews from it. Israel's long-term strategy is to ethnically cleanse and deport its non-Jewish citizens," he says.
Doomsday scenario
Odwan says: "They don't say this now because it is politically incorrect and the timing is wrong, but at one point in the future, they will tell the Arabs of Israel 'we are a Jewish state, you are not Jews, therefore you should leave'."
Odwan believes racist policies are adopted by successive Israeli governments. "Look at what they are doing to the Palestinians in the West Bank, where every act and every move is calculated to benefit Jews and harm non-Jews."
Sharkansky strongly rejects this "doomsday scenario", arguing that while there are indeed Jewish racists, the vast bulk of Israelis won't allow the occurrence of such a thing.
"Listen, we had Meir Kahane (the American rabbi founder of the extremist Kach group which advocates the collective deportation of Palestinians), and we outlawed his party. I would say Israel deals with its racists much more stringently than the Palestinians deal with their racists."
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3D4F81BB-D9A4-4085-B7D3-658B6D0D9FE3.htm
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My grandparents were kicked out of their home, with just the clothes on their back. They told stories about walking overland, looking for a safe place, but there was no safe place for Jews anywhere in north Africa. What my safta regreted most was "leaving the graves"- 4 generations of his family were buried on the property. Does anyone know anything about a repartation movement for Jews kicked out of Arab lands? There were hundreds of thousands who lost everything. Now that Israel appears to be on the verge of reparations for Palestinians, will anything be offered to the Jews removed from Arab lands?
One would hope that Jews kicked out of any country who tried to get back and were not allowed to would at least get some reparations for property. I wonder how many such cases would actually exist. My familly was forced to come to the US due to pogroms in E Europe but I have no idea if any property was left behind and would guess that anything owned was sold to pay for the boat tickets. For those forced out once the Nazis invaded reperations could be demanded of Germany but Ive only heard of such demands in cases of rich people with bank account or lost art treasures and havent heard anything about more normal famillys getting anything from Germany for houses that were destroyed or were never returned to after the war. Were most Middle Eastern Jews in the same situation as preWWII E Euopean jews or was it something closer to what happened to the Palestinians (where they were told they couldnt return to even collect their property even though they wanted to making the demand for property reperations feel stronger than a demand for reperations due to the hardship of being forced out or being forced out in such a horrible way that there was no desire to go back).
The real reason Palestinians need reperations has nothing to do with what happened a long time ago and has to do with the situation now. My familly may have lost a lot when we were kicked out of Poland but there isnt a memory in the family of wanting to go back of get lost property partly because we did well after comming to the US. In the case of the Palestinians many ended up in refugee camps and never got out. The need is one of aid to make the Palestinian economy viable more than merely aid to make up for past wrongs.
The whole idea of reperations to current generations for wrongs done by part generations bothers me. Much of the reason such demands make sense is because of an unwillingness of inheritance rights to ever be questioned. Why is it that a rich familly has a right to be rich while a poor familly doesnt? Reperations for slavery make sense to help bring equality to a community that was empovrished by a past wrong (one coudl say the same thing of Palestinians) but to view it as a legal thing that is based off the economic value of the wrong rather than the current situation assumes a belief property rights acrosss generations. I disagree with Capitalism but even for those who do believe in Capitalism one hears talk of "equality of opportunity" which is something that doesnt exist when some people are born into lives of leisure and others are not. I am not owed anything by the Germans of today since they are not living better than me because of the wrongs comitted by their ancestors on my ancestors.
The current Palestinian plight is due to many factors, including an unwillingness for Israel to let refugees from wars return, the injustice of the current Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the unwillingness for more wealthy countries to take Palestinians as refugees in large numbers (combined with an increasingly unwelcome environment in Western countries for any Muslim immigrants) The immediate demand of most Palestinians is an end to the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (meaning a real end not the fake end of a Gaza pullout where Palestinians are likely to not be allowed free movement to and from Egypt or other countries creating something that could look a lot like a giant prison or perhaps a country subject to a blockade) Reparations doesnt seem like a huge demand right now but it could help get things going in a positive direction if there ever were a real solution where Palestinians were allowed full citizenship rights somewhere. It could also lead to dependencies enslaving Palestinians (as continued international aid often does) and the idea of legal compensation for past wrongs as compared to the world helping make Palestinians lives better is seen pretty clearly if you look at the effects of current aid on the structure of Palestinian society (dependencies on Western Aid NGOs is much worse for the long term viability of a Palestinian society than a state run economy, an economy run by local communities or even a free market economy) Its probably safest for Palestinians to not demand reperations if they do get a new state because the way aid is provided by the West to rebuild societies (look at Iraq with Wetsern contractors looting Iraq uner the guise of rebuilding) almost always makes things worse.
To walk to north Africa from Yemen, one would need to walk on water.
Werent these all effectively European colonies at the time?
Or maybe Europe was all Arab colonies at one time. Why does everything with you have to be about the white man? I am sorry the Nazi party lost, but you are going to have to live with it.
Not so easy to enforce you "history" without a fascist mob huh?
In 1947 Egypt was ruled by King Farouk who most Egyptians saw as a British puppet (leading to an eventual coup and the rise of Lt Col Gamal Abdel Nasser several years later)
In 1947 Yemen was ruled by Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din who was a widely disliked monarch. It wasnt until 1967, in the face of uncontrollable violence, British troops began withdrawing, Federation rule collapsed, and NLF elements took control after eliminating their FLOSY rivals. South Arabia, including Aden, was declared independent on November 30, 1967, and was renamed the People's Republic of South Yemen.
In 1947 Saudi Arabia was ruled by the British and US backed Saudi Royal familly whose terroritoy was relatively recently conquered by them due to British support during and after WWI.
In 1947 Syria had just gained independence from France but was in the middle of a decade of coups. ", Syrian politics from independence through the late 1960s were marked by upheaval. A series of military coups, begun in 1949, undermined civilian rule and led to army colonel Adib Shishakli's seizure of power in 1951. After the overthrow of President Shishakli in a 1954 coup, continued political maneuvering supported by competing factions in the military eventually brought Arab nationalist and socialist elements to power."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria#Independence_to_1970
IN 1947 Jordan was ruled by a British installed monarch not native to the area. The mandate over Transjordan ended on 22 May 1946, but the special defense treaty relationship with the United Kingdom didnt end until 1957
IN 1947 Iraq was ruled by King Faisal II. The British installed Hashemite monarchy didnt end until July 14, 1958. "In 1956, the Baghdad Pact allied Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, United States and the United Kingdom, and established its headquarters in Baghdad. The Baghdad Pact constituted a direct challenge to Egyptian president Gamal Abdal Nasser."
Iraq had a sizable Jeiwsh population before the 1940s, but according to Wikipedia "The war and the hanging of a Jewish businessman led to the departure of most of Iraq's prosperous Jewish community. Although emigration was prohibited, many Jews made their way to Israel during this period with the aid of an underground movement. In 1950 the Iraqi parliament finally legalised emigration to Israel, and between May 1950 and August 1951, the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government succeeded in airlifting approximately 110,000 Jews to Israel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iraq
So antiSemitism became a problem under British rule but legally Jews were not allowed to leave (rather than being encouraged to leave).
...
You can try to blame the people of the Middle East for the expulsion of the Jewish population in the late 40s but none of the countries were ruled by the people and most were still either directly or indirectly in the hands of the US and Britain. Many countries like Iraq (where Baghdad was seen by the British when they conqured it during WWI as being majority Jewish) wouldnt allow Jews to leave since they feared the loss of a community that constituted a good portion of the middle-class in the cities. Pogroms inspired by the war with Israel did force many to leave (as in Iraq) but was there an organized attempt to ethnically cleanse any of the countries of their Jewish populations? Correct me if Im wrong but I'm pretty sure that Saudi Arabia would be the only country in the region to have had laws at the time outlawing minority religions?
Jordan was 2/3 of Palestine but the British (alwaysplayers of the double game) owed the Hussein family a favor and so gave them Jordan and Iraq. Defense treaty or not the British did nothing to keep Jordan from invading in '48, expelling all of the Jews from East Jerualem (at which point it became only then "historically Arab") and desecrating over 50 synagogues and cemetaries. By the way, "Glubb Pasha" the general that lead the Jordanian forces in '48 was a British officer named John Glubb. In essence, the British really reacted strongly to the discovery of oil in the Arab countries in the '30s, and their politics followed. If one is Jewish, then one cannot be granted Jordanian citizenship, even today.
My rough understanding was that there was some sort of discussion of the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands via the League of Arab Nations but it requires further reading. So simply, colonial powers weren't running the show. As to your other question, the vast majority of Arab countries were never run by the people and are not today. Its usually certain families regardless of who seems to be incharge.