Israel, a democratic state?

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies.

Wikipedia states, “Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel. Prior to coming to the UK, he was a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa (1984–2007) and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa (2000–2008).[2] He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), The Modern Middle East (2005), A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (2003), and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988).[3] He was also a leading member of Hadash, and was a candidate on the party list in the 1996 and 1999 Knesset elections.”

The reason for mentioning his background is to verify his bona fides and characterize him as knowledgeable and without a predetermined agenda.

Pappe, in his book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” describes the planned and purposeful removal of Palestinians from Israel starting in 1948. Some 700,000 plus Palestinians were removed at gunpoint during that year, while others were massacred as hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed. He has blamed the creation of Israel and Israel’s policies for the lack of peace in the Middle East. Pappe has stated that Zionism is more dangerous than Islamic militancy and has called for an international boycott of Israeli academics.

Let me segue to Max Blumenthal, author of the book “Goliath, Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.”

Max Blumenthal was born in Boston in 1977 and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 with a B.A. in history.

Blumenthal made a short video in 2007. titled “Generation Chickenhawk,” in which he interviewed attendees at the College Republican National Convention in Washington, DC, and asked them, why as supporters of the Iraq war they had not enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces. Mr. Blumenthal has written articles for the Nation, Mother Jones, and Huffington Post.

Blumenthal reveals, in “Goliath,” how Israel has become a country where right-wing leaders like Avigdor Lieberman and Bibi Netanyahu are sacrificing democracy on the altar of their power politics; where the loyal opposition largely and passively stands aside and watches the organized assault on civil liberties; where state-funded Orthodox rabbis publish books that provide instructions on how and when to kill Gentiles; where half of Jewish youth declare their refusal to sit in a classroom with an Arab; and where mob violence targets Palestinians and African asylum seekers scapegoated by leading government officials as “demographic threats.” While this is going on, we, in the U.S. continue to support Israel with over $3 billion per year.

Blumenthal relies on personal interviews with political leaders, your man on the street in bars and coffee houses, to the leaders and youth of the Palestinian society inside Israel, etc.

As is usually the case, Blumenthal has been viciously attacked by many in the Jewish community, labelled anti-Semitic, self-hating Jew, etc. Although he has been invited to speak to many groups, especially on college campuses, right-wing Jewish groups have been fighting against his right to speak.

I looked at the reviews of his book, “Goliath” by those who supposedly read it. Readers who appreciated his efforts and felt that he illuminated the situation in the Middle East had much to say about the book. People who hated the book, relied mostly on name calling and insults and said very little else. It makes me wonder if they bothered to read it.

Unfortunately, this is what exists. Any rational discussion about Israel with many Jews meets up with irrational and highly emotional responses. This is true of many professional and highly capable people or folks who are progressive in all other things but Israel.

The question that torments me, as a Jew, is what have we learned? Centuries of victimization, hate, religious persecution, and finally extermination and look what acts against humanity Israel is committing and we, as Jews, are justifying.

Much of the justification centers around Palestinian acts of violence against Israelis without putting it in context. It is the Israeli who has taken Palestinian land and by expanding their settlements continues to do so today. It is the Israeli who occupies Palestinian land and destroys their homes and villages. It is and has been the Israeli who has sabotaged efforts to reach a resolution by continuing to develop new settlements while negotiations with the Palestinians were in progress. Is this behavior coincidental? I say, no. It has long been my feeling that Israel’s goal is not and has not been to reach a two state solution but rather to drive the Palestinian people out completely. Hence, the illusion of negotiations as a public relations tool to pacify critics.

To equate rock throwing Palestinian adolescents with an Israeli army armed, with the aid of the U.S., with modern, sophisticated weapons, missiles, jets, and tanks is ludicrous. To refer to Palestinian resisters as “terrorists” blinds us to the realities of the situation. One country’s “terrorists” are another’s freedom fighters. Remember, it was Israel’s acts of “terror” against the British which drove them out of the territory and led to the implementation of the Balfour Declaration which ceded land to the Zionists.

Then there are the well meaning supporters of the Palestinian cause who advise a nonviolent resistance. Does anyone really think that Israel will willingly concede their dominance in order to demonstrate fairness? Do these same people feel that they would have advised the Warsaw Jews to remain nonviolent and negotiate with the Nazis for a fair settlement?

The Israelis have constructed an apartheid system that holds the Palestinians captive. It is no different than what Jews experienced in Europe during WW 11and what Africans experienced in South Africa. There is no taking the moral high ground on this issue if you try to justify Israel’s policies. Using the Holocaust and the slogan “Never Again” can no longer justify Israel’s racist policies.

Dave Alpert has masters degrees in social work, educational administration, and psychology. He spent his career working with troubled inner city adolescents.