A state where there are only Jews.
By Uri Avnery
Israel is the only state in the world that has a
population of 200 percent. And that’s a fact.
Public opinion polls show that it has two simultaneous
majorities. One is peace-loving, the other supports
extreme nationalism.
At the present time, it looks like this: In every
public opinion poll there is a large majority that
supports Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Sharon wants, of course, to enlarge the settlements,
intensify the war against the Palestinians, eliminate
Yasser Arafat, postpone a permanent solution and
refuse any peace negotiations until unattainable
conditions are met. Anyone who supports him must be a
radical right-winger.
But the very same public opinion polls show also that
a majority agrees to withdraw from (almost) all the
occupied territories, dismantle(almost) all
settlements and accept the establishment of a
Palestinian state in return for peace.
How is this possible? Can a state have a population of
more than 100 percent? If so, Israel is a very special
country.
This curious situation did not come about yesterday.
It started long ago.
I remember public opinion polls of more than 20 tears
ago, which also revealed two majorities. The first
majority supported the idea of expelling all Arabs
from the country west of the Jordan River. The
second one supported a withdrawal from the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip. Together with those who were
against both proposals, this totaled 200
percent.
Statisticians and sociologists examined, researched,
shook their collective heads, shrugged their
shoulders, raised both hands and thought: a crazy
people. Doesn’t know what it wants. Mixed up.
Schizophrenic. Suffering from a split personality.
But the people were not mad at all. The professors
just did not know how to read the results of their
polls.
What the public tried to say was: If it were possible
to drive out all the Arabs, that would be wonderful.
If it’s impossible, let’s get the hell out of there.
Why? For a simple reason: the one thing that unifies
almost all Jewish Israelis is the wish to live in a
state where there are only Jews. If we could achieve
such a state in all the country between the
Mediterranean and the Jordan River, OK. If not, let’s
leave the occupied territories. Not “land for peace”,
but “withdrawal for the sake of safeguarding a
homogeneous Jewish state”. This is the majority
opinion, and there is, indeed, only one majority.
Some call this “racist”. Some call it “nationalist”.
Some say that this is “apartheid”. But this attitude
is rooted in the fact that for thousands of years Jews
have lived as a religious-ethnic community dispersed
throughout the world and often suffered cruel
persecution(especially in the Christian world). They
have developed a ghetto mentality. They want to live
among themselves, separate from others,surrounded by a
high fence.
Zionism wanted to achieve this by establishing a state
where the Jews would live together, without Goyim
(Gentiles). Even the presence of a considerable
minority (the Arab citizens) in Israel creates severe
mental stress. For most Israelis, the ideal situation
would be a state without a single non-Jewish citizen.
(The presence of foreign workers does not bother
anybody; it is temporary, and they are devoid of any
rights.)
Lately this aspiration has found new expression in an
idea which is becoming quite popular: to transfer the
Israeli Arab villages adjoining the West Bank,
together with their inhabitants, to the future
Palestinian state, which means giving up territory so
that Israel will have less non-Jewish citizens.
This is quite unusual. The French, for example, have
shed rivers of blood in order to keep Alsace, whose
people are of German descent. India is ready to wage a
nuclear war in order to keep Kashmir, which is
populated by Muslims. For other nations, territory is
more important than a homogeneous population,
geography precedes demography. Israelis, too, like
territory — but demography is by far more important to
them.
One example: After the 1956 war, during which Israel
conquered the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, David
Ben-Gurion was compelled to give up the Sinai. At the
time there was a clamor from the right and the left to
annex the Gaza Strip. Ben-Gurion adamantly refused,
because he did not want to increase the number of Arab
citizens by hundreds of thousands at any price. (The
brilliant idea of an eternal military occupation,
which
allows the occupier to abstain from conferring
citizenship on the occupied population, was not yet
invented.)
Today, too, there is only one majority in Israel. Most
Israelis are ready to pay the price demanded for
peace. So why do they support Sharon, who represents
the opposite? For one simple reason: they have
been brought to believe that “We have no partner”.
There is a complete unanimity, from Avigdor Liberman
and Effy Eitam on the right to Haim Ramon and Yossi
Sarid on the “left”, that “there is no partner”. And
since there is no partner for peace, let’s support
Sharon, who knows (or so it seems) how to wage war.
The aim of this brainwashing is precisely
to make it possible to keep the occupied territories
and, God willing, to drive the Palestinians out.
The real criminal in this story is Ehud Barak. In
order to hide his monumental failure as a peace-maker,
he created the legend that “We offered them everything
and they rejected everything.” This historic lie
is the connecting link between the two seemingly
contradictory results of the polls: the majority is
ready to pay the price of peace but does not believe
that peace is possible. So let’s support Sharon.
There is no riddle here. Israel is not a mad cow. It
is, at most, a maddened cow.
Uri Avnery, award-winning Israeli journalist and
writer, three-time member of the Knesset and a
columnist for the Ma’ariv daily, is a founding member
of the Gush Shalom peace movement.) |
