[As with the essay that was drafted shortly afterwards, on an ostensibly very different topic but which shares some interesting connections, this is a currently a work in progress which needs major editing. It may take quite awhile to finish. I find it peculiarly difficult to work on, so progress is slow. So I apologize in advance. However, I find I must do this editing on an already public document because otherwise I wouldn't be able to get myself to write it at all, and I feel the topic is extremely important, both by itself, and together with the following essay.]
Zionists in Europe, the UK, and the USA are pushing for laws that define anti-semitism as including criticism of the State of Israel and the Israel Lobby, and punish people for those kinds of political speech. This is worse than merely outrageous. It is Orwellian.
In the USA, a schoolteacher in Kansas has lost her teaching contract because she is a member of the Mennonite church, which has officially endorsed BDS, a boycott of goods from Israel and/or the Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel. She is currently being defended by the ACLU. In Texas, flood repair contractors must sign a form declaring that they are not participating in BDS in order to receive state relief funds. This is quite ironic for a country which claims to be "free" and whose founding was partly motivated by the desire to escape from forced trade.
In the UK,
this has resulted in the expulsion of a Jewish mathematics and philosophy professor, Moshe Machover, from the UK Labour Party. Ironically the specific reason for his dismissal was that he had written an article titled "Anti-Zionism does not equal Anti-Semitism" for a publication of the Labour Party Marxists group. Machover himself was born and raised in Israel.
Anti-Zionism was the mainstream position of nearly all Jews before the holocaust, as well as being the Orthodox view according to the Jewish Torah and Talmud and all of the oral and written Jewish tradition as affirmed by all rabbis. There are many different Jewish groups which continue to hold that view to this day. One group which is very visible and active is
Neturei Karta. I am proud and happy to be able to contribute to them (as a fellow of good will primarily). It warmed my heart to get a nice blessing from one of their Orthodox rabbis. They demonstrate frequently in their Orthodox suits (they
are Orthodox, and they do not like being described as Ultra Orthodox--as they often are--but nobody doubts they are Jews) carrying signs saying things such as:
Authentic Rabbis have always opposed Zionism and the State of "Israel"
Zionism and Judaism are Extreme Opposites
Peaceful Dismantling of the Zionist State Is the REAL SOLUTION
Zionists Have No Right to Rule Over ANY PART of the HOLY LAND
Judaism rejects the Zionist state and condemns its CRIMINAL SIEGE & OCCUPATION
Neturei Karta descibes their history as follows:
The group was founded in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1938, splitting off from Agudas Yisroel. Agudas Yisroel was established in 1912 for the purpose of fighting Zionism. Gradually lured by money and honor they sold out to the "Golden-Calf" (see Exodus, XXXII) of Zionism. Those who wanted to maintain their faith and continue the struggle against Zionism, dissociated themselves from Agudas Yisroel and associated parties.
Counting the people in their communities and synagogues (they specifically list 4 synagogues and say there are others) Neturei Karta say they number about 5000. But also that Jews who think and believe just like them number in the hundreds of thousands.
This is not at all hard to believe seeing the demonstrations by anti-Zionist Jews in Britain and Israel itself, with 60,000 anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews gathered in huge stadiums within Israel, as shown by an umbrella organization of anti-Zionist Jews,
IVJ, who may have better pictures of
mass demonstrations of 20,000 or more anti-Zionist Jews which are happening in places like New York State every year if not every month. Of course you don't see these things in the Zionist US Media.
It might have been IVJ who organized a workshop I attended at the US Social Forum in 2007 which was riveting and made fundamental changes in my thinking. Since then, I'm sure the ideas of anti-Zionism have only spread further among Jews and others.
Here's another website, and one of their videos shows
20,000 Anti-Zionist Othrodox Jews at a New York State stadium in 2017. A rabbi interviewed says they have speakers and guest representing Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews from Canada, Europe, South Africa, and around the world. What has recently galvanized Orthodox Jews is that the Israeli government has decided that Orthodox Jews are required to serve in the IDF like all other Jews in Israel, and dragging Orthodox Jews out of their homes in the middle of the night (they show the pictures), beating themup and hauling them to prison for refusing the draft. Not just draftees are hauled away...family members are dragged away first for standing in the way (I've seen one picture of an old lady being dragged away). But the draftees who refuse are not just dragged away and put in jail for a few days...they are given prison sentences.
Orthodox Jews like this say they should not be forced to fight for a state that should not exist according to the Torah. They do not recognize the State of Israel and they say it is NOT a Jewish state, but a Zionist state, and Zionism is the extreme opposite of Judaism. They say they were living in Palestine (and around the world) for hundreds of years in peace with their Palestinian neighbors until the Zionist terrorists took control and started killing both them and the Palestinians who stood in their way.
The more I look the more events like this I find. I'm convinced there are indeed hundreds of thousands of Anti-Zionist Jews, if not more. And they are not just sitting at home, they appear to be out there organizing and demonstrating far more than most. And they do not submit to Zionist authorities, they resist them all they can. Anti-Zionist Orthodox are
Here is a 90 minute lecture by Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro contrasting Judaism with Zionism. The aim of Zionism, he explains, was to destroy Torah Judaism--a religion of peace, celebration, and tolerant coexistence--and replace it with a militaristic identity-based nationalism. Hertzl did not invent Zionism. Zionism had been invented centuries beforehand by Christians. What Hertzl did was to popularize Zionism among Jews, in total opposition opposition to what rabbis of the time were saying. (Zionism did not win over many Jews or Rabbis until the Holocaust.) Rabbi Shapiro argues well that Zionism did not originate as a reaction to anti-semitism, nor is it the correct response to anti-semitism, nor is it a wise approach to providing Jews safe haven. He argues that Zionism was openly understood by its founders to make Jews more like the very people they feared most. Jewish Zionism was seen by its founders as a plan to cure Judaism and its tendency to make Jews physically weak and scholarly rather than muscular and prideful. Ultimately the result of Zionism is to increase anti-semitism around the world (every time Israel engages in some brutal act, anti-semitism rises everywhere) and make Jews everywhere less safe, as well as Israel being about the least safe place for Jews to be in the first place. I think Rabbi Shapiro's presentations are well worth watching and wonderful with a few caveats that aren't relevant to this essay but which I'll address later.
Here's a wonderful debate between Rabbi Shapiro and Gilad Atzmon. Atzmon lived in Israel as a Jew and became so disgusted with the entire operation that he came to the USA and renounced his Judaism. He makes the point (to which Rabbi Shapiro silently concurs) that "we agree that Zionism itself is anti-semitism."
So, are all these Jewish Anti-Zionists "anti-semitic" ? Seeing all this, it does appear to be the other way around.
Now this all may seem nutty and inconsequential now. Anti-Zionists are only a small (but growing) fraction of Jews. Clearly Zionism has the much greater footprint among those commonly accepted as Jews. This is not likely to change soon. Nor does Israel seem to be crumbling under pressure from its neighbors* or "enemies," instead it is raising and reinforcing the Citadel further all the time--and some Zionists have even been talking about a Greater Land of Israel extending not merely to the Jordan but to the Euphrates. While some neighbors used to be among Israel's enemies--as evidenced by the wars of 1967 and 1973--since then Israel and its imperial partner the USA have cultivated client-state relationships with Israel's neighbors, including Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Others such have been damaged or weakened by US/Israeli covert and overt aggression for decades and are in no position now to challenge Israel for the forseeable future...not to mention the USA.
But I look at the big picture and the long view. I believe that by 2300, or even 2100, it will not seem so nutty. Many things are virtually certain to change by then:
1) The abandonment if not collapse of the Empire of the USA.
2) At least 3 degrees of Global Heating, if not 6. This might sound small, but in fact the effects are huge and dramatic. (See the book "Six Degrees.") Even with the fraction of a degree we are seeing so far...the effects are starting to look fairly dramatic.
The Southern Levant is virtually certain to be even more like a desert than it is now. This will be a test of who the real desert semites are. And a test of who can live in peace with their neighbors without the use of force. I believe that people who are more largely European or Asian won't like it in the southern Levant any more. The people who really are the desert people will still find the Southern Levant to be their place, even more uniquely. This may include a few Jews. I forsee return to the racial distribution of about 1900, if not 1800.
Meanwhile, the best course of action is not to depend on militarism now and in the future to maintain security, but on the good will of one's neighbors, from across the street to the other side of the world. Empires rise and fall.
The best that Zionist Jews (as well as others) can hope for, in the long run, is the peaceful dismantlement of the Zionist state, and the quick restoration of the good will of most others through re-committing themselves to the well being of others, the true lesson of Judaism (as well as Christianity and most other religions, and true leftist atheism). The sooner this is started, the better.
In these regards, I see the true Jewish tradition, as upheld by the Neturei Karta, as being quite prophetic. Remarkably so. Though I do take issue with the categorical imperative to "Be Fruitful and Multiply." That can't hold up in the long run, though it may have some further use in the not so distant future. I also wouldn't condemn the Enlightenment completely, but it's clear already it was full of thorns as well as rose-- and followers of the Enlightenment need to take care never to think in only self-interested terms.
*****
Machover spelled out the historical facts that Hertzl himself thought anti-semitic regimes would be allies in the Zionist cause, and for this reason Zionists of the time welcomed the early Nazi policies including the Nuremburg laws of 1935, before the Nazis switched to a policy of extermination.
After WWII, the worst atrocities of the Nazis became the ultimate justification for Zionism, as an eternal get-out-of-jail-free-and-label-others-as-the-monsters card through which the newly US owned and operated world could ignore the forcible expulsion of other peoples (also mostly semitic) from the newly claimed State of Israel. This has continued without significant change, and is now in its deep stage having clearly become Genocide itself. While
on-the-street Israelis are openly calling for the Final Solution for Palestinians--nothing new, ever since Golda Meier defined the Palestinians into non-existence or long before and I've heard similar sentiments from Zionists ever since 1967, and recently the West Bank having been annexed complete by official political statements now (of the sort "we are never going to allow...")--and where for a long the original people have had no right to property, privacy or life, and Gaza getting a periodic Mowing the Lawn killing tens of thousands and terrorizing all--while always being a prison from which no travel or exchange is possible except what little is allowed by the Israeli gatekeepers and their police state allies. The is not merely "Apartheid"--the Blacks in South Aftrica were not being systematically driven from the country they were doing the work. In Israel--there is no alternative to no alternative for "Palestinians"--the people who occupied the country and to whom it had been promised before it was taken from them by force in the late 1940's.
Palestinians suffer mightily while their country has been demolished to make way for rich whiter people seeking refuge from previous enemies who are now legally and traditionally bound not to be anti-semitic--threatening to be to the point of criticizing any of their actions. The US and the UK are both excellent places for Jews, who are the single richest ethnic group in the USA--a fact rarely mentioned. Meanwhile, wars and destructions intended to shore up Imperial control of the Middle East (for Empire and Israel, or Israel and Empire, or something like that) have been enormously destructive and costly and unending. This does not look like something that goes on well forever. It is a matter of Imperial Patience, or perhaps Imperial Succession. I will go on saying that at best Zionism was a big mistake, Diaspora was and remains the better choice for most Jews, the ultimately safer choice, as well as being the most ethical choice without extreme devotion to Palestinian rights or sovereignty (which is now legally prohibited by that "Democratic" but also "Jewish" state of Israel---you could be denied entry or immediately deported for calling for BDS).
To add to the deep ironies, the most prominent arbiter of the new anti-semitic thought crimes is Johnathan Freedland, a senior columnist at the Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle, who is himself a winner of the Orwell Award. (I had to look it up, and was disappointed to find that the Orwell Award was not some kind of sarcastic anti-Award. Or maybe it is, and they're simply not upfront about it.
Freedland won apparently for a series of articles on different topics, which look a bit edgy, but also try to mix left and conservative memes for a kind of bogus centrism. In an oped about Thatcher's passing, he contrasted his left center feeling that Thatcher should merely not be specially blessed to the "idiots" who wrote "the bitch is dead." Count me with the latter.) I learned long ago not to completely trust the Guardian. They seem to have a particular thing against real leftism--as somewhat represented by Corbyn whom the Guardian is always smearing with one hatchet job or another--and instead pushing for neoliberalism and identity politics and Zionism. Yes, perhaps the Guardian is not quite as bad as the New York Times, but with those same tendencies take further, and with the Times being in addition the one of the best examples of a pro-War propaganda machines in history, with the latest red scare about "Russians manipulating our Elections!" being as bogus and counter contextual as previous examples going back to at least the bombing of the US Maine, and designed deliberately to promote militaristic and Zionistic ends. The whole "Russians!" thing is daily debunked by the ultimate investigative reporter Robert Parry at Consortium News, to this day. Every knows which foreign government more far more than any other manipulates the US government,:Israel and it's lobbyists mostly, and massively. It's likely they have a very outsized effect on elections also, from their millions in contributions and dedicated mobilization. Meanwhile the NYTimes hyperventilates about how alledgedly a few Russians bought Puppy ads for some reason costing a few thousand dollars cash in all, having no likely impact, but potentially making a pretext for war if detected, something chessmaster Putin would be certain to never do.
Well despite this Orwellian counter reaction by some people in high places in the media and politics, the main action, as Machover says, is the international world of people pulling away from a knee jerk lock step alignment with the hawkish needs of Zionists. This is especially notable with those under 30, even among Jews, perhaps especially among Jews. (Somehow never my somewhat more elderly friends. Not in 60 years of associating with mostly jews from my Southern California semi elite background, has one of my own Jewish friends been or become anti-Zionist. But I see Jewish anti-Zionists to be the majorities of young jews in radical conferences. Before WWII, the majority of jews and most Rabbis was anti-Zionist, there was a long Talmudic tradition of opposing a new State of Israeli until certain conditions were met.)
Many Orthodox Jews today refuse to accept the legitimacy of Israel and say the best solution is for it to be peacefully dismantled.
But meanwhile, UK courts finally cleared for release and undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into the Israeli Lobby and it's influence in the UK. Among the findings were how Zionists in the Labour Party did actually try to undermine Corbyn. The judge decided against the claims that criticism of Israel or the Israeli lobby would constitute anti-semitism.
Hopefully we will see the results of a similar documentary made undercover within the US Israeli Lobby, the existence of which was subsequently made known.
The most authoritative account of the way the Israeli Lobby and its Zionist friends have manipulated US foreign policy to their own ends is a book by two highly respected and prominent Jewish scholars, Mearsheimer and Walt, in their book aptly titled,
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
But I admire the straightforwardness of one commenter who quotes this from
another website (from a prolific Jewish scholar in the USA):
Israeli power over the making and implementing of US Middle East policy has led to the US invasions of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the current economic boycott and blockade of Iran; the breakup of Sudan; and the bombing of Somalia.
We could quibble that it's not just Israel and it's armies of lobbyists and friends including officials and people in "think tanks". There are cold war imperialists who might not care at all for Israel itself except as a projection point for US power...for which all of the above might also make sense. I see as an even confluence of forces, Zionist and Imperialist, with each person and organization having some combination. However, the Zionist part is a major part, and why should Zionists be running US Foreign Policy ??? See all the harmful things it has gotten us into. And now, war with the most successful independent country in the middle east, Iran???
The basic problem with Zionism is not Judaism. Judaism is a fine religion, and Jews are fine people. The problem is ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is toxic wherever it arises. It rots the mind and soul.
Once ethnic nationalism sets in, and there are "others" to move outside the perimeter of social welfare, serious ethical and moral problems begin to arise.
Judaism itself teaches the importance of treating "the other" better than family. That is the true lesson of Sodom. It was for disrespecting the laws of hospitality that Sodom was consumed by fire and brimstone.
Historical Justice, Zionists, and BDS
A Zionist is someone for whom the creation of a "Jewish State" is the most important historical imperative, ahead of such concerns as peace, justice, and freedom. Jews are not necessarily Zionists nor are Zionists necessarily Jews. Zionists like to say that "Israel has a right to exist."
As Noam Chomsky says, the concept that any state has a "Right to Exist" itself did not exist until Zionists invented it to silence their critics. Noam Chomsky is a Jew who lived in Israel early in his life. He actually does believe that there should be an Israel, but he is not a Zionist. He believes that there should be an Israel which respects international laws and universal principles, and co-exists with an adjacent Palestinian state along the internationally agreed borders. Norman Finkelstein believes that also. I agree with them that if this option were actually attainable, it probably ought to be agreed to, as the best deal that might be imagined in a century or so.
But many Jews and other people, including most BDS supporters and "leadership", believe that this is not possible anymore, if it ever was, and so what is actually needed is a single state within the combined borders of Israel and Palestine which has fully equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, including the right of all Palestinians to return and live with fully equal rights in their homeland. This is much closer to what seems like justice. It is sometimes claim that Zionists would fight this to the bitter end, perhaps the last person standing, as it represents the end of the dream of a Jewish racist supremacist state.
I don't see how it is necessary to agree completely. The BDS tactics are available to anyone, regardless of whether they agree with the ultimate aim of BDS "leadership." In fact it's not exactly clear that BDS has a centralized leadership as such. There does not appear to be a "BDS Organization" one can actually join. The BDS website looks for sympathetic organizations close to where you live. BDS is primarily just a tactic, and the tactic really just involves Boycott and Divestment now, to achieve peace and greater justice than we have now, nothing else in particular, since everything else is subject to negotiation by representatives of the actual parties involved.
The Creation of Israel was a Historic Injustice
I've seen a great video of Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews protesting Israel on Balfour Day in London. There seemed to be hundreds of Orthodox Jews in the protest. They were only one set of many protestors totaling tens of thousands.
The Orthodox Rabbi speaking soft-pedaled the guilt of the British for the Balfour Declaration, saying that the British did not intend to create a Jewish State, rather only to allow a limited number of Jews to settle. It was the Zionists who defied the British to make the Zionist State.
There is much truth to this. The Balfour Declaration says nothing about a Jewish State, only a Jewish Homeland. A clause in the Declaration purported that no Palestinian rights would be abridged. However, the Declaration was actually a letter to Lord Rothschild, a key Zionist, who of course was interested in a Jewish State, and Balfour had no standing to even allow for a Jewish Homeland, which itself was an abridgement of the rights of the occupants of Palestine to self determination.
Misterioso at Mondoweiss wrote an excellent summary in
a discussion of other groups at the Balfour Day protest in London. He spells out the injustice of the Declaration itself, as well as the Partition Plan decades later. However this summary also makes clear that Britain many times thereafter made it clear that they had no intention of allowing for a Jewish state:
Britain’s illegal (i.e, in violation of the well established legal maxim, “nemo dat quod non habet” – nobody can give what he does not possess) Balfour Declaration laid the foundation for the eventual dispossession and expulsion of Palestine’s indigenous Arab Muslim and Christian inhabitants. To quote Chaim Weizmann, “the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was built on air.”
The King-Crane Commission made it clear where it stood regarding the Zionist’s historical claim to Palestine: “…the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a `right’ to Palestine, based on an occupation of two thousand years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.” (“The American King-Crane Commission of Inquiry, 1919” quoted in From Haven to Conquest, p. 217, edited by Harvard Professor Walid Khalidi) Or as Lord Sydenham stated before the British House of Lords on 21 June 1922: “If we are going to admit claims on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down.” (Hansard)
The Balfour Declaration was also opposed by Gertrude Bell, one of the era’s greatest Arabists, a colleague of T.E. Lawrence and a member of British intelligence in Cairo. Realizing what it could lead to, she wrote the British cabinet of PM Lloyd George advising it that “an independent Jewish Palestine” was impractical because “[Palestine]…is not Jewish; ” the native population would not “accept Jewish authority…. Jerusalem is equally sacred to three faiths and should not be put under the exclusive control of any one….” (Sanders, The High Walls of Jerusalem, p. 585)
By incorporating the Balfour Declaration the 1922 League of Nations British Class A mandate for Palestine did facilitate Jewish immigration to “secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home,” but it did not call for the creation of a sovereign Jewish state or homeland in Palestine or any form of partition. This was made very clear in the Churchill Memorandum (1 July 1922) regarding the British Mandate: “[T]he status of all citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the law shall be Palestinian, and it has never been intended that they, or any section of them, should possess any other juridical status.”
Furthermore, regarding the British Mandate, as approved by the Council of the League of Nations, the British government declared: “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State.” (Command Paper, 1922)
In May 1939, the British government issued the MacDonald White Paper, which in accordance with the Mandate, ruled out any possibility of a Jewish state, and declared Great Britain “could not have intended Palestine should be converted into a Jewish state against the will of the Arab population of the country.” It called for a Palestinian state in which Jews and Arabs would govern jointly based on a constitution to be drafted by their representatives and those of Britain. The constitution would safeguard the “Jewish National Home” in Palestine and if good relations developed between Jews and Arabs, the country would be granted independence in ten years. Land sales to Jews were to be restricted and the annual level of Jewish immigration was to be limited to 15,000 for five years, following which, Palestinian Arab acquiescence would be required.
Re the Partition Plan:
Palestinians rejected the Partition Plan (UNGA Res. 181, Nov. 29/47) for entirely justified reasons based on international law. While Jews made up just 31% of the population (90% of foreign origin, only 30% had become citizens, thousands were illegal immigrants) and privately owned only between 6% and 7% of the land, the Partition Plan (recommendatory only, no legal foundation, contrary to the British Class A Mandate and the Atlantic Charter, never adopted by the UNSC) outrageously recommended they receive 56% of Palestine (including its most fertile areas) in which Palestinians made up 45% of the population. (10% of Palestine’s Jewish population consisted of native Palestinian/Arab Jews who were anti-Zionist.)
48% of the total land area of mandated Palestine was privately owned (‘mulk khaas’) by Palestinian Arabs. As noted above, total Jewish privately owned land was only between 6% and 7%. About 45% of the total land area was state owned, i.e., by citizens of Palestine, and it was comprised of Communal Property (‘mashaa’), Endowment Property, (‘waqf’), and Government Property, (‘miri’.) (The British Mandate kept an extensive land registry and the UN used the registry during its early deliberations. It has in its archives 453,000 records of individual Palestinian owners defined by name, location & area.)
Although Palestinian Arab citizens made up at least 69% of the population and to repeat, privately owned 48% of the land, the Partition Plan recommended they receive only 42% as a state. (The 2% of Palestine comprised of Jerusalem and Bethlehem was to be placed under international control, a corpus separatum.)
Land ownership by Sub-district in all of mandated Palestine, 1947:
Acre: 87% Palestinian Arab owned, 3% Jewish owned, 10% state owned; Safed: 68% Palestinian Arab owned, 18% Jewish owned, 14% state owned; Haifa: 42% Palestinian Arab owned, 35% Jewish owned, 23% state owned; Nazareth: 52% Palestinian Arab owned, 28% Jewish owned, 20% state owned; Tiberias: 51% Palestinian Arab owned, 38% Jewish owned, 11% state owned; Jenin: 84% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, 16% state owned; Beisan: 44% Palestinian Arab owned, 34% Jewish owned, 22% state owned; Tulkarm: 78% Palestinan Arab owned; 17% Jewish owned, 5% state owned; Nablus: 87% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, 13% state owned; Jaffa: 47% Palestinian Arab owned, 39% Jewish owned, 14% state owned; Ramleh: 77% Palestinian Arab owned, 14% Jewish owned, 9% state owned; Ramallah: 99% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, less than 1% state owned; Jerusalem (West and East): 84% Palestinian Arab owned, 2% Jewish owned, 14% state owned; Gaza: 75% Palestinian Arab owned, 4% Jewish owned, 21% state owned; Hebron: 96% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, 4% state owned; Bersheeba (Negev): 15% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, 85% state owned. (Village Statistics, Jerusalem: Palestine Government, 1945; subsequently published as United Nations Map no. 94b, August, 1950)
Population of and land ownership in West and East Jerusalem in 1947: The total population of West Jerusalem (the New City) and East Jerusalem (the Old City) and their environs was about 200,000 with a slight Arab majority. (Professor Walid Khalidi, Harvard, “Plan Dalet,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn, 1988, p. 17)
The total land area of West Jerusalem (the New City) in 1947 was 19,331 dunams (about 4,833 acres) of which 40 per cent was owned by Palestinian Muslims and Christians, 26.12 per cent by Jews and 13.86 per cent by others, including Christian communities. Government and municipal land made up 2.90 per cent and roads and railways 17.12 per cent.
East Jerusalem (the Old City) consisted of 800 dunams (about 240 acres) of which five dunams (just over one acre) were Jewish owned and the remaining 795 dunams were owned by Palestinian Muslims and Christians. (“Assessing Palestinian Property in the City,” by Dalia Habash and Terry Rempel, Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and their Fate in the War, edited by Salim Tamari, The Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 1999, map, pp. 184-85)
In short, Palestinians were entirely justified and in full accordance with international law when they rejected the Partition Plan.
Rubbing salt into the wound, the United States quashed a proposal based on international law put forth by Arab delegates at the UN that a referendum be conducted in Palestine to determine the wishes of the majority regarding the Partition Plan. The United States also thwarted their request to have the matter referred to the International Court of Justice.
Racism, Apartheid, and Genocide Have No Right to Exist
Certainly it can be said that Genocide or Apartheid have no right to exist, and when they arise, it is the moral responsibility of all to stop them as quickly as possible.
All people may be racist to one degree or another--it can't be prevented. If people say racist things that offend others, that is not good, but it should not be illegal, as it is more important that people have freedom of speech. Institutions, however, should not operate in a Racist way, to the largest degree that it can be prevented. Even if it can never be fully stopped, it would be silly to think that Racism has a right to exist.
Jews are the Very Nicest People
At least in my experience, Jews have been the very nicest people.
All of my best friends for the first 36 years of my life were Jews and many still are (I've simply lost touch with all the others).
Starting from age 7, friendly and outgoing Jewish boys I met in school (in Los Angeles) brought me into their lives, homes, and even synagogues. All of them were very smart (though not always the smartest), but more than that, hip, and fun to be with.
I was raised in a Christian church, but none of the people I associated with in church or Sunday School became my best friends. I'm not sure why, but I never developed the same feeling of closeness with them.
I had Passover with one of my Jewish friend's families many times, and they even took me on vacations. They brought me to meet still more Jewish friends. I attended one friend's Bar Mitzvah. I attended two Jewish weddings, one where I was something like 'Best Man.'
Many times, I've had this strange feeling, I wanted to be a Jew also. Only 5 years ago, I started looking into what it might take to convert to Judaism. Of course it is not easy, so I dropped the thought, though it made me cry. And seriously, I think I've found my place as a leftist athiest, that's what suits my way of thinking. I feel heartened by the fact that one of my personal heroes, Richard Stallman, considers himself an Atheist and not a Jew.
My brother in law is Jewish and he is an Atheist also.
I always wanted to have a Jewish girlfriend. That never went very far, though I know many very fine Jewish ladies. My girlfriend of 9 years so far is at least 1/4 Jewish. Perhaps that was part of why I was attracted to her.
I have no known Jewish ancestry, but I've wondered ever since some mean anti-semitic kid in Junior High School called me "Jew." I told him I was not insulted, I would think it very fine to be a Jew like all my friends, but he was mistaken. He said he wasn't mistaken--just look at that nose.
I do not have the biggest Jewish nose, if that's what it is, but in truth it doesn't look exactly like the mixed Scandinavian ancestry I'm supposed to have either. Ever since then I've thought I must have some Jewish ancestry, though nobody knows when or where going back several generations. Given how related all the people in the world are, it's probably just a matter of how many generations you have to go back to find a Jewish ancestor.
While Jews are the very nicest people, I've learned not to discuss Palestine. It doesn't take long for every Jew I've known personally o go off the rails of a reasonable universalism it has usually seemed to me, and into a heated argument. This has saddened me.
Before I go further, I'll also say that all my favorite writers, movie directors, and professors are Jewish also (and also mostly athiests). Woody Allen is my very favorite movie producer and director.
I think one particular Jew, Noam Chomsky, is the very smartest person I've ever heard or read. And of course one could go on with a list including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and many others who are (or were) also among the very most intelligent people ever.
While this is not true of all Jews...as I have shown many are anti-Zionist or non-Zionist...it has often seemed to me that for all their intelligence Jews often lack critical thinking in a few key areas, including Israel. Often they can have the very best critical thinking in most areas...and then lose all ability to think critically it one or two areas. But this is probably true of most people, including me, it's just hard for each one of us to see our own blind spots.
I do not want bad things to happen to Jews. I am fine with Jews living in the southern Levant, if that's where they choose to live, though it seems ridiculous to me.
But I can see no ethical alternative to allowing all the Palestinians to return to their homeland. I think Jews and others were sold a very rotten deal with Zionism, which was dreamed up and promoted by just a few Jews, and then 'realized' by early Zionist terrorists. It's fallen into the blind spots of many Jews not to see how rotten this deal was, and how it's probably just not going to work out as they have dreamed. And that is very sad.
And Terrible for the Palestinians who have lost their homeland in a historic Catastrophe caused by Jews blinded by the false dream of nationalism, which the Jews' own ancient writers sternly warned against, allied with powerful Imperialists.
I would like to see the Jewish Zionists mend their ways and get back to sort of fully ethical Judiasm that is my dream. And I would like to see my own country get out of the business of Empire.
Empire and Zionism are the two faces on the same rotten coin which has brought catastrophe and terror not just to the middle east but the entire world.
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Lest I be unclear, if asked what the reasonably just solution and possible solution would be,
I couldn't agree more with Edward Said when he wrote about The One State Solution in 1999.
Even more just might include large reparations, subsidized resettlement, highly paid labor, or, even, some expulsion of Jews. But I wouldn't let the impossible be the enemy of the decent.
Just making the right-of-return equivalent for Palestinians and Jews, and full equal rights everywhere, would be a gigantic leap, into modern and legal statehood.
