EDITOR: What is brewing up in Palestine? Is the Two State solution seen to be dead?
Many are now speculating on the likely outcome of the UN vote on the Palestinian state. One thing which is not likely to emerge from it is a Palestinian state, a real state, unlike the PNA Latifundia in the West Bank. What is likely to happen is the growth of resistance, as a result of the realisation that the current situation only helps Israel to grab more land and disposses more Palestinians.
Intellectuals do not need to prepare the resistance. The resistance is best left as truly popular, not directed from anywhere but the ranks. So far so good. Palestinians must understand by now that the two-state ‘solution’ sold them by Israel and the US leads nowhere, yet they are reluctant to go back to their own better and more principled solution of a secular, democratic state in the whole of Palestine.
And what about progressive Israelis? How can they support the continuation of the occupation and settlements, afater four and a half decades? This is question one needs to direct to the so-called Israeli left.
Having come back this week from the Israeli maelstrom, I would like to make this point: There is no constituency for the One-State idea in Israel at the moment, tent protest or not… Israeli society, including its radical edges, is not ready to negotiate the future with Palestinians on any terms which take into account Palestinian aspirations, or the idea of true equality. None of them wishes to even consider changing the rules of the game. Democracy? Yes, they have a “Jewish Democracy” and cannot consider any other kind.
As all of you know, this idea (the One-State solution) not acceptable to many anti-Zionists, most of whom have not signed the current iteration of the one state document. The truth is, whether we like it or not, that none of them is ready to give up Israeli identity, or Israeli self-determination, even while living in exile and sporadically speaking against the occupation. That is at the heart of this problem. If these individuals are unable to make the small leap required towards the democratic state of Palestine, how much less likely are the masses of the occupying power? Shelley Yachmovich, the leading candidate of so-called left-leaning Avoda, has given her warm backing to the settlement project, reminding people it was her party, indeed, which built and strengthened it. This is the left wing of Israel, and not to realise this is a political error, as this directs us towards some arguments and away from others.
So why are progressive Israelis being so reactionary? I think that in the past, progressive Diaspora Jews could find no problem with the the idea of sharing democratically with the indigenous population of Palestine. This was many decades ago, of course. Now, after the normalisation not only of Israel, but mainly of the results of the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 war ( most Israelis have been born after 1967!) then the premise: Israel= No Palestine, has been so powerfully learnt, internalised and forgotten, that the existential prerogative is indeed of denial Read the work of Ilan Pappe and Nur Masalha about the Nakba and its denial in Israel, for example) Denial is stronger than memory – memory, after all, is socially implanted, while denial is much more deeply personal.
I have no better explanation. The connection to history is, for most Israelis, nota connection to the diaspora and 2000 years of life outside Palestine; that is strongly denied (see the work of Amnon Raz Krakotzkin on that, of course). For most Israelis, they have a connection, through implanted memory and invented community, to Bar Kokhva and Yehuda Macabeus, or to Massada, but not to the people living across the apartheid wall… Existentially, they seem to say, especially after the Holocaust, non-Jews cannot be trusted; so their lesson from the Holocaust is the opposite of mine or yours – while we are saying – never again should such racism be allowed to succeed and harm humanity, they are saying – even when they do not know it – “we cannot trust any non-Jews to guarantee our security”. I believe that is why they find it difficult to rethink the solution to the conflict, difficult to feel excited about some real democracy, rather than ‘Jewish democracy’, or about life as human beings, not as occupying soldiers on leave. They are not full human beings in that sense, and therefore they also deny Palestinians their humanity.
What is quite disturbing is that many Palestinians are seeing the logic of the One-State solution, despite the years of enmity and dispossesion – for Palestinians to be less than trusting about their occupiers would be natural. Yet, Israelis on the other hand, do not trust Palestinians as they know they have been harming them (Israelis harming Palestinians) for over six decades! Occupiers never trust the occupied, no more than robbers trust those they have robbed…
So, existentially or politically, not a hopeful scenario. However, I trust the realities created by the situation itself, as these cannot be denied or chucked away. Reality will win in the end, when all other solutions will be seen to have lost credibility.
Zygmunt Bauman: Palestinian persecution echoes the Shoah, which began with discrimination, ghettoes and pogroms: Mondoweiss
by PAUL MUTTER, WITH EVA SMAGACZ on SEPTEMBER 5, 2011
Several weeks ago, the renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman gave a stunning interview to the Polish journal, Polityka, on Zionism, the Holocaust, and Israel’s cult of war. In it he charges Israel’s leaders with actively discouraging peace, with seeking war instead of peace, and accuses them of manipulating the Holocaust’s lessons to justify repression. In one of his most charged claims, he says the wall surrounding the Occupied Palestinian Territory is little different than the walls surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto.
Bauman is one of the foremost social theorists in Europe, an alchemist of post-Marxist, post-modernist thought whose work has tackled everything from the Holocaust to globalization to “liquid modernity.” He is also a member of the Holocaust generation, a Polish-born Jew who survived Hitler by escaping to the Soviet Union only to be forced out of Eastern Europe for good during Poland’s 1968 anti-Semitic purges. As such, his words carry enormous influence, and his interview has stirred up a small frenzy.
Bauman’s interview is, at the moment, only available in Polish. Eva Smagacz has been gracious enough to provide to this site with an English translation of some of the highlights of the interview, which you can read below.
I don’t know how people will interpret what is happening today when they will look back at it in 25 years. But the fact of it being an unknown does not mean that we shouldn’t judge what is happening in front of our eyes.
I would use the point made by [Tony] Judt in his memorable article published in the New York Review of Books in 2003, that Israel is becoming a “belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno-state”, that the middle eastern “peace process” is finished – “it did not die – it was killed.”
I was expressing similar sentiments nearly 40 years earlier in “Haaretz” as I was leaving Israel in 1979. My concerns were related to the toxic and corrosive characteristics of the Occupation, its putrefying effect on ethics and the moral scruples of the occupiers. I was concerned at that time that the younger [Israeli] generation was growing in the belief that state of war and military readiness – in 1971 still treated as “state of emergency” – was normal, natural, and probably unavoidable.
I was concerned with a country that was learning to hide its numerous and inevitably growing internal social problems, washing its hands of those problems by inciting and inflaming the sense of external threat, [thus] losing the skill to deal with these problems in the process.
Inside that besieged fortress, arguing – no, even expressing a simple difference of opinion – is [becoming] both criminal and treason.
I was also disconcerted with the inversion of the Clausewitzian doctrine of war, where war is a continuation of policy, and transmogrifying policy into . . . military ventures, the consequence of which has been the remorseless erosion of democratic habits.
I was concerned with the deepening inability of Israel to live in a state of peace and with people’s growing disbelief in the possibility of life without war, and with the political elite’s fear of peace when they would no longer know how to govern [without war].
I also share the fear expressed by Judt as to the use of Holocaust by Israel’s rulers as a get-out-of-jail card for their own depravity and absolution of their sins, both those that they have already committed and those they are going to commit.
I also wrote about it in “Modernity and the Holocaust” (1989), citing Menachem Begin when he calls Palestinians Nazis, and paints having them as neighbors of Israel, of seeking another Auschwitz. Begin was answered – very mildly and in an oblique way – by Abba Eban, who was a minister in the Labor Party, that it was time for Israel to stand on its own feet, rather than standing on the feet of six million murdered victims.
The way of “commemorating” the Holocaust in Israeli politics is one of the main obstacles in realizing the potential of the Shoah as a moral purging [for Jews] – and in a way is a post-mortem triumph for Hitler, who dreamed of creating conflict between Jews and the whole world, and between the whole world and the Jews, in preventing Jews from ever having peaceful coexistence with others.
[My] radically opposite way of “commemorating” the Holocaust can be summarized as follows: It is forbidden to stay silent in the face of Israeli crimes and their persecution of Palestinians exactly because the fate of Jews in Europe had similar beginnings – discrimination, pogroms, ghettoes, concluding with the Shoah.
And there you have it. It is a mission of the survivors of the Shoah to bring salvation to the world and protect it from repeated catastrophe: to expose those hidden from the world, but still suffering – to prevent another disgracing of civilization.
The greatest of historians of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, understood that mission when he used to stubbornly repeat that the Shoah machine did not differ in its structure from the “normal” organization of German society. To put it another way: the Shoah was one of the expressions of that society. And again, theologian Richard Rubinstein remembered that just as personal hygiene, subtle philosophical concepts, superb works of art, or sublime music are expressions of civilization, so too is imprisonment, war, exploitation, and the concentration camp. The Shoah – he said in conclusion – “was not an expression of a collapse in civilization but of its progress.”
Unfortunately, this is not the only lesson of the Shoah. Another one is that the one who hits first becomes the top dog, and the more iron the fist, the better chance of getting away with it.
The rulers of Israel are not the only ones that draw on and amplify this sinister lesson, they are not the only ones that should be blamed for the post-mortem triumph of Hitler. Yet when Israel, whose founders took up the mantle of being the custodians of Jewish fate, does these things, then the shock is much greater than in other cases – because this fact also destroys a myth, a myth accepted by us, that is important to us:
That suffering ennobles, that victims come out cleansed, exalted and altogether saintly. And here it turns out how things turn out in reality: As soon as their suffering is over, victims stand waiting for the first opportunity to pay back their persecutors; and if taking revenge on yesterday’s persecutors is somehow unattainable or inconvenient, they rush to erase the dishonor of yesterday’s weakness . . . and show that they also know how to wave the baseball bat and crack the whip – and that they will use whatever is at hand to achieve victory.
What is the wall built around the Occupied Territories if not an attempt to surpass the creators of the wall surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto?
Hurting people debases and morally destroys those who are doing the hurting . . . [Hurting others] does, however, initiate the process that the great anthropologist Gregory Bateson named “schizmogenesis” – a sequence of action and reaction where each consecutive behavior may exaggerate one another, leading to an ever more deepening schism.
Polish-Jewish sociologist compares West Bank separation fence to Warsaw Ghetto walls: Haaretz
Zygmunt Bauman says Israel ‘terrified of peace’ and ‘taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts,’ in interview with Polish weekly ‘Politika.’
By Roman Frister
Zygmunt Bauman, the Jewish sociologist and one of the greatest philosophers of our time, castigated Israel harshly this week, saying it did not want peace and was afraid of it.
Bauman said Israel was “taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts,” and compared the separation fence to the walls surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in the Holocaust.
In a long interview to the important Polish weekly “Politika,” Bauman said Israel was not interested in peace. “Israeli politicians are terrified of peace, they tremble with fear from the possibility of peace, because without war and without general mobilization they don’t know how to live,” he said.
“Israel does not see the missiles falling on communities along the border as a bad thing. On the contrary, they would be worried and even alarmed were it not for this fire,” the Polish-British sociologist said.
Bauman, who lived in Israel briefly, referred to an article he wrote in Haaretz, in which he expressed concern that the younger Israeli generation was being raised on the understanding that the state of war and military alert were natural and unavoidable.
The Polish public has not heard such a diatribe against Zionism and Israel since the anti-Semitic propaganda campaign the Communist regime conducted after the Six-Day War.
Not surprisingly, leading Jewish figures came out against it.
“Politika” published the criticism alongside the letter of Israeli ambassador in Warsaw Zvi Bar, who rejected Bauman’s “half truths” and “groundless generalizations.”
Bauman, who was born in Poland in 1925, has been living in England since he left his lecturer’s chair at Tel Aviv University in 1971.
He is seen as one of the greatest sociologists of our time and has dealt extensively with the ties between the Holocaust and modernism, globalization and consumer culture in the postmodern era.
Some of his books have been translated into Hebrew, including “Liquid Love.”
His grandson is attorney Michael Sfard, of the human rights group Yesh Din.
Palestinians: We won’t surrender to U.S. pressure to drop UN bid: Haaretz
Top Abbas adviser says there is little Americans could do to change the Palestinians’ plans; two senior White House envoys in region for talks with Israeli, Palestinian officials.
The Palestinians say they will not surrender to American pressure to drop their bid for statehood at the United Nations, taking a tough position ahead of a meeting with a senior U.S. delegation.
Two senior White House envoys, David Hale and Dennis Ross, arrived in the region on Tuesday for talks with Israel and Palestinian officials.
The U.S. has been trying to persuade the Palestinians to drop their plan to ask the UN this month to approve their independence and instead, it wants the Palestinians to resume peace talks with Israel.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said there was little the Americans could do to change the Palestinians’ plans.
Turkey clarifies: Trade sanctions against Israel include only defense industry: Haaretz
Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, aide to Turkey PM Erdogan clarifies earlier remarks by the Turkish premier, according to which all trade with Israel would be suspended.
Turkey’s economic sanctions against Israel include only trade between the two countries’ defense industries and not trade in general, an aide to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. The clarification came hours after Erdogan announced a suspension of Israel-Turkey trade relations.
Erdogan said in his announcement that Turkey was “totally suspending” defense industry ties with Israel, after downgrading diplomatic relations.
“Trade ties, military ties, regarding defense industry ties, we are completely suspending them. This process will be followed by different measures,” Erdogan told reporters in Ankara on Tuesday morning.
A spokesman for the Turkish PM told the Wall Street Journal a few hours later that these sanctions did not include general trade between the two countries, and rather referred only to defense goods “for now”.
Ankara earlier this week launched a series of penalizing measures, including the severing of military ties, against Israel over the latter’s refusal to apologize for its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in 2010.
Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer warned Monday that the consequences of a prolonged and broad trade rift with Turkey would be “expensive” for Israel, saying that that the Turkish economy far surpasses Israel’s and is growing extremely fast.
“[The] Turkish economy is growing at an exceptional rate,” said Fischer. “They have great entrepreneurs and a European trained labor force. Turkey will be a big market in the region and a major exporter. The consequences of not having trading relations with Turkey will be expensive.”
“Inter-regional trade in the Middle East is small, and it will stay small even if it opens up,” said Fischer. “Our intetregional trade does not amount to very much at the moment, but it would be of benefit if it grew.”
Israel arrests East Jerusalem Hamas lawmaker near Ramallah: Haaretz
Abu Tir, who had his Jerusalem residency revoked last year, is expelled to PA-controlled Ramallah. An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said he was checking the details of the arrest.
Israel arrested Palestinian lawmaker Muhammad Abu Tir from his home in a Ramallah suburb on Tuesday, Hamas officials said.
Abu Tir already spent three years in an Israeli prison and was released only last year.
He was elected to the Palestinian parliament in the 2006 legislative elections, which saw the Islamist Hamas movement score a surprise victory over the secular Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abu Tir is one of four lawmakers from East Jerusalem, all of whom ran on Hamas-affiliated tickets. They were arrested, along with several other Hamas officials, after Hamas’ abduction of an Israeli soldier near Gaza.
Following his release last year, the Israeli Interior Ministry revoked his Jerusalem residency status on the allegation that he hadchanged allegiances by serving an enemy parliament.
He was expelled to the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Ramallah, where he set up a new home.
The three other lawmakers, who faced a similar expulsion order, took refuge in the Red Cross building in East Jerusalem and have been holed up there for more than a year.
An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said he was checking the details of the arrest.
Israel’s Anti-democratic Enterprise:Palestinechronicle
By George Polley
Israel as a Jewish state is unworkable for one simple reason: non-Jews are treated differently than Jews, leaving non-Jews in a lesser-than position in which they have fewer rights than Jews, and are required to carry a special identification card that identifies them as non-Jews, and must be surrendered whenever requested by a Jewish authority.
“In a Jewish state,” writes Israeli journalist and leftist Larry Derfner, “a gentile has a lesser standing, a lesser share in the state, than a Jew” has. (1) One needn’t look far to discover why. In secular Zionist and religious thought, Jews are called by God to separate themselves from other nations as God’s special representatives on earth. The Zionist enterprise looked to create a modern Jewish state of Israel to be the homeland of and for Jews anywhere in the world, a nation in which they would feel free and safe in their Jewish identity. The message to Arabs living there was (and continues to be) that they were and are not welcome. The method used to deliver that message has from the beginning been violent, the violence excused because the Arabs fought back when attacked. What they should have done, the message is, is accept the Jewish invasion without complaint. The problem is that no self-respecting people will do that. The message is a simple one: The Jewish state does not care what you experience, think or feel. Obey or suffer the consequences.
Though the idea of a Jewish homeland sounded sound, especially after the murders of six million Jews and other “unacceptables” during Hitler’s mad regime, the reality has not been nice at all for Palestine’s indigenous Arab population. Nor has it created the safe haven for Jews that the founders of modern Israel hoped for. The reason is obvious: the system they created guarantees perpetual conflict between the privileged Jewish population and non-Jews living there. What the Zionists did was set up a system that guarantees continuous conflict and outbursts of violence. In other words, they set up a system that guarantees the failure of their initial plan and perpetuates the suffering and lack of security they say they do not want. It’s a classic case of victims guaranteeing their perpetual victimhood by mistreating others. It’s what happens when one group of people sets itself up as superior to other people. Do it and you shouldn’t complain when they fight back.
Turkey expels Israel envoy over flotilla raid row: Independent
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Saturday, 3 September 2011
Geoffrey Palmer: The former New Zealand premier’s report for the UN criticised Israel’s use of firepower during the raid as ‘excessive’ but backed its naval blockade
Turkey announced the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador yesterday and the freezing of military relations in response to the Netanyahu government’s refusal to apologise for the lethal raid it authorised on a Gaza-bound flotilla 15 months ago.
The move, which threatened the most serious downgrading of official relations between the two countries for 30 years, came before the formal publication of a UN report on the raid which killed nine Turks aboard the flotilla’s lead ship, the Mavi Marmara.
The report, from a team headed by former New Zealand premier Sir Geoffrey Palmer, criticises Israel’s use of firepower during the raid as “excessive and unreasonable” but says the naval blockade it was enforcing was legal and justified – a conclusion Turkey disputes.
Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s Foreign minister, told reporters that the Israeli ambassador and other diplomats would be gone by Wednesday. He said military agreements between the two countries would be suspended and that other possible sanctions could include naval restrictions on Israel in the eastern Mediterranean and Turkish state backing for court actions against Israel by the families of victims of the raid.
The Foreign minister added: “The time has come for Israel to pay for its stance that sees it above international laws and disregards human conscience. The first and foremost result is that Israel is going to be devoid of Turkey’s friendship.”
While Turkey has insisted a full apology is a condition of restoring relations, Israel is arguing that the report seeks only reparations and an expression of “regret” for the deaths of the Mavi Marmara passengers – recommendations the Netanyahu government has indicated it would be prepared to meet.
Asked why the report did not demand the apology Turkey has consistently sought, the country’s president, Abdullah Gul, said: “To be frank, the report is null and void for us.” Mr Davutoglu indicated Turkey would be seeking a re-examination of the blockade’s legality by the UN and the International Court of Justice.
The US, which is concerned about the consequences of a breakdown in relations, has reportedly pressed Israel to apologise. But Israel last night repeated that it would not do so. Although there was no ministerial comment on the Turkish move, a senior diplomatic official said: “As advised in the report, Israel once again expresses its regret over the loss of life, but will not apologise for its soldiers taking action to defend their lives. Like any other state, Israel has the right to defend its civilians and soldiers.”
The official described the Palmer Report as “professional, serious and comprehensive”. He insisted that Israel “cherishes the significant ties… between the Turkish and Jewish peoples”. That was why, he added, Israel had made “numerous attempts” to settle the dispute.
Alon Liel, a former diplomat and an advocate of good Israeli-Turkish relations, said the current freeze could jeopardise more than $2bn a year in mutual trade. He added that military ties had already loosened since the election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP government, but that the move could put a question mark over Israel’s export of drones to the Turkish military.
The report says participants in the flotilla “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade,” which was militarily justified because of the risk of weapons being imported to Gaza. It notes the danger the Israeli soldiers faced but adds that no satisfactory explanation has been provided for any of the deaths.
Founding a nation on a principle of specialness duplicates Hitler’s racist society in which one group is treated as “special” and everyone else as “outsiders”. In the modern state of Israel, non-Jews are called “goyim”, a word meaning non-Jew that also means “cattle.” (2) Cattle may be useful animals, but they are definitely not human. The message is a sinister one: Goyim living in a society where this dichotomy is the rule of law are treated as subhumans. And in Israel, this is exactly what has happened from the beginning. It’s the old “separate-but-equal” system in which separate means unequal, and everyone knows it. If you wish to perpetuate conflict, this is a wonderful way to do it.
Within the Jewish state, the Occupied Territories and Gaza, Arabs and other goyim are treated the way Hitler’s mad regime treated the Jews. About a year ago I read a description of a young, blond member of Israel’s Shin Bet brutally beating a young Palestinian journalist for having returned home with a journalism award he’d received in Europe. Here was a young Jewish man treating a young Palestinian man like a cockroach for daring to behave like a human being. The image that came immediately to my mind reading this was “He’s acting like a member of the Gestapo or SS.” When this kind of violence is repeated often enough, the mental association between “Jew” and “violence toward others” becomes is a natural one. But this is overlooked by people in Israel’s government and thousands of people like Larry Derfner who miss the obvious point that organizing a nation and a society based on “Us-Them” relationships ends in tragedy for everyone.
A democracy Israel is not, even though it defines itself as one, insists that it is one, and its chief benefactor says it is one. Even Larry Derfner knows that. “The principles of a ‘Jewish state’ and a ‘democratic state’”, he writes, “inherently clash.” He may not like it, but clash they do. Yet, like so many people, he tries to make it palatable: “I think it’s possible for the country’s gentiles — virtually all of them Israeli Arabs, who are 20% of the population — to be about as equal as they’d want to be (my emphasis) in a country where 80% of the people are Jews.” Does he have any curiosity about what this would be like? He doesn’t appear to have. Like most everyone else who practices such contradictory thinking, he justifies it by saying that it’s impossible for the Arab minority to become “fully Israeli because their loyalty will always be divided between the state and their people.” What he’s saying is that it is impossible for Jews to admit gentiles into their system on an equal basis, because that would mean giving up their Jewish identity as the primary way they identify themselves.
Though Larry Derfner admits the inequalities in the system, he and others like him see no contradiction in it. The system may be abusive, but he denies it by minimizing it. I guess imagining himself living as an Arab is too painful a thing for him to contemplate, so he ignores it. Besides, they’re not “special” like the Jews, so it doesn’t matter. That’s how denial works.
He concludes his post by thinking of the world during the first half of the 20th century, and asking himself this question: “Which was more undemocratic, Zionism to the Arabs of Palestine or anti-Semitism to the Jews of Europe and Russia and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East? [T]he answer,” he says, “is easy: anti-Semitism. And this, finally, is how I, as a democrat, justify the creation of the Jewish state – because it was more democratic than what it came to replace, which was anti-Semitism.” Which justifies everything that has happened since the first Zionists set foot in Palestine.
If I were Jewish, I would dissociate myself from Israel, its violence and its claims of chosenness. I would do it for two reasons: First, I believe that societies in which all people are treated with respect and have equal opportunity and worth as people are not only the best places to live, but are the hope of a viable future. Second, I fear a rise of a new wave of anti-Semitism if people begin to connect Israel’s violently abusive, arrogant behavior against non-Jews as “Jewish” behavior. This will not surprise me, as abusive systems create their own worst nightmares. Personally, I want nothing to do with such systems, and certainly do not want to live in or be associated with one.
If Israel wants to survive as a state, it has to become a state of all its citizens. For people like Larry Derfner, this will not be easy, because it means giving up being special and having exclusive rights to a land (all of Palestine, not just the land within Israel’s assigned borders) where Arabs have lived far longer than the Jews who invaded it and took it over, claiming God gave it to them over three thousand years ago. It means learning to live as members of that more inclusive tribe called human, while maintaining an identity as Jewish members of the human tribe. I am an American, but I see myself as a member of the wider human family, not just the narrow one bounded by U.S. borders and citizenship. Americans are not “special”, though we like to think we are.
If Israel fails in this enterprise, I fear for its future. Israel has made itself a pariah state in the eyes of many and, even though it maintains a powerful lobby in the US, the UK and other European states, the day may soon dawn when Israel has worn out its welcome with them and even with the world’s Jewry.
In case anyone reading this wonders if I support the right to call itself a Jewish state, here is my answer. It has the right to call itself a Jewish state, and even to try to continue existing as one. To continue following that course, however, is suicidal. It is also immoral and terribly, terribly foolish.
Do I support Israel as a Jewish state? No, I most definitely do not.
– George Polley is a Japan-based American writer. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
Turkey suspends Israel defence ties over Gaza aid raid: BBC
Israeli navy commandos intercepted the Mavi Marmara and other ships
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country is suspending all defence ties with Israel.
The move follows the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador over its refusal to apologise for the 2010 raid on a flotilla of activists heading for Gaza, in which nine Turks were killed.
A UN report has concluded that Israel used “excessive force” in its raid, but that the naval blockade was legal.
Turkey has vowed to take the case to the International Court of Justice.
Based in The Hague, the ICJ is a permanent UN court set up to rule on state-to-state disputes.
In reality, experts say it is unlikely Turkey will be able to take Israel to the ICJ since, under court rules, Israel would need to give its consent for the action to be heard.
Mr Erdogan said Turkey was “totally suspending” defence ties with Israel, after downgrading diplomatic relations with the country.
“Trade ties, military ties, regarding defence industry ties, we are completely suspending them,” he told reporters in Ankara. “This process will be followed by different measures.”
Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador on 2 September and also suspended military co-operation with Israel last week.
Israel has expressed regret for the loss of lives.
But Mr Erdogan described the raid as “savagery” and accused Israel of acting like “a spoiled boy” in the region.
Co-operation
A US state department spokeswoman expressed concern over the row between the two countries, urging them to “de-escalate” their dispute.
“Our emphasis with both the government of Turkey and the government of Israel is to hope that we can de-escalate, we can defuse, and we can get them back to talking about improving their relationship,” Agence France Presse quoted spokeswoman Victoria Nuland as saying.
The two countries have had substantial military co-operation during the past two decades, but that has decreased in recent years, says the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Istanbul.
If there were any doubts about Turkey’s attitude to its once-lucrative defence arrangements with Israel, Mr Erdogan has dispelled them, he says.
However, most of the deals with Israeli companies, like the upgrading of Turkey’s US-made jets and tanks, have already been completed.
The last of 10 advanced drones, or unmanned aircraft, have been delivered, and Turkey does not plan to buy any more. But it may still need Israeli technical assistance to operate those drones, which play an important role in the war against Kurdish insurgents, adds our correspondent.
Turkey’s manufacture of Israeli-designed armoured vehicles – essential equipment for the soldiers fighting in the south-east – could also be affected.
In the past, the Turkish armed forces might have been able to stop such a break in relations with their Israeli counterparts.
But this year, the generals are for the first time firmly under the thumb of a civilian government, which is determined to show its displeasure with Israel, says our correspondent.
‘Unreasonable’ force
The nine pro-Palestinian activists who died were on board the Turkish-flagged ship, Mavi Marmara, when it was intercepted by the Israeli navy in international waters as it sailed towards Gaza’s coast on 31 May 2010.
At the time, the Israeli military said its commandos fired live rounds only after being attacked with clubs, knives and guns. But activists on board said the commandos started shooting as soon as they hit the deck.
The UN inquiry found Israel’s naval blockade had been “imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law”.
It said Israeli troops had faced “significant, organised and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force for their own protection.
But it also said Israel’s decision to board the vessels “with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable”.
The report noted “forensic evidence showing that most of the deceased were shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range”.