Can a place be a "Jewish homeland" and not be a "racist state?"
Basic-Law Israel
"Basic Principles (a) The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish People in which the State of Israel was established. (b) The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which is realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to determination. (c) The realization of this right to national self-determination is exclusive in the Jewish People."
The motto of the United States is "Out of Many, One.." It has a founding principle that all men are created equal. It is an ideal more honored than practiced. American Indians were removed, Blacks enslaved and segregated, Chinese excluded, Japanese interred, Jews subject to quotas, Mormons killed, Muslims blocked at the borders, and Mexican immigrants called rapists and criminals. American history has contradictions.
Other countries have different founding principles and different contradictions. The nation of Israel affirms that its founding principle is that Israel is for Jews. Fresh in the memory of Jews is being a victim of a mass program of ethnic cleansing, the holocaust. Yet the historic land of Israel was not a blank slate to be created anew. Christians and Muslims lived there and had for centuries, people with homes, farms, businesses, and sacred places of their own. What is Israel to do with them?
Herb Rothschild is a retired professor of English. During his working years he was a political activist on behalf of world peace and civil rights for Black Americans. He is still doing that work, advocating for peace and justice. He lives in Talent, Oregon.
Guest Post by Herb Rothschild
At a conference for the progressive organization Netroots Nation on July 15, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) made comments critical of Israel. In the course of them she called Israel “a racist state.” The next day she apologized for using the term “racist,” although she affirmed her criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Her apology was in vain. Her Republican and Democratic colleagues fell over themselves in the race to distance themselves from her. On July 18, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 412-9 for a non-binding resolution declaring that “the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state,” that “Congress rejects all forms of antisemitism and xenophobia," and that “the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.”
Source: https://ifamericansknew.org
For defenders of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, I would guess that debates about whether Israel is rightly called a “racist state” or an “apartheid state” are a welcome distraction from the main point--that Israel continues to appropriate land that belonged to the Palestinians. The map I’ve provided tells the story of Jewish expansion.
To go with it, here are the historic population figures (rounded to thousands):
1900: 24,000 Jews, 499,000 others (mostly Muslims)
1914: 39,000 Jews, 602,000 others
1944: 529,000 Jews, 1,061,000 others
2014: 6.1 million Jews, 6.2 million others
What the map doesn’t provide is evidence that, from the beginning of Zionism, the intention was to encompass within a Jewish state as much of what Zionists called Eretz Israel, the Biblical land of Israel, as they could get, and they have worked at realizing that intention since the first settlements at the beginning of the last century to the most recent settlements in the occupied West Bank. What follows is documentation of my assertion.
"[We Zionists will] spirit the penniless population across the border [of the Jewish state] by denying it employment . . . Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Diary of Theodore Herzl, co-founder of the Zionist movement, entry dated June 12, 1895.
“The Islamic soul must be broomed [ethnically cleansed] out of Eretz-Yisrael.” Also, "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews of Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.” Ze'ev Jabotinsky, spiritual father of the Likud Party, in a letter dated November 1939 to a Revisionist colleague in the U.S.
"There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, all of them." Also, "Not one village, not one [Arab] tribe should be left.” Diary entries of Yosef Weitz, director of the Transfer Committee Israel created in 1948, the year of its founding.
"The compulsory transfer of the Arabs . . . could give us something which we never had [even in Biblical times].” Also, "With compulsory transfer we will have a vast area . . . I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." David Ben-Gurion, first prime minister of Israel, quoted in Benny Morris, “Righteous Victims: A history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1999.”
"It is not as though there was a Palestinian people . . . and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them . . . they did not exist." Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel 1969-1974, quoted in The Washington Post, June 16, 1969.
"There is no Zionism, colonization, or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Ariel Sharon, prime minister of Israel 2001-2006, quoted in the New York Times, 1998.
In April, 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex portions of the West Bank.
So what shall we call a people who displaces by force a native population? How about “White American”?
I am Jewish. There is no defense for Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people. I don't know whether that makes them "racist" or just incredibly self-serving and hypocritical. Comparing, or attempting to defend, Israel by comparing them to the European conquest of the Americas is simplistic. As my mother used to say, "two wrongs don't make a right."
I am Jewish and I agree, the basic principles of the Israeli state are racist, as are the expulsion of the Palestinians and the settlement of their former lands. I am afraid my people have gained this land at the cost of their souls.