19 March '12..
Peter Beinart has a new piece in the New York Times. It will be called ‘important’ because part of his message and that of his supporters is that he is telling an important truth that is suppressed by the Jewish establishment. He insists that he is a Zionist and supports Israel. But there is little truth in his analysis and a huge amount of fantasy in his prescriptions.
Beinart calls for boycotting Jewish communities (‘settlements’) beyond the Green Line, because he wants to end what he calls “undemocratic Israel:”
…both names mislead. “Judea and Samaria” implies that the most important thing about the land is its biblical lineage; “West Bank” implies that the most important thing about the land is its relationship to the Kingdom of Jordan next door. After all, it was only after Jordan conquered the territory in 1948 that it coined the term “West Bank” to distinguish it from the rest of the kingdom, which falls on the Jordan River’s east bank. Since Jordan no longer controls the land, “West Bank” is an anachronism. It says nothing meaningful about the territory today.
Instead, we should call the West Bank “nondemocratic Israel.” The phrase suggests that there are today two Israels: a flawed but genuine democracy within the green line and an ethnically-based nondemocracy beyond it. It counters efforts by Israel’s leaders to use the legitimacy of democratic Israel to legitimize the occupation and by Israel’s adversaries to use the illegitimacy of the occupation to delegitimize democratic Israel.
Beinart mischaracterizes the area east of the Green Line; actually it is already two ‘states’: what is called Areas A and B which are under Palestinian Authority (PA) administration and contain at least 97% of the Arab population, and area C, where all of the ‘settlers’ live and which is under Israeli administration.
What Beinart finds “nondemocratic” is that Palestinian Arabs in the territories do not have the right to become citizens of Israel, which ‘controls their lives’. But they are citizens of the PA. Elder of Ziyon explains that
[The PA] is recognized as a full state by 129 nations; its citizens vote (at least in theory) to elect their leaders, it has autonomy, a territory that all accept as controlled by its own security forces, a court system, an Olympic team, and its own passports. According to at least one distinguished legal scholar, it is considered a full state under international law. The World Bank is putting out reports about how ready the territories are for statehood.
What Beinart considers “systematic oppression” and “human rights violations” are Israeli security measures like checkpoints and the security barrier, which he sees as ethnically-based differential treatment. But it is also possible to see them as a reasonable response to an Arab insurgency which is aimed at repeating the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Jordanians in 1948, and indeed extending it to all of Israel.
This is not an ideal situation, but describing it as an Israeli province where apartheid — OK, “nondemocracy” — reigns is going a bit far.
The ultimate cause of the oppression, Beinart says, is ‘settlements’. Without them, Israel could simply cede the territories and everyone would be happy.
It’s not as though Jews never lived in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem until they became ‘settlers’. They were there before the Jordanian Army kicked them out. They were granted the right to live there by the League of Nations Mandate, which recognized their historical presence in the land of Israel long before that.
Beinart, his President and the Europeans want to improve things by implementing a plan for a state in all of Judea and Samaria, mitigated by some small border adjustments. If ‘settlers’ don’t like it, says Beinart, “they should move.”
The problem with this this plan is that
1. It is essentially racist, in that it calls for establishing a Jew-free state
2. It violates international law (the Mandate) and the spirit of UN resolutions calling for defensible borders
3. It sacrifices the well-being of Jews that live beyond the Green Line for the nationalist aspirations of Arabs
4. It precludes Israel’s ability to defend itself, since it would make a Gaza-like terrorist entity of Judea and Samaria (only much worse strategically)
5. It ignores the oft-expressed intention of the PA leaders to use such a state as a steppingstone to the elimination of Israel
Point 4 was underlined last week when Iranian-inspired terrorists fired hundreds of missiles into Israel from Gaza. Think about how much worse it could be if the high ground east of the Green Line could be used to launch short-range rockets directly into Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, etc.
The Oslo paradigm of a two-state solution was discredited by the rejection of reasonable offers by the Palestinian leadership in 2000 — when Arafat chose war instead of statehood — and 2008. They continue to press their demands for 1949 lines, right of return for Arab refugees, no demilitarization, refusal to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, etc. as preconditions to negotiation. There is no intersection between the maximalist demands of the PA and the continued existence of a Jewish state of Israel.
And if you think that the Palestinian leadership — the PA, not just Hamas — just wants to “end the [1967] occupation,” you simply have not been paying attention. Official Palestinian media (see here) are filled with statements to the contrary, as well as praise for the most murderous terrorists and vicious anti-Jewish lies.
Beinart says that “Boycotting other Jews is a painful, unnatural act, [but] the alternative is worse.” While he is very concerned about “oppression” of Arabs, he doesn’t seem to feel the pain of the tens of thousands of Jewish settlers — in the best possible case — who would be expelled from their homes if the two-state plan with swaps were actually implemented.
By insisting on a plan whose imposition would almost certainly mark the beginning of yet another war, by demonizing and punishing the Jewish ‘settlers’ who have every right to live where they do, by calling for a boycott because Israeli security measures constitute “oppression,” Beinart’s alternative is anything but ‘Zionist’!
Link: http://fresnozionism.org/2012/03/beinarts-anti-zionist-boycott/
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