Surprise? Israel’s Critics Want to Destroy It — Not Improve It - by Adam Levick

Whereas Israeli leaders must reject annexation and continually work to keep the two-state solution alive, less they forfeit their very right to exist, nothing whatsoever is asked of Palestinian leaders. They aren’t asked to create, as Zionists leaders did in the decades before 1948, the apparatuses of statehood — healthy proto-state political and civil institutions that would inspire faith that Palestine won’t become a failed state.

Adam Levick..
Algemeiner..
15 July '20..

Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland begins his recent Jewish Chronicle op-ed, “What next, if the two state dream is dead?” thusly:

Though annexation itself seems to be up in the air, one of annexation’s expected consequences is already materializing: a crisis of faith among those whose Zionist belief in the legitimacy of a Jewish state depended on there being at least the possibility of an eventual two-state solution, but who now see that prospect vanish before their eyes.

Freedland’s op-ed was addressing a recent 7,000 word piece by Peter Beinart calling for Jews to embrace a one-state, non-Zionist future, published at Jewish Currents — a shorter version of which was published by The New York Times.

You can read CAMERA’s response to Beinart’s call for the end of a Jewish state here, but Freedland’s framing of the crisis is interesting, as it — correctly — casts the (former) Zionism of Beinart and his allies as contingent upon a particular political outcome with the Palestinians. This contingent Zionism suggests that the very legitimacy of Israel is not, as with all other countries, to quote Abba Eban, “axiomatic and unreserved” — but is permanently “suspended in mid-air” awaiting others’ moral approval.

Contingent Zionism negates and erases the fact that Israel is, by any objective measure, a dynamic, successful, and democratic state; and demands, as the condition for political and moral international legitimacy, that it facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state. Conversely, this political calculus appears to conclude that no moral demands should be made of Palestinians for them to be granted the right to statehood and legitimacy.

(Continue to Full Column)

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