My New Novel: Armageddon in the Gulf – Book One: Prelude to Disaster

I have just completed a two book novel (duology?) about the Israeli-Palestine conflict that is centered around an Israeli attack on Iran. In doing research for it, I decided to reread Exodus. The high-point for me was Uris’ rendition of the Balfour Agreement (p.247):

“His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

Unfortunately, Uris conveniently left out the comma at the end (not a period) and the critical next clause:

“…, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, …”

I guess admitting that under Balfour the non-Jewish communities in Palestine (then 90 percent of the population) might have equal rights to the incoming Jewish minority didn’t quite fit into the theme of heroic Jews verses backward, savage Arabs.

Notwithstanding the propagandistic nature and poor quality of Exodus, its impact, when coupled with the movie and haunting theme, was monumental. It turned all of us who grew up in that generation into lovers of Israel, its noble Kibbutzim, its brave warriors, and its tan and comely (hot) young sabra lasses who wore tight shorts and loose fitting shirts with the top three buttons unfastened (the number one fantasy of my sordid teenage mind).

Exodus created in all of us an image of that tough little Jew who would not back down whatever the odds and who, though bloodied and beaten, would ultimately triumph over the hordes of Arab savages. The tough little Jew metaphor began in Uris’s first novel, “Battle Cry” which was about the Marines in World War II. In Exodus he cleverly extended the metaphor to a tough little Jewish country who fought back against all odds.

I decided about a year ago that fiction (and art in general including movies and music) may have much more persuasive impact than logic and rational discourse. Exodus certainly provides support for that belief. Rather than continue what I saw as largely futile posting of articles and comments on this blog and on Phil Weiss’ Mondoweiss blog, I decided to try writing a novel, an anti-Exodus if you will. It’s now complete and called Armageddon in the Gulf. The first book is called “Prelude to Disaster” and the second “Armageddon and Redemption”.

The main character is Hailey Corrigan, the first female US president. While there is a lot of talk in it about the I-P conflict and its origins, including US politics and the Lobby, it also has a lot of Tom Clancy-ish action centered around Israel’s attack on Iran, plus some passionate romance (“50 Shades of Goy”?).

I would be delighted if any of my blog readers would be willing to review it and provide me with suggestions, corrections, and ways of bolstering the narrative I provide about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its origins and history. If interested, let me know by replying to this post. I’ll email you a PDF copy.

 

A TIME FOR ATONEMENT: Will this Yom Kippur Bring Justice for the Palestinians?

A TIME FOR ATONEMENT:

Will this Yom Kippur Bring Justice for the Palestinians?

by Gil Maguire

On September 29 American and Israeli Jews celebrated Rosh Hashanah.  The ten days following Rosh Hashanah are days of reflection and repentance for Jews culminating October 8 in Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement, the most important and solemn of Jewish holy days.  This year, American and Israeli Jews alike should reflect on the plight of over 8 million Palestinians who, some 63 years after Israel’s formation, remain estranged from their homeland, deprived of self determination and freedom and imprisoned in a limbo-like oppressive existence that reflects terribly on Jews.  It is an existence that American and Israeli Jews are jointly responsible for and for which they have a moral duty to change.  This season of Yom Kippur is the time to reflect and a time to commit to that change.

 The scope of the harm American and Israeli Jews have created is immense.  Stephen Robert, a Jewish-American investment banker, and long-time Israel supporter, who is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former chancellor of Brown University, described the situation in the West Bank as “apartheid on steroids” after his most recent fact-finding visit to Israel and the West Bank this past summer.  In a long and detailed article in The Nation, he concluded,

 ”How can Jews, who have been persecuted for centuries, tolerate this inhumanity? Where is their moral compass? How can this situation be acceptable to Judaism’s spiritual and political leaders? I don’t have that answer; except to say that Israel’s biggest enemy has become itself.”

There are about 4.5 million Palestinians living and confined in the West Bank and Gaza occupied and controlled by Israel since 1967.  There are another 4 million or so living as unwanted refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.  Over 1.5 million Palestinians still live in the squalor of refugee camps, all some 63 years after they or their forebears fled or were ethnically cleansed from Israel in 1948.

Every day that goes by is another day of squalor and oppression for 8.5 million Palestinians which will compound to over 3 billion individual days of additional squalor and oppression in the coming year alone.  During the coming year, more and more Palestinians will be illegally evicted from their lands and homes which will be confiscated to allow thousands more Israeli Jews to move to illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas set aside by the United Nations in 1947 for the planned but long-delayed Arab State of Palestine.

This is not to say that the Palestinian leadership and extremists are blameless.  Palestinian tactical and strategic errors and violence against Israeli civilians over several decades are inexcusable and have contributed to the continuing pain and isolation of 8.5 million of their fellow citizens.  But, the major culprit in the continuing oppression of millions of Palestinians is Israel and its ongoing occupation and settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  From 1967 on, Israel has always had the ability to turn over the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians to allow them to create the Arab State of Palestine promised them by the United Nations in 1947.  It never did so, despite internal recommendations that this would be in Israel’s long-term best interest, and that the settlement of the West Bank with Israeli Jewish citizens would violate the terms of the 4^th Geneva Convention.  It never did so because of greed and a religion-based desire to create a Greater Israel including the entirety of the West Bank.  The responsibility for that immoral policy and its horrific results is ultimately on the shoulders of American and Israeli Jews who support and condone it.

Unfortunately, Israel’s 44 year occupation and settlement of the West Bank is on the verge of destroying  the possibility of  a two state solution because Israeli settlements now control so much of the West Bank that a separate Palestinian state may no longer be viable and acceptable to the Palestinians.  When that happens, Israel’s occupation of the entirety of the West Bank (and by default, Gaza) will become a de facto illegal annexation of the entirety of original Palestine into a Greater Israel (the dream and goal of many American and Israeli religious Zionist Jews).  That reality will leave Israel with three stark and unacceptable choices:

It can create a democratic state of Greater Israel in which Palestinians and Jews alike have equal rights, including voting rights.  This choice would not be acceptable to Zionist Jews because these demographic changes would deprive Israel of its status as a homeland for the world’s Jews and as a predominantly Jewish state.  While initially, the Jewish and Palestinian populations of this Greater Israel would be about equal, there would be intense international pressure to allow the remaining 3-4 million Palestinians still living as unwelcome guests and refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan to return to their homeland in this Greater Israel.  Since Israel would refuse to allow their return, it would never have peace and it would remain a pariah state in the eyes of the world.

The two remaining choices are even less palatable: apartheid or ethnic cleansing.  Israel could refuse to give the Palestinians in Greater Israel equal voting and other civil rights possessed by its Jewish citizens, but that will make Israel truly an apartheid state rather than one having apartheid-like qualities as it is now.  Or, Israel could attempt to remove all or a major portion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to insure a dominant Jewish majority.  But, to do so would be  ethnic cleansing.  Either choice would be an unacceptable  major violation of international law and norms  and would subject Israel to international sanctions and a status equivalent to that of South Africa during it apartheid period.

The only acceptable choice, if Israel is to remain a democratic Jewish state and have peace with its Arab neighbors, is for Israel to accept the 1967 borders as its eastern boundary and give up its illegal settlements and annexation of all of Jerusalem, including Arab East Jerusalem.   Ten years ago, in the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, 22 Arab states offered Israel peace under those terms.  Israel has yet to respond even though Palestinian negotiators have shown a willingness to accept only a modest return of refugees to Israel proper and accede to reasonable Israeli security concerns.

The issue of security is vital to Israelis as the distance between the West Bank and the heart of Israel is less than the commute to work for most Americans.  But, the highest threat to Israel is no longer tank warfare.  Instead, it is the threat of missiles from well beyond Israel’s borders, which in large numbers can overwhelm any missile defense system.  The current Israeli government stresses the importance of “defensible borders” and claims a return to the pre-1967 borders would put Israel at risk.   Yet, those very borders withstood the test of time, two decades, and two major wars.

What are the legitimate security concerns of Israel, and what would be acceptable defensible borders?  Many high-level US and Israeli military and security experts feel Israel’s 1967 borders are defensible.  Martin van Crevald, Israel’s preeminent military historian and theorist, recently analyzed this issue in the Jewish Daily Forward on December 15, 2010 in an article entitled: “Israel Doesn’t Need the West Bank to be Secure”.  He concluded that an invasion of Israel from Jordan through the West Bank would be suicidal for the attacker,

“…since the West Bank itself is surrounded by Israel on three sides, anybody who tries to enter it from the east is sticking his head into a noose. To make things worse for a prospective invader, the ascent from the Jordan Valley into the heights of Judea and Samaria is topographically one of the most difficult on earth. Just four roads lead from east to west, all of which are easily blocked by air strikes or by means of precision-guided missiles. To put the icing on the cake, Israeli forces stationed in Jerusalem could quickly cut off the only road connecting the southern portion of the West Bank with its northern section in the event of an armed conflict.”

As his article demonstrates, Mr. van Crevald is not in any sense a hand wringing liberal Israeli Jew with unrealistic views of Israel’s security concerns.  For instance, he approves of Israel’s security wall as well as the extreme violence of its invasions of both Lebanon and Gaza as effective means of deterrence.  Nonetheless, van Crevald views the Israeli settlement movement as the major threat to Israel’s security and feels Israel needs to withdraw totally from the West Bank as it is fast becoming an apartheid state.  His conclusion is both powerful and persuasive:

“… it is crystal-clear that Israel can easily afford to give up the West Bank. Strategically speaking, the risk of doing so is negligible. What is not negligible is the demographic, social, cultural and political challenge that ruling over 2.5 million — nobody knows exactly how many — occupied Palestinians in the West Bank poses. Should Israeli rule over them continue, then the country will definitely turn into what it is already fast becoming: namely, an apartheid state that can only maintain its control by means of repressive secret police actions. To save itself from such a fate, Israel should rid itself of the West Bank, most of Arab Jerusalem specifically included.”

Unfortunately, accepting the 1967 borders is no longer a politically viable choice for Israelis because of the strength of its right-wing religious parties who believe Israel has an ancient right of ownership in the West Bank.  Nor is the US government able to influence or force Israel to accept that solution, even though it would be in both countries’ best interest.  The influence of Israel’s US lobby has become too powerful.  To paraphrase the recent words of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, a moderate and influential American and Jew, the U.S. government has become a hostage to Israel because its powerful US lobby is capable of forcing the US to defend Israeli policies that are neither in American interests nor in Israel’s.

It is a lobby that quite apparently controls Congress, and even the executive branch, on all matters involving Israel and US foreign policy in the Middle East.  It is not a Jewish lobby but more the lobby of Israel’s right-wing Likud and religious parties who seek their dream of a restored historic Greater Israel including all of ancient Palestine.  Noted commentator Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Beast has accurately described  it as the pro-Greater Israel lobby.  Ironically, this powerful lobby doesn’t speak for either the majority of Israeli or American Jews who generally support a two-state solution and see Israel’s settlements as a major obstacle to that goal.

As we have recently seen, no US president dares diverge from pro-Israel policies, even when those policies are doing great harm to US standing and influence, for to do so would be a political death sentence.  This is a situation that is dangerous to Israel and to the US.  It is a situation for which American Jews are directly to blame for allowing Israel to pursue policies that were both immoral and self defeating to Israel, and for failing to support their own president and country when Israel and its US lobby’s conduct were doing grave harm to American interests.   More ominously, it is a situation that will not change until some major tragedy occurs that will open the eyes of the American public to the harm done to American interests by Israel, its US lobby, and by American Jewish citizens who either supported Israeli misconduct, or stood silently by and did nothing when faced with that evidence.

The situation in the West Bank and Gaza is as much apartheid as was the treatment of black Americans in the South, or blacks in South Africa.   It is a practice that must be ended for it reflects badly on American Jews.   As the remaining short days and hours before Yom Kippur tick by, American  Jews should reflect on what it would be like to be a Palestinian for each of those days, each of those hours.  Each must answer the question posed by Stephen Robert:  “How can Jews, who have been persecuted for centuries, tolerate this inhumanity? Where is their moral compass?”  I hope the answer for the vast majority of American Jews will be that continued Israeli oppression of the Palestinians is not tolerable, and that they can and will no longer remain silent.

Thousands of courageous American Jews standing up and insisting that both the West Bank settlement folly and oppression of the Palestinians be ended would represent atonement in the highest spirit of Yom Kippur and the noble Jewish tradition of Tikkun Olam, working to make the world a better place.  Unfortunately, many Jews will reflexively dismiss these comments as the blatherings of a likely anti-Semite, and will seek refuge in the old tired narratives in which Israel can do no wrong, the and for which the Greater Israel is their historic birthright.  Neither choice will be accurate or help Israel.

Sometimes, to paraphrase the ending in today’s article by New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, “Is Israel its own Worst Enemy?“, the best criticism comes from concerned friends.  As Israel has few friends left in the world, it might be wise for its Jewish citizens and American Jewish supporters to heed these warnings and begin to question the validity and morality of its assumptions and actions.

Hopefully, this Yom Kippur will cause the vast majority of American and even Israeli Jews to reflect, repent and move forward in the spirit of atonement.  This may well be the last Yom Kippur season they will have the opportunity to do so before the door for a two-state solution slams shut and Israel hurdles further into the abyss.  We can pray that won’t happen.

Shana Tova, and, for Saturday, G’mar Chatimah Tovah.

Gil Maguire practices law in Ventura, California

and blogs on the Israel-Palestine issue at

www.irishmoses.com.

Slaughter on the Golan

SLAUGHTER ON THE
GOLAN

By Gil Maguire

      As recently reported in the media, at least 12 unarmed Palestinian and Syrian demonstrators were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers on May 15 and perhaps as many as 22 more on June 5, along with scores of wounded after hundreds of Palestinian and Syrian refugees demonstrated at the Golan Height border with some attempting to cross the border into Israeli occupied territory.  In the May 15 incident, some demonstrators managed to get across the border where they talked to local villagers then returned home.  One enterprising Syrian lad managed to hitch-hike to Jaffa where he looked around for his grandparents’ ancestral home then surrendered to Israeli authorities and was deported.  In the June 5 incident, none were successful in crossing the border; those killed and wounded were all still in Syria proper.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to justify the killings saying, “Nobody should be mistaken. We are determined to defend our borders and our sovereignty.” An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitz, blamed the latest protest on the Syrian government, said that Israeli forces aimed at the protestors’ legs, and that “We have to protect our borders like any other country.”

These protestors are largely refugees evicted from their homes and villages by Israeli soldiers during and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war or during and after the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel conquered and occupied all of the West Bank of Palestine and the Golan Heights portion of Syria.  Today, some 63 years after the 1948 war, there are still about 3.5 million Palestinian refugees, of which about 1.5 million continue to reside, unwelcome, in squalid refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza.  They are protesting their living conditions and Israel’s failure to allow them to return to their ancestral lands, villages and homes, as well as Israel’s failure to allow them a country of their own as promised by the United Nations in the 1947 Partition Plan which was intended to divide the then British Mandate of Palestine into an Arab State and a Jewish State.  In the entire Arab world, only the Palestinians have never received their independence from European colonialism.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 were specifically enacted to prevent the types of war crimes, atrocities and oppression committed against Jews and many other populations during and prior to World War II.  Under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to which Israel is a signatory, a country which takes over and occupies the land of another during hostilities is restricted in how it can govern the territory it has occupied after hostilities have ceased.  Article 3 prohibits the use of deadly force against civilians.  Article 47 prohibits an occupying power from annexing or taking for itself all or part of the territory occupied.  Article 49 prohibits the occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it has occupied.  Article 49 also prohibits the permanent transfer or expulsion of civilians out of the territories occupied, and requires any civilians transferred to be returned to their homes and villages.  Article 53 prohibits the destruction or misappropriation of real or personal property of civilians by the occupying power.

Israel has violated and continues to violate all of these provisions, all of which are considered breaches so grave that they are considered War Crimes under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.  These grave violations include Israel’s mass deportation of almost 1 million Palestinians and Syrians from Israel and the occupied territories in 1948 and 1967, its refusal to allow the return of those deported to their villages, lands and homes, its mass destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages in Israel, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, its annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem into Israeli territory, its de facto annexation of the entire West Bank, and its transfer of 650,000 of its own Jewish citizens to “settlements” throughout the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.  These unarmed Palestinian and Syrian refugees who are the victims of Israeli war crimes have every right to demonstrate.

While Israel claims it is protecting its borders and sovereignty, in fact it is not as the Golan Heights, captured by Israeli forces during its 1967 Six Day War, is Syrian territory that Israel has unlawfully annexed.  Moreover, using deadly force against peaceful, unarmed demonstrators, or even border crossers is an illegal and barbaric practice which President Obama and other world leaders have justifiably condemned when used by various Arab and other governments such as Egypt, Yemen, Iran and, most of all, Syria. By using deadly force against unarmed, peaceful demonstrators and border crossers Israel is violating Article 3 of the 4^th Geneva Convention, again a war crime.

The United States has a major problem with illegal border crossers from Mexico.  Millions of undocumented border crossers now reside illegally in our country.  Yet, we have never resorted to using deadly force to prevent these crossings.  It would be outrageous and barbaric for us to do so.  Nor do we use deadly force to control peaceful, unarmed demonstrators.  Instead, our police and military are trained to use non-lethal crowd control methods that are invariably successful without causing unnecessary injuries and loss of life.

Criticizing Syria, Libya and Iran for using deadly force against peaceful demonstrators while ignoring Israel’s resort to the same tactics is hypocrisy in the extreme, particularly since Israel’s military is funded by billions of US tax dollars every year.  It is one thing for US citizens and US Jews to support US guarantees of Israel’s security, it is quite another for us to support Israeli war crimes and wanton killing of unarmed demonstrators.  It is high time we learned to distinguish between the two and told our Israeli allies that there are limits to our patience.

In this “Arab Spring”, hundreds of thousands of Arabs, with our support, have been demonstrating for freedom and justice in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Syria and other countries.  Palestinian Arabs have been deprived of freedom and justice for 63 years.  US citizens, including US Jews, need to support justice for the Palestinians and insist that Israel accept the terms of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative which would give Israel 78 percent of Mandate Palestine and peace with the 22 nations of the Arab League and allow Palestinians to finally have a state of their own.   It is time we support the  Palestinian Spring.

Defensible Borders for Israel: The 1967 Lines are Just Fine

By
Gil Maguire

            In his Middle East policy speech last Thursday, President Obama said,

   The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

This unremarkable statement is consistent with prior  negotiations between the parties, including 2000 Camp David, 2001 Taba,  and the Erekat-Olmert negotiations of 2008-2009.  Moreover, UN Security Council Resolution 242 specifically requires Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 armistice lines from the territories it conquered and occupied  during its 1967 Six Day War.

Despite the banality of President Obama’s statement (which was quickly and universally endorsed by the Quartet, Germany, France, the UN, etc.), Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately condemned it as requiring Israel to retreat to “indefensible borders”, even though  Israel had survived three wars under those borders from 1948 through 1967.  The principal of defensible borders has become the mantra of the Israeli government, the US Israel lobby , and is quickly and predictably being adopted by many members of the US Congress, not to mention Republican presidential candidates, and is apparently aimed at maximizing the amount of land and settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that Israel will be allowed to keep under any future settlement with the Palestinians.

At a minimum, Israel insists that it be able to keep large blocks of West Bank territory – along the Jordan River in the east and along Israel’s border in the west, from the north-central settlement of Ariel to the Gush Etzion settlements south of Bethlehem, as well as all of its settlements in East Jerusalem.  It also demands early-warning stations on high ground near the Palestinian cities of Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron and a permanent military presence in the Jordan Valley.  This package of arrangements would create, in the words of Israeli negotiators, a “protection envelope” surrounding the new Palestinian state.  Needless to say, these requirements are unacceptable to the Palestinians who want secure and recognized borders in a sovereign and contiguous state of their own.

What are the legitimate security concerns of Israel, and what would be acceptable defensible borders?  Martin van Crevald, Israel’s preeminent military historian and theorist, recently analyzed this issue in the Jewish Daily Forward on December 15,
2010 in an article entitled: “Israel Doesn’t Need the West Bank to be Secure”.  He concluded that an invasion of Israel from Jordan through the West Bank would be suicidal for the attacker,

…since the West Bank itself is surrounded by Israel on three sides, anybody who tries to enter it from the east is sticking his head into a noose. To make things worse for a prospective
invader, the ascent from the Jordan Valley into the heights of Judea and Samaria is topographically one of the most difficult on earth. Just four roads lead from east to west, all of which are easily blocked by air strikes or by means of precision-guided missiles. To put the icing on the cake, Israeli forces stationed in Jerusalem could quickly cut off the only road connecting the southern portion of the West Bank with its northern section in the event of an armed conflict.

As his article demonstrates, Mr. van Crevald is not in any sense a hand wringing liberal Israeli with unrealistic views of Israel’s security concerns.  He approves of Israel’s security wall as well as the extreme violence of its invasions of both Lebanon and Gaza as effective means of deterrence.  Nonetheless, van Crevald views the Israeli settlement movement as the major threat to Israel’s security and feels Israel needs to withdraw totally from the West Bank as it is fast becoming an apartheid state.  His conclusion is both powerful and persuasive:

… it is crystal-clear that Israel can easily afford to give up the West Bank. Strategically speaking, the risk of doing so is negligible. What is not negligible is the demographic, social,
cultural and political challenge that ruling over 2.5 million — nobody knows exactly how many — occupied Palestinians in the West Bank poses. Should Israeli rule over them continue, then the country will definitely turn into what it is already fast becoming: namely, an apartheid state that can only maintain its
control by means of repressive secret police actions.

To save itself from such a fate, Israel should rid itself of the West Bank, most of Arab Jerusalem specifically included.

Van Crevald’s views are not unique.  In a January 24 article from the
Jerusalem Post entitled “Encountering Peace: What does Netanyahu want?” Gershon Baskin, head of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, concludes the
following:

ALL THE security experts I have spoken with, including several US generals and senior NATO officers, have said there are real military and security answers that would effectively guarantee security along the Jordan River. The Palestinian leadership, including President Mahmoud Abbas, has said in public and in
private, that they are willing to find a way to meet all security demands, including direct IDF involvement in patrols and monitoring missions that would be established based on Israeli security standards.

… In other words, most security experts, including a significant number of current and former IDF officers, Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) officials, believe that the security risks from peace – including a withdrawal from the West Bank based on the June 4, 1967 border with agreed-on territorial swaps in the order of around 3%-4% – pose no real strategic or security threat that cannot be answered.

On the other hand, failure to reach peace raises some real unanswerable existential threats that not only empower extremists locally and regionally, but also put an end to the
two-state solution, which is a death blow to the Zionist enterprise.

In early April, a group of former Israeli defense chiefs and heads of Israeli intelligence agencies including Mossad and Shin Bet, as well as former Israeli political leaders, created the Israeli Peace Initiative based on the 2002 Arab Initiative which calls for Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders except for minor land swaps.  It is difficult to imagine that such a distinguished group of Israeli defense and intelligence officials would make such a recommendation if it would put Israel at risk by creating indefensible
borders.

The most likely motive for Netanyahu’s insistence that the 1967 border not be used as a basis for negotiations with the Palestinians is that he, his government, party, and right
wing Zionist supporters in Israel and the US, fully intend to keep as much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as possible.  The massive increases in illegal settlement building in both areas provide the starkest evidence of that motive.  Since its capture and occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem after its victory in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel has transferred over 500,000, of its Jewish citizens into Jewish-only settlements throughout the lands intended by the UN for the creation of an Arab state of
Palestine.  These transfers, amounting now to about 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, constitute war crimes and are direct violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention.  Israel has no legal right to continue to occupy and settle those territories and oppress the Palestinians who are the lawful owners of those lands some 44 years after conquering them.

Israel should not be allowed to legitimize its unlawful occupation and settlements on Palestinian lands and “negotiate” a permanent seizure of part of those lands under the guise of providing itself more “defensible borders”.  Israeli and US Jews, as well as US citizens in general, need to inform their politicians that Israel must agree to a two-state solution with the Palestinians based on the 1967 lines.  In the words of President Obama, “The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their
potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.”  A first priority of the Arab Spring should be freedom for the long-oppressed Palestinians, and, at long last, a land of their
own.

Gil Maguire practices law in Ventura and blogs on the Israel-Palestine issue at www.irishmoses.com

Morning Musings: Israel as a 44 Year Old Apartheid State

This issue of Zionism has been a major topic and area of debate in the Israel-Palestine blogoshere.  Professor Jerome Slater has been a major contributor on this issue.  Here is my earlier posting on one of his pieces:  http://savingisrael.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=179&action=edit ”Comment on What’s Wrong with a Jewish State?”.

Professor Slater recently posted a very readable, detailed and scholarly 9000 word treatise on the topic, “The Jewish State Controversy: Can Zionism be Reconciled with Justice for the Palestinians?” on his blog which is a must bookmark for anyone interested in the Israeli-Palestinian issue.  He is one of the major voices in this area and provides well-researched, very cogent arguments.

While Professor Slater makes a powerful argument why Zionism and justice for the Palestinians are compatible, ultimately I don’t agree with his conclusions.  Basically, I think things have gone too far downhill in Israel and that hard core Zionists in control of that country have made a two state solution virtually impossible.  My personal view has evolved quite a bit over the past few months and I now see Israel as a largely irredeemable long-established apartheid state.   These strong feelings are clear in my following comment I made in response to Mondoweiss article by David Samel, “Zionism’s History, Real and Imagined” concerning Professor Slater’s treatise.  I’ve added the title:

THE ONE STATE SOLUTION: ISRAEL AS A 44 YEAR OLD APARTHEID STATE

Good analysis.

The one point I take issue with is the inaccurate but very common dualistic description of outcomes as future events: single or two state. This seems to presume there is currently no state in place and won’t be until some decision between the two possible solutions is finally made. In fact, a single apartheid Jewish state solution has been in place for 44 years.

Israel conquered its Greater Israel in 1967 and almost immediately began moving its civilians onto the conquered lands into exclusive Jewish “settlements”, showing its clear intent to permanently include so-called Judea and Samaria into Greater Israel. It did so in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits such population transfers as well as territorial annexations by an occupying power. It did so in full knowledge of the illegality of such steps as demonstrated by the famous Judge Meron secret legal memorandum.

So, please, if you want to discuss and debate the remote impossibility of converting the current single apartheid state of Greater Israel into two states, one Palestinian, have at it. I have come to see such arguments as little more useful than debates about how many Zionists can fit on the head of a pin. Why don’t we all just cut to the chase and apply Occam’s razor to trim as much non-reality (i.e. bullshit) as possible from our arguments. Here are my first proposed two Occam-like issue statement simplifications to be used to better frame our arguments:

1. Is it possible to modify the current single apartheid state of Greater Israel such that the former Palestinian possessors/owners could gain either a separate state of their own, or a modicum of basic and essential human rights that would allow them to share equally in the benefits of Greater Israel?

2. Are Jews entitled to an apartheid state of their own to protect them from perceived future dangers of anti-Semitism, or do past crimes against Jews provide sufficient justification alone for a Jewish apartheid state?

3. If Jews are entitled under international law to an apartheid state of their own for either or both of the above reasons, shall this be a generally applicable international legal precedent for oppressed peoples or is it exclusive only to peoples specifically chosen, such as Jews?

The clear reality is this: a single, apartheid state of Greater Israel has existed since 1967, now 44 years. 10 percent of Israeli Jews now inhabit 40 percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and have asserted total oppressive control over the lives of the remaining Palestinians who live there. The numbers of illegal settlers and settlements grow rapidly with no end in sight. Ethnic cleansing and violence toward Palestinians, with the protection and enablement of the Israeli government and military continues and expands in parallel. Arguments need to be framed around that existing reality, not hypothetical future outcomes.

The only remaining question in my mind is what steps can the international community take to reduce the apartheid conditions the Palestinians live and have lived under so that they can have some basic civil rights and liberties within the existing single apartheid state of Greater Israel. It would be nice to see that happen this year as they have been waiting, mostly patiently, for some 44 years (some would say 64 years).

The threshold question in this debate was: Is Zionism compatible with justice for the Palestinians? The experience of 44 years of post-1967 Zionist policies and practices (not to mention the happenings of the prior 19 years) strongly suggest not. The revelations of the Palestine Papers, the failure of President Obama to have any positive effect on the recent negotiations, coupled with his feckless veto of the UN resolution on the illegality of settlements demonstrate how pontless, fruitless and corrupt that whole peace process aimed at achieving a two state solution and justice for the Palestinians really is.

The only remaining question for Israel’s Zionist leaders seems to be how they can best go about cleansing their beloved Judea and Samaria of the remainder of those offensive Arabs, or at least pushing them into the least desirable Bantustan-like sectors of the West Bank and out of sight and out of mind of the heroic Jewish settlers and prosperous Jewish settlements.

The question to me is not whether there should be a one or two state solution, but what should be done about the current apartheid state of Greater Israel that has existed since 1967. Instead of Mandate Palestine becoming an Arab state and a Jewish state, as intended by the United Nations in 1947, it became the Zionist apartheid Jewish state of Greater Israel in 1967. It remains that today and we should describe as such in our arguments.

The question is not what to do to prevent Israel from becoming an apartheid state, it is an apartheid state. The question is can Zionist apartheid ever be stopped. I am not optimistic.

One final caveat: when I refer to Zionism or Zionists, I am referring only to the hard core variety who believe in and are committed to a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, not to the moderate versions which I see as largely powerless and now think of as Zionism-lite. Those with moderate views who believe in some form of justice for the Palestinians and even in a two state solution are welcome to identify themselves as Zionists but please don’t accuse me of including you in the excesses of hard core Zionism.

To the extent my growing frustrations with this issue may have resulted in some rhetorical excess, I apologize, but the 44 year old apartheid state of Greater Israel is what it is. We need to quit beating around the bush.”

Gil Maguire
http://www.irishmoses.com

Morning Musings: More on the Transformation of Jeffry Goldberg

Here is an entire thread that I commented extensively on (hijacked might be more accurate).   It is an important development from my earlier piece: http://savingisrael.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=301&action=edit

It involves the further metamorphosis of conservative neocon Atlantic commentator and media figure Jeffrey Goldberg.  It is a big deal when conservative neocons with the stature of Jeffrey Goldberg show they are fed up with Israeli and Lobby policy and start talking about how it is hurting Israel and hurting this country.

Goldberg embraces J Streetby Philip Weiss on March 28, 2011

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Jeffrey Goldberg embraces J Street at his blog. (Thanks to Ali Gharib) He says they’re right in line with the George Washington of Zionism, Ben-Gurion.

[In 1967] Ben-Gurion said that Israel cannot be an occupier of Arabs. He was right then, and J Street is right now. If Shimon Peres is to be considered a Zionist; if Rabin is considered to have been a Zionist; and if David Ben-Gurion is to have been considered a Zionist, well, then J Street is Zionist as well. It is not heroic in the manner of these men, but neither are most of Israel’s current leaders, and nor are the leaders of American Jewry today.

Couple comments. This is significant in terms of Israeli opinion, which Goldberg has the ability to affect. Goldberg, who attacked the settlers in the New York Times 2 years back and then did nothing to follow up, is catching up. David Remnick and Peter Beinart have already claimed this territory, as writers. Note the jab at American Jewish leadership; this was Beinart’s theme of a year back which Goldberg challenged at the time.

Also note the embrace of Zionism. Old school. Jewish Voice for Peace’s Cecilie Surasky said two weeks ago, We avoid the word Zionism. We don’t see the point in getting in fights over the term. We focus on human rights. This wisdom is bubbling up in American progressive life and American Jewry and Goldberg and Remnick are surely hearing it from their own children, or their kids’ friends. Ben-Gurion of course approved ethnic cleansing of the nascent Jewish state so that it would have a large Jewish majority.

PALESTINE’S DAY OF RAGE SHOULD BE A WORLD-WIDE DAY OF RAGE AGAINST THE U.S. AND ISRAEL

Palestinians, properly outraged at the Obama administration’s decision to veto a UN Security Council declaration on the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, are planning a Day of Rage this Friday. It would be wonderful if that demonstration happened in front of every American and Israeli embassy and consulate in the world. The power of the common people, as we have recently expressed in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Algeria, Libya and other Middle East countries is a wondrous thing. Nothing, including dictators, police or armies can stand in the way of a determined and peaceful mass of unarmed but insistent citizens determined to gain their rights even at the risk of death. It was and is a moving experience to watch and it harkens back to the halcyon days of our founding forefathers before we lost our democratic ideals, souls, and freedoms to interest group politics and corporate greed.

Of all the downtrodden peoples of the Middle East, the Palestinians are certainly the most deserving of help. They alone among Arab nations have never achieved independence and a country of their own. They alone remain under the boot of a ruthless colonial power, Israel, which is intent on keeping all their ancestral lands and homes for its Jewish citizens. Unlike the Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans and others, they have no country of their own. Nor do they have any freedoms. Instead, they are subject to the daily humiliation of military control and oppression by Israeli Defense Forces who routinely kill unarmed civilian demonstrators, arrest small children, seize homes and act to protect Jewish settlers no matter how outrageous their conduct toward their Palestinian neighbors.

One would think that my own country, the United States, known for its democratic history and as a champion of civil rights, would be the first to stand up in support of Palestinian independence and freedom. Alas, we, virtually alone among the nations of the world, ignore, except for occasional lip service, the plight of the Palestinians. We instead act as Israel’s great benefactor, funding its illegal settlement enterprise and brutal military occupation in Palestine at the tune of more than $3.0 billion per year. We claim we are acting as a neutral and fair mediator in our attempts to resolve the conflict but in fact we are “Israel’s Lawyer” and promote Israel’s positions no matter how unfair to the Palestinians. We further protect Israel from any and all international sanctions for its gross misconduct in its military adventures in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon and Gaza by vetoing any UN resolutions aimed at curtailing and sanctioning unlawful conduct by the Israelis.

The latest veto, this past Friday, was of a resolution that merely confirmed the US position of the last 43 years that Israel’s exclusively Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law. It is difficult to know the logic behind the decision to veto something we supposedly are in complete agreement with. We are told that the resolution would interfere with the negotiation process. That makes little sense since the negotiation process is effectively dead and has been largely moribund from the beginning. In her lame attempt to justify the veto, US UN Ambassador Susan Rice said “the US rejects in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continuing Israeli settlement activity”. Such crafty language is the tool of moral cowardice. The settlements are not illegitimate, they are illegal under international law. Opposing continuing Israeli settlement activity implies that we do not oppose past or completed settlement activity. What she should have said was that the US opposes all Israeli settlement building from 1967 on as illegal and a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The reason for the veto and crafty language is very clear: Israel and its US Jewish Zionist lobby hold great sway in American politics and in our Congress. Defying that lobby could result in a loss of as much as 50 percent of the funding of US congressional and presidential campaigns which would then be directed to parties and candidates who show complete fealty and obedience to the whim of Israel’s US Jewish Zionist lobby. The existence and power of this lobby is no secret and is freely admitted to and bragged about by its own supporters, and has been described in detail by past American presidents, secretaries of state and lessor dignitaries.

The power of Israel’s lobby over President Obama has been astonishing to watch. He began his administration with strong talk about how it was a vital national security interest of the United States to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He, Secretary of State Clinton and others said that Israel must immediately stop all settlement activities. After Vice President Biden was humiliated in a visit to Israel by the announcement of further settlement building, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton held meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu admonishing him for his conduct.

These largely verbal attempts at controlling illegal settlement activity by the Israelis caused major efforts by Israel’s lobby to change the administration’s approach to Israel. Normally dependable political funding sources dried up for democratic candidates. Obama soon faced not only the loss of his democratic majorities in Congress but also the destruction of his chances for a second term as President, a fate suffered by two former presidents who tangled with Israel’s US Jewish Zionist lobby, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.

Within weeks President Obama was making peace with Netanyahu. Despite total intransigence by the Israelis in the few months of peace talks, the Obama administration took no more adverse actions toward Israel, verbal or otherwise, and instead resorted to bribery as a form of persuasion. Nothing worked and the peace talks collapsed. Meanwhile illegal settlement building increased at exponential levels. There are now well over 500,000 Israeli Jews living in exclusively Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands intended by the UN for the Arab State of Palestine. This is the equivalent of 30 million Americans being moved into exclusive, Americans only, gated and guarded compounds throughout Canada without the permission of the Canadians.

The recent disclosures from the Wikileaks and Palestine Papers diplomatic documents have shown conclusively that the US is not acting as an honest broker mediator in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, and that Israel has no intent of entering into any remotely fair or equitable agreement. The Palestinians, justly disappointed, have turned to the UN for help and justice in the hope that they might finally receive the independent state of their own promised yet still denied them for some 64 years. They were supported by 130 nations and all fourteen member states on the UN Security Council, save one, the United States who killed the motion with its lone veto vote.

The Palestinians now have turned to their last hope, the power of the ordinary people of the world, like the Egyptian, Libyan, Tunisian masses who braved bullets to throw out dictators. Their hopes for American or UN justice forlorn and shattered, they have turned to all of us for help, for justice. They want and deserve their Day of Rage, their day of reckoning against Israel and its US Jewish Zionist Lobby, but most of all they want to express their rage against the US and its feckless president and gutless congress.

It would be wonderful to see this coming Friday large crowds gathering in front of US and Israeli embassies and consulates throughout the world demonstrating and chanting for Palestinian independence and freedom from Israeli oppression. The demonstrations should be peaceful but the chanting loud and forceful: “Freedom and independence for Palestine”. “Stop Israeli Oppression of the Palestinians”. Chants could even be rude if accurate, such as: “President Obama: Netanyahu’s Bitch”, or “President Obama: Israel’s Uncle Tom”, or “Yankee Go Home – to Tel Aviv”, or “US Foreign Policy: Bought and Paid for by AIPAC”.

These demonstration would be empowering for us all. They would show our corrupt governments that the lobby or interest group they should fear the most is the People’s Lobby. They would show us that we too have the blood and courage of Tunisians and Libyans coursing through our veins, that we too can walk and demonstrate like an Egyptian, that we too care about independence and human rights for all oppressed people, and most of all we care for our Palestinian brothers and sisters who have suffered under Israeli oppression far too long.

We have little time left before now and Friday to organize this massive effort but so what, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions were largely spontaneous. We can do it if we care enough, if we have courage enough to do so. This will be the fourth Friday of February. We should meet again in another demonstration on the fourth Friday of March and every month until Palestinians are at last free and independent. If we see no progress we should demand the closure of US and Israeli embassies and consulates and a boycott of Israeli and US goods and services until a fair solution is reached.

People Power is an awesome force. We need to use it.