Israel's
Right To Be Racist
By Joseph Massad
17 March, 2007
Al Ahram
Israel's
struggle for peace is a sincere one. In fact, Israel desires to live
at peace not only with its neighbours, but also and especially with
its own Palestinian population, and with Palestinians whose lands its
military occupies by force. Israel's desire for peace is not only rhetorical
but also substantive and deeply psychological. With few exceptions,
prominent Zionist leaders since the inception of colonial Zionism have
desired to establish peace with the Palestinians and other Arabs whose
lands they slated for colonisation and settlement. The only thing Israel
has asked for, and continues to ask for in order to end the state of
war with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours, is that all recognise
its right to be a racist state that discriminates by law against Palestinians
and other Arabs and grants differential legal rights and privileges
to its own Jewish citizens and to all other Jews anywhere. The resistance
that the Palestinian people and other Arabs have launched against Israel's
right to be a racist state is what continues to stand between Israel
and the peace for which it has struggled and to which it has been committed
for decades. Indeed, this resistance is nothing less than the "New
anti- Semitism".
Israel is willing to do anything
to convince Palestinians and other Arabs of why it needs and deserves
to have the right to be racist. Even at the level of theory, and before
it began to realise itself on the ground, the Zionist colonial project
sought different means by which it could convince the people whose lands
it wanted to steal and against whom it wanted to discriminate to accept
as understandable its need to be racist. All it required was that the
Palestinians "recognise its right to exist" as a racist state.
Military methods were by no means the only persuasive tools available;
there were others, including economic and cultural incentives. Zionism
from the start offered some Palestinians financial benefits if they
would accede to its demand that it should have the right to be racist.
Indeed, the State of Israel still does. Many Palestinian officials in
the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation
have been offered and have accepted numerous financial incentives to
recognise this crucial Israeli need. Those among the Palestinians who
regrettably continue to resist are being penalised for their intransigence
by economic choking and starvation, supplemented by regular bombardment
and raids, as well as international isolation. These persuasive methods,
Israel hopes, will finally convince a recalcitrant population to recognise
the dire need of Israel to be a racist state. After all, Israeli racism
only manifests in its flag, its national anthem, and a bunch of laws
that are necessary to safeguard Jewish privilege, including the Law
of Return (1950), the Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of the
State's Property (1951), the Law of Citizenship (1952), the Status Law
(1952), the Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), the Construction
and Building Law (1965), and the 2002 temporary law banning marriage
between Israelis and Palestinians of the occupied territories.
Let us start with why Israel
and Zionism need to ensure that Israel remains a racist state by law
and why it deserves to have that right. The rationale is primarily threefold
and is based on the following claims.
Jews are always in danger
out in the wide world; only in a state that privileges them racially
and religiously can they be safe from gentile oppression and can prosper.
If Israel removed its racist laws and symbols and became a non-racist
democratic state, Jews would cease to be a majority and would be like
Diaspora Jews, a minority in a non-Jewish state. These concerns are
stated clearly by Israeli leaders individually and collectively. Shimon
Peres, for example, the dove of official Israel, has been worried for
some time about the Palestinian demographic "danger", as the
Green Line, which separates Israel from the West Bank, is beginning
to "disappear ... which may lead to the linking of the futures
of West Bank Palestinians with Israeli Arabs". He hoped that the
arrival of 100,000 Jews in Israel would postpone this demographic "danger"
for 10 more years, as ultimately, he stressed, "demography will
defeat geography".
In December 2000, the Institute
of Policy and Strategy at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre in Israel
held its first of a projected series of annual conferences dealing with
the strength and security of Israel, especially with regards to maintaining
Jewish demographic majority. Israel's president and current and former
prime ministers and cabinet ministers were all in attendance. One of
the "Main Points" identified in the 52-page conference report
is concern over the numbers needed to maintain Jewish demographic and
political supremacy of Israel: "The high birth rate [of 'Israeli
Arabs'] brings into question the future of Israel as a Jewish state
... The present demographic trends, should they continue, challenge
the future of Israel as a Jewish state. Israel has two alternative strategies:
adaptation or containment. The latter requires a long-term energetic
Zionist demographic policy whose political, economic, and educational
effects would guarantee the Jewish character of Israel."
The report adds affirmatively
that, "those who support the preservation of Israel's character
as ... a Jewish state for the Jewish nation ... constitute a majority
among the Jewish population in Israel." Of course, this means the
maintenance of all the racist laws that guarantee the Jewish character
of the state. Subsequent annual meetings have confirmed this commitment.
Jews are carriers of Western
civilisation and constitute an Asian station defending both Western
civilisation and economic and political interests against Oriental terrorism
and barbarism. If Israel transformed itself into a non-racist state,
then its Arab population would undermine the commitment to Western civilisation
and its defence of the West's economic and political interests, and
might perhaps transform Jews themselves into a Levantine barbaric population.
Here is how Ben Gurion once put it: "We do not want Israelis to
become Arabs. We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the
Levant, which corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve the authentic
Jewish values as they crystallised in the [European] Diaspora."
Indeed Ben Gurion was clear on the Zionist role of defending these principles:
"We are not Arabs, and others measure us by a different standard
... our instruments of war are different from those of the Arabs, and
only our instruments can guarantee our victory." More recently,
Israel's ambassador to Australia, Naftali Tamir, stressed that: "We
are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow
skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia
and Israel are not -- we are basically the white race."
God has given this land to
the Jews and told them to safeguard themselves against gentiles who
hate them. To make Israel a non-Jewish state then would run the risk
of challenging God Himself. This position is not only upheld by Jewish
and Christian fundamentalists, but even by erstwhile secular Zionists
(Jews and Christians alike). Ben Gurion himself understood, as does
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, that: "God promised it to us."
It is important to stress
that this Zionist rationale is correct on all counts if one accepts
the proposition of Jewish exceptionalism. Remember that Zionism and
Israel are very careful not to generalise the principles that justify
Israel's need to be racist but are rather vehement in upholding it as
an exceptional principle. It is not that no other people has been oppressed
historically, it is that Jews have been oppressed more. It is not that
no other people's cultural and physical existence has been threatened;
it is that the Jews' cultural and physical existence is threatened more.
This quantitative equation is key to why the world, and especially Palestinians,
should recognise that Israel needs and deserves to have the right to
be a racist state. If the Palestinians, or anyone else, reject this,
then they must be committed to the annihilation of the Jewish people
physically and culturally, not to mention that they would be standing
against the Judeo-Christian God.
It is true that Palestinian
and Arab leaders were not easily persuaded of these special needs that
Israel has; that it took decades of assiduous efforts on the part of
Israel to convince them, especially through "military" means.
In the last three decades they have shown signs of coming around. Though
Anwar El-Sadat inaugurated that shift in 1977, it would take Yasser
Arafat longer to recognise Israel's needs. But Israel remained patient
and became more innovative in its persuasive instruments, especially
its military ones. When Arafat came to his senses and signed the Oslo
Accords in 1993, he finally recognised Israel's right to be racist and
to legally discriminate against its own Palestinian citizens. For that
belated recognition, a magnanimous Israel, still eager for peace, decided
to negotiate with him. He, however, continued to resist on some issues.
For Arafat had hoped that his recognition of Israel's need to be racist
inside Israel was in exchange for Israel ending its racist apartheid
system in the occupied territories. That was clearly a misunderstanding
on his part. Israeli leaders explained to him and to his senior peace
negotiator Mahmoud Abbas in marathon discussions that lasted seven years,
that Israel's needs are not limited to imposing its racist laws inside
Israel but must extend to the occupied territories as well. Surprisingly,
Arafat was not content with the Bantustans the Israelis offered to carve
up for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza around the Jewish
colonial settlements that God had granted the Jews. The United States
was brought in to persuade the malleable leader that the Bantustan solution
was not a bad one. Indeed, equally honourable collaborators as Arafat
had enjoyed its benefits, such as Mangosutho Gatcha Buthelezi in Apartheid
South Africa. It was no shame to accept it, President Clinton insisted
to Arafat at Camp David in the summer of 2000. While Abbas was convinced,
Arafat remained unsure.
It is true that in 2002 Arafat
came around some more and reaffirmed his recognition of Israel's need
for racist laws inside the country when he gave up the right of return
of the six million exiled Palestinians who, by virtue of Israel's racist
law of return, are barred from returning to the homeland from which
Israel had expelled them while Jewish citizens of any other countries
obtain automatic citizenship in an Israel most of them have never before
seen. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Arafat declared: "We
understand Israel's demographic concerns and understand that the right
of return of Palestinian refugees, a right guaranteed under international
law and United Nations Resolution 194, must be implemented in a way
that takes into account such concerns." He proceeded to state that
he was looking to negotiate with Israel on "creative solutions
to the plight of the refugees while respecting Israel's demographic
concerns". This however, was not sufficient, as Arafat remained
unpersuaded of Israel's need to set up its racist apartheid in the occupied
territories. Israel had no choice but to isolate him, keep him under
house arrest, and possibly poison him at the end.
President Abbas, however,
learned well from the mistakes of his predecessor and has shown more
openness to Israeli arguments about its dire need to have a racist apartheid
system set up in the West Bank and Gaza and that the legitimacy of this
apartheid must also be recognised by the Palestinians as a precondition
for peace. Abbas was not the only Palestinian leader to be beguiled.
Several other Palestinian leaders were so convinced that they offered
to help build the infrastructure of Israeli apartheid by providing Israel
with most of the cement it needed to build its Jews-only colonies and
the apartheid wall.
The problem now was Hamas,
who, while willing to recognise Israel, still refused to recognise its
special needs to be racist inside the Green Line and to set up an apartheid
system inside the occupied territories. This is where Saudi Arabia was
brought in last month in the holy city of Mecca. Where else, pondered
the Saudis, could one broker an agreement where the leadership of the
victims of Israeli racism and oppression can be brought to solemnly
swear that they recognise their oppressor's special need to oppress
them? Well, Hamas has been resisting the formula, which Fatah has upheld
for five years, namely to "commit" to this crucial recognition.
Hamas said that all it could do was "respect" past agreements
that the PA had signed with Israel and which recognised its need to
be racist. This, Israel and the United States insist, is insufficient
and the Palestinians will continue to be isolated despite Hamas's "respect"
for Israel's right to be racist. The condition for peace as far as Israel
and the US are concerned is that both Hamas and Fatah recognise and
be committed to Israel's right to be an apartheid state inside the Green
Line as well as its imposition of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza.
Short of this, there will be no deal. The ensuing summit between Condie
Rice, Ehud Olmert and the exalted PA President Abbas was spent with
Olmert interrogating Abbas on how much he remains committed to Israel's
need for apartheid in the occupied territories. A minor replay summit
was concluded on the same basis a few days ago. Abbas had hoped that
the two summits could coax Israel to finalise arrangements for the Bantustans
over which he wants to rule, but Israel, understandably, felt insecure
and had to ensure that Abbas himself was still committed to its right
to impose apartheid first. Meanwhile, ongoing "secret" Israeli-Saudi
talks have filled Israel with the hope and expectation that the Arab
League's upcoming summit in Riyadh might very well cancel the Palestinian
right of return that is guaranteed by international law and affirm the
inviolability of Israel's right to be a racist state as guaranteed by
international diplomacy. All of Israel's efforts to achieve peace might
finally bear fruit if the Arabs finally concede to what international
mediation had already conceded to Israel before them.
It should be clear then that
in this international context, all existing solutions to what is called
the Palestinian-Israeli "conflict" guarantee Israel's need
to maintain its racist laws and its racist character and ensure its
right to impose apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza. What Abbas and
the Palestinians are allowed to negotiate on, and what the Palestinian
people and other Arabs are being invited to partake of, in these projected
negotiations is the political and economic (but not the geographic)
character of the Bantustans that Israel is carving up for them in the
West Bank, and the conditions of the siege around the Big Prison called
Gaza and the smaller ones in the West Bank. Make no mistake about it,
Israel will not negotiate about anything else, as to do so would be
tantamount to giving up its racist rule.
As for those among us who
insist that no resolution will ever be possible before Israel revokes
all its racist laws and does away with all its racist symbols, thus
opening the way for a non-racist future for Palestinians and Jews in
a decolonised bi-national state, Israel and its apologists have a ready-made
response that has redefined the meaning of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism
is no longer the hatred of and discrimination against Jews as a religious
or ethnic group; in the age of Zionism, we are told, anti-Semitism has
metamorphosed into something that is more insidious. Today, Israel and
its Western defenders insist, genocidal anti-Semitism consists mainly
of any attempt to take away and to refuse to uphold the absolute right
of Israel to be a racist Jewish state.
The writer is associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual
history at Columbia University. His latest book is The Persistence of
the Palestinian Question; Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians. This
commentary was originally published by Al-Ahram Weekly.