A Look at Israeli Racism

"So what's your solution?" by Moshe Arens

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1089751.html

This editorial is by Moshe Arens, former Minister of Defense and Foreign Minister of Israel. Arens is a member of the Likud party, the major center-right political party in Israel. The newspaper is the Haaretz, a left-leaning daily that has been described as "the most prestigious Israeli newspaper" and "Israel's liberal beacon". Neither the author who wrote this editorial, nor the paper that published it, can be considered the fringe of Israeli political thought.

For Arens, an axiom (#2) necessary for any negotiations of a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine is: “There is a limit to the size of the minority population that can be included within the borders of the State of Israel without endangering the Jewish state's ethnic coherence.” This is an extraordinary statement. Imagine other politicians making equivalent statements. A white American politician calling for the deportation of blacks and Hispanics so as not to “endanger the state’s ethnic coherence”. Imagine Han Chinese, Iraqi Shiites, South African blacks, or Indian Hindus calling for the depopulation of minorities in their respective countries. This sort of blatant racism would be considered outrageous by the international community if it came from anywhere other than Israel.

This racism is mostly overlooked by the West because the state of Israel, as it currently exists, is inherently racist. To renounce the views of politicians like Moshe Arens, would call into question our entrenched policy of being a loyal ally with Israel. To accept the current state of Israel, one has to accept that Jews are superior to Arabs, and that Jews have more of a right to live in this land than other peoples.

Enacted two years after the founding of the state of Israel, and now a cornerstone of Israeli national identity, the Law of Return gives the Jews of the world the right to settle in Israel and be made citizens. Arabs, despite having equally significant historical and religious ties to the land, are officially considered less worthy to live in the state of Israel. Imagine if a law like this existed in the U.S., and did the equivalent for whites or Christians, inviting and giving them preferential treatment merely because of their religious-ethnic similarity to the majority.

This intrinsic racism can be seen in the existence and expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Under military occupation since 1967, the Palestinian territories are now home to nearly half a million Israeli settlers. These Israeli settlers are not subject to the same military and local laws as the Palestinians. This has created a system where settlers enjoy liberties and legal guarantees that are denied to Palestinians. The UN security council, the International Court of Justice, the EU, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch all consider the Israeli settlements to be illegal. Israelis argue they have a right to build these illegal settlements because of the “Bible and the history of Jewish people”. That Jewish people lived in the area within the last 2,000 years is, in the Israeli view, enough justification for the flagrant violation of international law.

Moshe Arens use of the term ‘Judea and Samaria’ for what is internationally known as ‘the West Bank’, reveals the religious motivation of his racism. The terms Judea and Samaria are used to demonstrate a biblical Jewish connection to the land and thus supply the rationale for contemporary Jewish control over the area.