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CounterPunch
October
11, 2002
Israel: the
Jewish Demographic State
by URI AVNERY
It sounds like a bad joke, but it really happened:
A rabbi went from Israel to Peru, converted a group of Native
Americans to Judaism, brought them to this country and put them
in a settlement, on land taken away from its Palestinian owners.
There they receive, as all settlers do,
generous government subsidies, paid for with money taken away
from thousands of Israelis living below the poverty line. There
they can live happily ever after (unless they leave the settlement
in an unarmored car, in which case they may be ambushed by the
original Palestinian owners.)
What causes a state to bring total strangers
from another hemisphere in order to displace the native people,
who gave lived there for many centuries, at the price of an eternal
bloody conflict? The answer touches the foundations of Israel.
Since the founding of the state, its
emissaries have been searching for "Jews". In the former
Soviet Union, Jews were discovered either by finding Christians
with remote Jewish family connections (the "Jewish  grandmother") or by simply forging
documents. Nobody knows how many non-Jews were thus brought to
Israel by the Jewish Agency and other organizations--at least
200 thousand, perhaps 400 thousand. According to the laws of
Israel, they were automatically accorded citizenship.
A few days ago, the "National Demographic
Council" was revived, after being condemned to inactivity
for some years. This is an institution that is supposed to deal
with what many Israelis consider the state's most important problem--more
important than the war with the Palestinians, Saddam's weapons
of annihilation, growing unemployment and the economic crisis.
The "demographic problem" is
being pondered in universities, talked about in the media, expounded
by politicians and commentators.
"Experts" with computers are
calculating what will be the percentage of Jews in Israel in
10, 25, 50 or a hundred years time. Will they be less than 78%?
Or--God forbid!--only 75%? Will the womb of the orthodox Jewish
woman, in addition to expected immigration, balance the production
of the Arab uterus?
And if not, what can be done? Some propose
encouraging Jewish births while resolutely discouraging Arab
natural increase. Some suggest preventing Jewish immigrants from
Russia from bringing with them Christian family members (allowed
by the Law of Return in its present form.) Some demand the immediate
expulsion of all foreign workers, before they settle down and
establish families. Some pray for a wave of anti-Semitism in
France or Argentina (but definitely not in the United States),
that will push multitudes of Jews towards Israel. Many, including
members of Sharon's government, support the simplest solution:
driving all Arabs out of the country. The "new historian",
Benny Morris, recently hinted that Ben-Gurion should have done
this in 1948.
The attitude of the state to it Arab
citizens, who now number 19% of the population, reminds one of
Pharaoh, who--according to the Bible--told his people how to
deal with another national minority: "Come on, let us deal
wisely with them, lest they multiply." And of the method
employed: "They made their lives bitter." (Exodus,
1)
According to the official definition,
Israel is a "Jewish Democratic State". This was enshrined
in law and endorsed by the Supreme Court. In theory, there is
no contradiction between the two adjectives: The state is Jewish,
but democracy safeguards equality for non-Jews, too. Or, alternatively,
the state is democratic, but safeguards its Jewish character.
In reality, this is not a "Jewish
democratic state" but a "Jewish demographic state".
Demography overcomes democracy in all fields of action. An Arab
citizen feels at every turn, since childhood, that he has no
part in the state, that he is, at most, a tolerated resident.
In every government office, police station or place of work,
even in the Knesset, he is treated differently from a Jew, even
in times of quiet. True, apart from the Law of Return, which
gives a "Jew" and his family (but not to Arab refugees)
the absolute right to come to Israel, no law discriminates between
a "Jew" and a non-Jew. But this is only make-believe:
numerous laws accord special privileges to persons "to whom
the Law of Return applies", without mentioning "Jews"
specifically.
This is so self evident, that all state
officials act accordingly without even being aware of it. The
"Israel Land Authority" distributes land to Jews, not
to Arabs. All state development projects include Jews only. Among
the hundreds of new towns and villages set up since the founding
of Israel, not a single one was established for Arabs. There
is no Arab minister in the Government, no Arab judge on the Supreme
Court bench.
Usually, all these omissions are explained
away by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all,
Israel's Arab citizens are Palestinians, too. But the question
is what causes what: does the conflict create the anti-Arab attitude
or does the anti-Arab attitude prolong the conflict?
Critics of Israel accuse it of practicing
"Apartheid", the South African racist doctrine. This
analogy may be partly misleading. Unlike Apartheid, Zionism is
not based on race, but on a mixture of ghetto mentality and 19th
century European nationalism.
Ghetto mentality is the spirit of a persecuted,
isolated community, which saw the whole world as divided between
Jews and Goyim (gentiles). European nationalism strove for a
homogeneous national-ethnic state. The Jewish demographic state
has absorbed both these elements: a homogeneous Jewish national-ethnic
state, with as few non-Jews as possible.
In Europe, where classical nationalism
was born, it is giving way to the modern American outlook, which
considers that every holder of a US passport belongs to the American
nation, irrespective of race and ethnic origin. This has helped
it becoming the most powerful state in the world, culturally,
economically, and militarily. European nation-states are gradually
ceding sovereignty to the European Union, and their citizenship
is accorded to foreign immigrants, too, who contribute to their
economy and safeguard their social welfare system. In Germany,
children of immigrants born in the country receive citizenship,
Britain and France are even more liberal.
Israel is faced with a historical choice:
to go back to being a Jewish ghetto, with demographic anxieties
and state trappings, or to go forwards towards a new national
outlook, on the American-European model.
Zionism was the last European national
movement. Israeli colonialism, too, has come 200 years too late.
So it is perhaps natural that the challenge of adopting a new
national outlook comes rather late. But in the end, I hope, the
Jewish Demographic State will be replaced by the Israeli Democratic
Republic, for the welfare and security of its citizens.
Uri Avnery
has closely followed the career of Sharon for four decades. Over
the years, he has written three extensive biographical essays
about him, two (1973, 1981) with his cooperation. Avnery is featured
in the new book, The
Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.
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Eight
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