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September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
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Bush and the Love Doctors
Sex,
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September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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September 9, 2004
Toward a True
Democratic State in the Middle East
The
Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
By
TODD MAY
Recently, the debate about Israel and
Palestine has taken an odd turn. The idea of a single democratic
state in historic Palestine, once thought dead, has re- emerged
as an option worthy of consideration. For some, the idea of a
single state is a matter of realism. Tony Judt, for example,
argues in The New York Review of Books that the integration of
the West Bank may already be irreversible, and suggests that
a single binational state may be the only alternative to ethnic
cleansing. More recently, Noah Cohen has criticized Noam Chomsky's
endorsement of a two-state solution. In Cohen's view, we ought
to think of Palestine on the model of South Africa, and follow
its solution of endorsing a democratic state for all who live
in it.
Like many, I long favored a
two-state solution. It seemed to me the best of a set of bad
solutions to the problem of two peoples living side by side on
a small parcel of land. I believe now that I was wrong. The two-state
solution is neither moral nor realistic. The only politically
and ethically viable approach to the problem of Israel and Palestine
is to support a single democratic secular state that provides
equal rights for all of its citizens. Furthermore, the failure
to recognize this has, I believe, helped underwrite some of the
most egregious of Israel's policies. The most important reason
for this has not, to my knowledge, yet been sufficiently addressed.
I would like to do so here.
Many Palestinians have argued
that the formation of Israel was a case of solving European problems
on Arab land. Let us look a little more closely at what that
solution has consisted in. A single people is thought, in the
name of its religion, to have primary dominion over that land.
There are others living on the land; they are to be accorded
secondary rights. (Although Israel claims its Palestinian citizens
possess equal rights, such a claim is ludicrous. It is well known
that the Palestinians are unable to form parliamentary coalitions
with the Jewish parties that universally reject them, they do
not enjoy equal municipal funding in their towns, they are dispossessed
of their land, they are denied equal access to education, and
so on.)
This is not simply a moral
matter. Nor is it simply a historical one. It is both. And that
is the problem that we who have endorsed a two-state solution
have neglected.
To privilege a single people
on a land that supports others as well is to create two intertwined
problems. First, it implicitly accords a greater moral worth
to that people. We who live in the United States should be viscerally
aware this, given our history with native Americans and people
of African descent. Second, according this greater moral worth
erases the moral limits that any person or people should enjoy
relative to others. Once those moral limits are erased, the door
is open to abuses of the kind that are rife in Israel's history.
Think, for example, of the
recent issue of terrorism. How many of us are ready to ascribe
terrorism to suicide bombings but not to the destruction of homes
with people still in them or the enforced starvation of towns
and villages or the indiscriminate firing on nonviolent protestors?
This imbalance is never far to seek, and even those of us who
support the Palestinians find ourselves on the defensive. However,
we who have supported a two-state solution have negligently endorsed
the framing of the issue that allows this to happen. We endorse
a "right to exist" that seems to apply to a particular
nation but in fact applies only to a particular people within
that nation: Jewish people. Furthermore, that right is exercised
at the expense of others whose rights, as the Bush administration
does not cease to remind us, must be earned by renouncing their
struggle against occupation.
The core of the problem lies
here. To privilege politically a single people is to lay the
foundation for all subsequent abuses. This is not to say that
those abuses follow logically from this privileging. Nor is it
to say that they were historically inevitable. Rather, it is
that the struggle against such abuses concedes at the outset
what it should not: that there is a certain privilege legitimately
accorded to Israeli Jews.
We should deny this privilege,
and anything that follows from it. One of the things that follow
from it is a two-state solution in which Jews enjoy privilege
in one of those states (and, presumably, non-Jews in the other
one). We should endorse what we should always have endorsed:
a single state that privileges nobody, a state where the primary
address from one of its members to another is that of "citizen."
I am sure that this approach
must ring false to the ears of many. There are a number of objections
that one might raise to it. Let me put a few forward, and then
answer them in the hope of giving some plausibility to an idea
that cuts against the grain of much of received wisdom.
A first objection might appeal
to the motivation for recognizing (although, historically, not
for forming) a Jewish state in the first place. The Holocaust
seemed to many to prove that Jews were unsafe anywhere, and that
they needed a place where they could erect a barricade against
the history of genocide they faced. A Jewish state would be a
natural way to do so.
This objection is misplaced.
Jews were indeed often unsafe in Europe. They were not nearly
as unsafe in the United States, nor were they in Palestine before
the advent of Zionism. That the Holocaust proves that European
Jews deserve protection against the history of hatred against
them is undeniable. It does not follow from this that they deserved
a state where they would be privileged vis-à- vis another
people. That idea has more to do with nineteenth-century nationalism
than with the internationalism more characteristic of the contemporary
world. Moreover, history has shown the effects of this privileging.
I should note in passing that
in replying to this objection I do not mean to rule out the possibility
of a single binational state, one that, like South Africa or
Canada, recognizes the collective rights of all of its groups
and seeks to protect them. However, I do not, with Professor
Chomsky, see a two-state solution as a potential path toward
binationalism. For the reasons I have given, I have come to see
the former as resting on assumptions that undermine the possibility
both of binationalism and even of the two-state solution itself.
The second objection is that
it is unrealistic to expect Palestinians and Jews to live side
by side without acrimony. Things have gone too far; hatred has
become too deep to expect anything but a cycle of violence and
counterviolence. While hatred is certainly palpable between Israeli
Jews and Palestinians, its inevitable longevity can be reasonably
doubted. During the Oslo period, although Israel continued systematically
to dispossess Palestinians of their land and settle Jews on it,
there were numerous acts particularly of economic cooperation
between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Much of this cooperation
occurred out of the glare of the media, so it was not noticed.
But occur it did. Indeed, one should not be surprised. The opportunity
for enhancing one's livelihood has proven a powerful motivator
over the course of human history. There is no reason to expect
economic cooperation, particularly if it is fostered, to drown
in a sea of hatred. In fact, there is reason to expect the opposite.
The final objection is perhaps
the most powerful one, because it is the most entrenched. All
of this talk of a single state, one might say, is idle dreaming.
Israel will not allow it to happen, because it will mean the
end of Israel as a state and Zionism as an idea. In short, the
proposal is a non-starter.
In addressing this objection,
we should first recognize that what is and is not realistic to
endorse depends on what the options are. Presumably, the more
realistic alternative is a two-state solution. But is this really
more realistic? The entire sweep of Israeli history argues against
it. There is not a single moment in the history of Israel, and
in particular of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, in which Israel was prepared
to recognize a viable, independent Palestinian state existing
along its borders. (The Barak proposal at Camp David is often
offered as a counterexample. However, I fail to see how a demilitarized
state that does not have control of its borders, its airspace,
its aquifers, or many of its central roads is considered a viable
state. If there is a non-starter, that was certainly it.) There
is no reason to believe that Israel is to be enticed into a two-state
solution, so the question then becomes one of the terms in which
it is to be confronted.
Some might say, however, that
Israel will more easily succumb to confrontation if it involves
something less than the end of Zionism. I used to believe this.
I no longer do. It is precisely the privileging of Jews to which
Zionism is committed that fosters the idea that Israelis are
justified in their horrific treatment of Palestinians. That is
the tenet that needs to be attacked. We should not seek to welcome
Israel into the community of nations, but rather seek to welcome
Jews into the community of people. The first endorses a sense
of Jewish exceptionalism, the second an integration that is all
anyone is entitled to and something everyone (including Palestinians)
should be protected in.
The struggle for a single state
will certainly be a long one. But the struggle for two states
has been a long one as well, and its results so far have not
been promising. My suggestion here is that the reason for such
meager results has more than a little to do with the framework
within which many of us have thought about the issue. I do not
want to deny that there are, in politics, times in which moral
compromise is necessary for the sake of preventing a far worse
fate. It has become increasingly evident that this is not one
of those times. The politics of Palestine require that we remove
our moral blinders, not in order to attain a greater moral purity
in approaching a just solution to the "problem of Palestine,"
but in order to see our way to a solution at all.
Todd May is a Professor of Philosophy at Clemson
University. He can be reached at: TKDRJMAY@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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