August 16, 2007

Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

The future of the state of Israel is politically and ideologically now more uncertain than at any time since its inception in 1948.

I speak not of the threat of attack from Iran, or the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, but rather of the increasing tendency, in some western academic and intellectual circles, to question Israel’s very right to exist.

For these critics, the right of national self-determination for Jews in a state of their own is morally reprehensible, its very foundation a crime, an “original sin.”

They demand that this illegitimate state be dismantled, or at the very least “de-Judaized,” in terms of its laws and symbols, in order for it to become “a state of all its citizens” -- by which they refer to the 1.5 million people, about 20 per cent of Israel’s population, who are Arabs and Druze.

In fact, this Arab population has full citizenship, with legal protections and political rights: currently, 12 of the 120 members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) are Israeli Arabs, most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel’s Supreme Court judges is an Israeli Arab.

But this is not good enough for Israel’s opponents. They want to eliminate the “Zionist” (read: Jewish) nature of the state altogether.

One bone of contention is Israel’s “Law of Return,” which allows speedy immigration to the country by Jews, but not by others. (Israel was founded, after all, in order to be a Jewish state.) But rarely do these detractors of the state acknowledge that many other countries have similar policies.

Germany, for instance, allows ethnic Germans from elsewhere, even if they have no family connection with the country, to “return” to Germany.

But others do not have a similar right. Turks from Turkey cannot simply come to Germany under such arrangements, even if they have relatives among the large population of ethnic Turks in the country.

An Israel that became a “state of all its citizens” in terms of its public face would simply revert to being pre-1948 Palestine. The national flag and anthem, both Jewish, would need replacement. Extra-national bodies such as the Jewish Agency would disappear. The country would no longer be Jewish, so why would Jews have bothered creating it at all?

As well, in a non-Jewish Israel (or, to give it its proper name, Palestine), Jews would quickly become a minority, since we can assume that former Arab Palestinian refugees and their descendants would be allowed back under their own “law of return.” They would quickly assume the reins of power, and Jews would live under their governance.

In that case, Jews might just as well live in California or South Africa; Los Angeles or Capetown are just as pleasant as Tel Aviv. And they are in better neighborhoods!

Do Israel’s detractors also demand that the many states that are officially, not merely demographically, Islamic – Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and many more – also become “states of all their citizens?” Not that I’ve noticed.

Of course most of those countries have very few or no non-Muslim citizens, not even second class ones, since, unlike in Israel, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Jewish minorities are, to put it mildly, made to feel less than welcome.

If there are Jews who can only conceive of Israel as a state in which they are inherently superior, legally and socially, they have only themselves to blame if people regard that kind of Israel as a state that has no right to exist in its current form, warns one writer.

Really? No right to exist? But why then do the Albanians, the Bulgarians, the Croats, the Czechs, the Finns, the Greeks, the Latvians, the Japanese, the Swedes, the Ukrainians, the Vietnamese, and some 100 other ethnic groups have proprietary rights to their own states? And there are many others, including Chechens, Kosovar Albanians, Tibetans, and Palestinians themselves, demanding their own national independence.

Are they also not “privileged” within their own countries? Are not their symbols and laws reflective of their religious and cultural systems, past and present? Do their flags not display crosses and crescents?

Finally, what about all the artificial countries, the relics of colonialism – the Congos and Nigerias and Sudans? I see few people calling for the elimination of these polities.

Given the amount of ink spilled in attacks on Israel, a recently landed Martian might assume this nation to be the hub of a huge empire, comparable to some of the giants of the past, states that ruled over hundreds of millions of subjects.

The visitor might think Israel comparable to ancient Rome; 16th century Spain; the Ottoman and Mughal empires; Napoleonic France; the Victorian British Empire, with its worldwide reach; the Chinese empires, imperial and Communist; and for that matter the old Soviet Union, that “prison house of nationalities,” together with its east European satellites states.

But Israel is in fact tiny: fewer than seven million people in an area (pre-1967) of 22,072 square kilometres, or 8,522 square miles. This is not even twice the size, and with about half the population, of Greater Los Angeles!

The occupied West Bank (and Gaza) add another 6,335 square kilometres (2,446 square miles), with a population of 3.8 million.

And Israel is surrounded by states, far larger than itself, which have been less than pleased to see it come into existence. Some empire.

So how to account for the fixation on, and obsession with, this little Jewish country? I leave it to the readers’ imaginations – or better yet, their reading of history. I think we know the answer.