‘NYT’ runs Israeli’s op-ed recommending that Palestinians ’emigrate voluntarily’

US Politics
on 43 Comments
New York Times headquarters

In the last few days The New York Times has run several opinion pieces from the Israeli or American Zionist point of view. We’ve seen none from Palestinians. Last Wednesday was a low point. Right alongside Tom Friedman urging Donald Trump to “save the Jews” from division over Israel, the Times ran a piece called, “A Settler’s View of Israel’s Future,” by Yishai Fleisher, international spokesperson for the illegal settler community in Hebron.

The very-Jewish-centric New York Times last Wednesday

The article included a bible lecture about why the two-state solution was dead: “Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people. Our right to this land is derived from our history, religion, international decisions and defensive wars.”

But as for the fundamental question — what are you going to do about all the Palestinians? — Fleisher offered five ideas, all from Israeli Jews.

1. “Jordan is Palestine.” Palestinians in the West Bank would be given Jordanian citizenship, with democratic rights there, “but live as expats with civil rights in Israel.”

2. Bantustans. “Arabs living in Areas A and B — the main Palestinian population centers — would have self-rule.”

3. More bantustans. Seven Arab population centers in the West Bank and Gaza would be called “emirates.”

 4. Give them equal rights, but keep an eye on their “birth rates” and encourage “emigration.”

5. Get out of here. “Palestinians in Judea and Samaria would be offered generous compensation to emigrate voluntarily.”

“Emigrate voluntarily”? It is shocking to read these proposals about where to stash Palestinians, offered not by some racist quoted in a news article, but a racist granted a platform on the op-ed page. It is impossible to imagine the New York Times giving such status to supremacist visions about what to do with pesky minority subjects offered by any other overlord in our world.

In stark contrast, the Times letters column ran a letter from Roderick Balfour, a descendant of Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary who penned the Balfour Declaration 100 years ago, pointing out that “a central tenet of the declaration has all but been forgotten over the intervening decades: respect for the status of (Arab) Palestinians.”

Balfour noted “The increasing inability of Israel to address this condition,” and concluded that the intentions of his forebear’s declaration would be fulfilled only by “making Jerusalem an internationally protected capital for all three Abrahamic faiths.”

Balfour’s assertion that Israelis can’t address the Palestinian condition is an understatement; and it is borne out by the hideous proposals in Fleisher’s opinion piece. It is a blot on the New York Times, and a sign of the corruption of Zionism, that Roderick Balfour is not granted op-ed space; while ethnic supremacists who take their writ from the bible are.

This piece has been corrected from the original which misspelled Fleisher’s name as Fleshler. 

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43 Responses

  1. eljay
    February 20, 2017, 11:03 am

    Dear so-called “Palestinians”,

    The geographic region of Palest…errr, I mean, Judea and Samaria does not belong to you, its indigenous population. It belongs to people all over the world who choose to be/come Jewish – that is, to hold or acquire the religion-based identity of Jewish.

    We have tried over the decades to drive home this point by driving you out of your homes, oppressing you and even murdering you in cold blood; but like so many cockroaches you continue to infest our Promised Land.

    So let’s be perfectly clear: While ethnic cleansing is “currently not necessary”, we’re willing to revisit this and any other “necessary evil” in the not-too-distant future if you refuse to f*ck off and/or die.

    So, please, f*ck off and/or die.

    Yours in eternal supremacism,

    a Zionist.

    P.S. – All hail the Thousand Year “Jewish State”.

    • BeamMeUp
      February 22, 2017, 1:37 am

      This is the most disgusting piece I have read in a long time. Once upon a time in utopia (as compared to now) the Jews and Palestinians lived together in decent harmony (which is the best we can say about different groups living together). I am not anti-semitic, but to my core, I am anti-Zionist….look it up, there’s a difference. When we overlook “one human family” in deference to any “race, religion, color or creed” we become all the lesser for it. We are ONE RACE, the human race….but there is that thread of greed and power and selfishness that overcomes compassion, cooperation and community and all but slaps in the face all the religions in the world that impart the wisdom and righteousness of caring for each other.

      • Mibo
        February 22, 2017, 4:52 pm

        Hear, hear!

    • paulh1985
      February 25, 2017, 9:14 am

      i am very much sure that this is a sarcastic reply ie in favour of palestine..

  2. oldgeezer
    February 20, 2017, 11:31 am

    Such a revealing article. It’s astounding that it was printed by any newspaper let alone the NYT. I’m not defending the times as it has a pretty bad history of publishing zionist propaganda. This article though is so over the top. I look forward to the times publishing similar articles from the kkk and aryan brotherhood.

    That said it’s good that published. It generally is really just a summation of ideas being proposed by Israeli political leadership and not the authors own ideas. As such it shows the evil that is zionism. The racism at it’s core and the lack of sincerity in their stated wishes for peace.

    The readers comments are quite good too. They show no one is buying this crap. If only we had political leadership which lived up to our supposed western values.

  3. Ian Berman
    February 20, 2017, 1:57 pm

    The Balfour Declaration and the Zionist Failure to live up to the bargain

    https://www.facebook.com/SpiritOfJBulworth/photos/a.494329413929325.133572.494320497263550/1142502795778647/

  4. Ossinev
    February 20, 2017, 2:30 pm

    Have read the article in full and struggled to hold the contents of my stomach down. The author is quite simply a Fascist with a Fascist attitude to humanity other than his own brand of Menschen humanity. The suggestion of remuneration for giving up your homeland (incidentally also giving up your children and grandchildrens rights to that homeland) is quite simply repugnant and the concept of “paying people off” simply reinforces the “Jews and money ” trope which he would criticize as being grossly Anti- Semitic in a full range of other scenarios. Like a lot of self brainwashed Zionists he really does see himself as being humane,pragmatic and bless him open to new ideas. but gives his predictable odious little game away as soon as he starts mouthing off the usual crap about God Given and latterly Balfour and “International Law” (FFS) given rights to ” Judea and Samaria” . A Zionist version of the Caliphititis virus.

  5. pabelmont
    February 20, 2017, 2:45 pm

    hideous proposals in Fleshler’s opinion piece. It is a blot on the New York Times, and a sign of the corruption of Zionism, that Roderick Balfour is not granted op-ed space; while ethnic supremacists who take their writ from the bible

    Well — Not sure Zionism has been corrupted: it started out as it is. Not shiny but not corrupted.

    OTOH, NYT used to be a pretty good paper. In the period 1980-1990 I subscribed to NYT (paper of course) and clipped I/P daily, finding a lot of useful stuff. Nothing like the pure-propaganda of today. Including the recent Fleshler “blot”.

    The NYT has been corrupted, fer sher.

    • HarryLaw
      February 20, 2017, 5:42 pm

      “Thus we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say “no” and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.”
      In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral and just or it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

      We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

      There is no other morality.

      Vladimir Jabotinsky ‘The Iron Wall’

      • MHughes976
        February 20, 2017, 6:01 pm

        What’s moral and just should indeed be done. The scale of opposition is not entirely irrelevant even then, but basically ‘thou shall not follow a multitude to do evil’. The rest of Jabo’s remarks are a bit dubious, though.

      • Maghlawatan
        February 20, 2017, 9:30 pm

        Jabotinsky was the Jewish Bannon of his day. Israel implemented his dystopian vision in full. It has not far off one million settlers in the West Bank. But it misjudged the Palestinians. They didn’t leave. they never well. Not after 1948. And thus Israel is doomed.

        Israel needs a peace process to cover up apartheid. The peace process is the face of Dorian Israel.
        Without the peace process the goys just see the picture of Dorian Israel.

      • Talkback
        February 21, 2017, 8:11 am

        Maghlawatan: “Jabotinsky was the Jewish Bannon of his day.”

        Bannon? More like Mussolini. Like his political descendants of the Likud party.

  6. Kaisa of Finland
    February 20, 2017, 3:15 pm

    I red the whole article!! Thank you for sharing it. Now I’ll have something to refer to, when I am trying to explain people here what zionism is about.

    I was trying to imagine what would have happened, if that article had been written in finnish and published in a news paper here. I don’t think, it could have been published, but if it had, it would most likely have become a police investigation for the obvious racial discrimination it is including . Spreading that kind of talk here, is a crime.

    • Kaisa of Finland
      February 20, 2017, 3:49 pm

      And for those who happen to watch Ami Horowitz’s program of Sweden, I’d like to remind that the biggest group of immigrants in Sweden are Finns and Mr. Horowitz could easly have been knocked out by a drunken Finn while filming in Husby, since it is no secret there are plenty of them there.. So let’s not make the swedish immigration issue a muslim issue either..

      • Bumblebye
        February 20, 2017, 4:55 pm

        The two Swedish cops quoted in the Fox/Horowitz pretence of a documentary on how the questions posed in the doc are *not* the ones they were actually asked:
        http://www.thelocal.se/20170220/swedish-fox-news-cops-hit-out-at-filmmaker-ami-horowitz-he-is-a-madman

        The Independent on the most recent terror attacks in Sweden (which most certainly would not be the kind Trump inferred):
        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/donald-trump-terror-attack-claim-sweden-neo-nazis-refugee-centre-florida-rally-a7588516.html

      • MHughes976
        February 20, 2017, 5:52 pm

        Sweden is not free of fear and anxiety. In the realm of fiction, there was a very interesting and disturbing television series called Blue Eyes about the successes of the neo-Nazis in gathering support among deprived people and the corrupting ambiguity of mainstream politicians. In real life, we visited Denmark and Sweden last May – I’ve not heard that things have changed since. The train from Copenhagen to Malmo has to stop and passengers have to cross, maybe heavy laden. to another train, with passports etc. checked. When this train gets near Malmo the police board it and check all over again. Such is Swedish anxiety about immigration and Syrian hordes. By contrast when we flew to Stockholm we were in the welcoming Schengen world and passports were quite unnecessary. We then went to a restaurant where we were charged an incredible sum for meatballs but met a reminder of the country’s liberal past, the daughter of a refugee from Pinochet-era Chile. The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats have been doing well, but eyes should turn to the Netherlands where Geert Wilders, who is Trump doubleplus – well, maybe that comparison is seriously unfair to Trump – could come out of the imminent election with the largest number of votes. God grant to the Dutch as much good sense as to the Austrians.

      • Mooser
        February 21, 2017, 3:24 pm

        Sweden, its economy and tranquility, is extremely important. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with the design and construction of Nord keyboards and instruments.

      • Kaisa of Finland
        February 21, 2017, 6:28 pm

        MHughes976:

        “Such is Swedish anxiety about immigration and Syrian hordes”..

        Well the boarder controlls are there, because of the summer 2015 and those about 200 000 Syrian, Iraki and Afghan refugees who came here in uncontrolled “masses” many of them without any papers and an european languge to communicate with. In this kind of climate to have paperless people without a common language wondering around the streets, is not a good idea.. In some point of time they’d either freeze to death or get used by criminals when trying to get out of the streets..

        I speak both swedish and danish and follow the “social discussion” in both countries almost daily and have not noticed that much new in the discussion there lately. We have not said no to the refugees and as far as I’ve understood atleast in Finland and Sweden we would just prefair the refugees to come better controlled, their papers already checked, knowing where they are coming from and who is coming (the way it is done in Canada??)

        And about Jimmie Åkerson and his Sverige demokraterna, I am still not worried about. These tones have always existed in the Nordic countries too, but still today they are a minority and the opposing side to them is much wider and stronger. Here we took our anti-immigrate party “The True Finns” (do not ask who gave them the permission to register that name for their use..) to the goverment after the last elections, to take responsibility of their talks and it has deffinately cut the sharpest tones off from their arguments (and also their support: the voting precent in the parliament elections 2015 was 17,65% and in the recent “support measuring” fallen to 8,6%). This is what we hope would happen in Sweden too.

        And what comes to Ami Horowitz and Sweden: The social problems on certain suburbs of Stockholm or in Malmö have been there long time before the summer 2015 and those refugees.. And they are not specificly connected to the muslims or arabs or certain nationalities. As I wrote earlier, plenty of finnish immigrants – and their descendants – living in those areas too.. Those problems are mostly caused by bad regional policies practiced specially in 70’s, 80’s and 90’s in atleast Finland, Sweden and Denmark, placing lot of people with different kind of social issues to live together in the same small areas, like they couldn’t quess what might come out of it.

        Anyway my point being: There are some social issues, but they are not specificly related to immigrants, arabs or muslims or any other certain groups of people, even the populists like to present it that way. Plenty of open discussion of it here and we are trying to solve the problems. Greetings to the Fox, Mr. Horowitz and Mr. Trump or just anyone who likes to use us as an example..

    • Mibo
      February 22, 2017, 4:43 pm

      @MHughes976: don’t worry about Geert Wilders. Unlike the US and the UK we have a coalition government over here, and the larger parties have already stated that they will not form a government with the PVV. And unlike Trump, Wilders is all talk and no action. He would have to change Article 1 of our Constitution to push through the major points on his agenda, and that will not happen.

      • MHughes976
        February 25, 2017, 10:22 am

        Thanks for interesting information, you two.

  7. just
    February 20, 2017, 4:14 pm

    ” 4. Give them equal rights, but keep an eye on their “birth rates” and encourage “emigration.” ”

    What????? Forced birth control AND ethnic cleansing, too? What the hell “equal rights” is that “Israeli Jew” talking about?

    Was that from Anat Cohen, illegal “settler” Fleshler’s vicious, foul, and IOF protected illegal squatting and prolific birthing ‘muter’ neighbor in Occupied Hebron? You know, the one who attacks ‘other’ children and people from ISM as well as anyone who doesn’t agree with her sick Zio~ worldview.

    Shame on the NYT and Sulzberger/Baquet/Bennet.

    • echinococcus
      February 21, 2017, 3:44 am

      Just,

      Was that comparison to a declaredly ultra-reactionary “settler” from el Khalil really appropriate?
      The NYT mostly works for the so-called “Liberal Zionists”, i.e. the folks that gave us the invasion, the colonization, the Nakba, the 4 or more first wars of aggression, the theft and the genocide.
      The so-called “left” and secular Zionists are the genocidaires par excellence. It would be a good idea to expose them more, instead of shifting the blame onto the less dangerous, cavemen factions.

  8. Jeff Klein
    February 20, 2017, 6:49 pm

    In one of those ironies that is infrequently noted, Zionist routinely argue that the descendants of those forced out or Palestine 70 years ago are not true refugees. But the very historically doubtful descendants of Judeans who left their country 2000 year ago are. . . the real indigenous population and the Palestinians are “invaders.”

  9. Mooser
    February 20, 2017, 7:05 pm

    This is the kind of thing which is going to convince me it’s really only about +13 or 14.

  10. talknic
    February 20, 2017, 7:30 pm

    WTF drugs is the editor of the NYTimes on to allow such vile garbage?

  11. WH
    February 21, 2017, 2:33 am

    After reading the settler’s article and noting how he tried to sound reasonable and hide his racist zeal, I had to laugh when I saw the description of him as the leader of Hebron’s Jewish community – notoriously militant nutcases who hurl shit at Palestinians.

  12. diasp0ra
    February 21, 2017, 7:39 am

    If the birth rates of some of your citizens worry you, but not others, then you’re not living in a democracy. You’re living in an ethnocracy.

    Giving a platform for this kind of disgusting rhetoric normalizes it. The NYT should be ashamed.

  13. Talkback
    February 21, 2017, 8:29 am

    The New York Times is now officially the Zionist Stuerner.

  14. oneangrycomic
    February 21, 2017, 8:47 am

    Perhaps the Zionists and their illegal squatters will offer casinos to Palestinians as part of the Hasbara propaganda campaign? But that would require having “reservations” to build them on. Unlike the US genocide of Native Americans and the subsequent “Trail of Tears” march, the Israelis have NO intention of leaving one scrap of land for the Palestinians to exist on. They will bomb, terrorize and starve them out of existence if they refuse to leave Palestine. And ZioRags like the NYT will continue to print blatant lies to cover Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing!

    The silver lining to the NYT reporting is that it is so blatantly biased that even the least educated/informed reader (which, sadly describes so many Americans) can see through the lies. The NYT’s refusal to print letters from opposing views is one of the lowest forms of journalism; that strategy, along with other pressures in the industry, will eventually cause them to close their doors. “All the news that’s fit to print – pending Zionist approval”!

  15. hophmi
    February 21, 2017, 9:09 am

    You seem to think that the NY Times op-ed page should be an echo chamber for your views. It doesn’t work that way.

    • WH
      February 23, 2017, 3:39 am

      That’s obvious. But do you think they’d publish a comparable opinion piece suggesting that Native Americans, blacks or Latinos be encouraged to ‘voluntarily emigrate’, and that their birth rates are worrying?

  16. captADKer
    February 21, 2017, 9:41 am

    SAVING MY PLANET!
    beyond politics of demography and shielding terrorist fortifications there is no responsible rationale for the numbers of dependents being propagated. would the imposition of animal husbandry be too effective a starter?

    • Mooser
      February 21, 2017, 11:53 am

      “SAVING MY PLANET!”

      Now, now, “captADKer” although it is an act of supreme self-sacrifice, I don’t think ecological consideration are a good reason for the disappearance of Jews. We can make plenty more without using up all the oxygen, really.

    • Mooser
      February 21, 2017, 12:09 pm

      “SAVING MY PLANET!”

      It’s like that classic Jewish joke: A student bursts into cheder and shouts “Rabbi, it says in the newspaper that the sun is going to crash into the earth and destroy Uranus!

  17. Richard Baldwin Cook
    February 21, 2017, 10:36 am

    One State? Two States? An election by residents and refugees is the only just course:

    Neither the Zionist invaders and refugees from Europe, not the British nor the League of Nations nor the UN nor the US has ever agreed to representation elections, which Palestinians formally requested as early as 1919 and which the UN Charter required.

    We are at the same place we were a century ago with the same presumptuous empire builders perpetually dancing away from the same issue – whether the indigenous population will be accorded political representation throughout Palestine.

  18. Mooser
    February 21, 2017, 12:05 pm

    And good ol Josh Marshall at TPM, in an article titled “The Vicious Hand of Blood and Soil Reaches Out”says:

    “… the tide of barbarism is not only upon us. It has taken critical high ground. It is coming for Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, every group that is marginalized.”

    Yup, marginalization. And first on the list, too. Maybe we should dis-assimilate.

  19. Boomer
    February 21, 2017, 1:40 pm

    “keep an eye on their birth rates” — perhaps emulate China’s “one child” policy?

  20. James Canning
    February 21, 2017, 2:00 pm

    Do we know what, if anything, Donald Trump thinks should become of the non-Jews in the occupied West Bank, if Israel is not forced to end that occupation?

    Israel’s June 1967 war was an elective war, in that Israel knew Egypt did not intend to attack, and that Nasser was merely grandstanding.

  21. john douglas
    February 21, 2017, 7:51 pm

    Regardless of the intentions of the NY Times in printing this, there is a potential upside. On the assumption that there are some liberal Zionists who are getting more and more uncomfortable with Israel’s racism, lies and brutality, this gives them more reason, the stark truth of what is down the road for Palestinians in Palestine. I could also be true that, among settlers, the author is a moderate. It could be much worse than this.

  22. iResistDe4iAm
    February 21, 2017, 9:38 pm

    1. “Jordan is Palestine.” Palestinians in the West Bank would be given Jordanian citizenship, with democratic rights there, “but live as expats with civil rights in Israel.”

    ==> It takes a fascist to propose a unilateral scheme that is guaranteed to be rejected by the two parties that are negatively impacted by that scheme (without even consulting those parties). Of course, no people have ever voluntarily agreed to live as third-class non-citizens in their own homeland. Presumably the “expats” can be deported at the whim of the fascist masters.

    2. Bantustans. “Arabs living in Areas A and B — the main Palestinian population centers — would have self-rule.”

    ==> Presumably because self-rule homelands, reserves, bantustans, separateness and separate development, and segregation have proven to be such successful forms of governance elsewhere (Not).

    3. More bantustans. Seven Arab population centers in the West Bank and Gaza would be called “emirates.”

    ==> Israel morphing into South Africa but with a twist. Like South Africa, which once had an Afrikaner imposed 11-state apartheid solution (1 self-proclaimed “white” state and 10 bantustans), Palestinians can similarly have an Israeli imposed eight-state apartheid solution (1 self-proclaimed “Jewish State” and 7 bantustans). Of course, more hasbara will be needed to deny any linkage to evil Afrikaner Apartheid — the use of “emirates” instead of bantustans, and “emirs” instead of chiefs should probably placate the liberal Zionists.

    4. Give them equal rights, but keep an eye on their “birth rates” and encourage “emigration.”

    ==> What if birth rates and emigration trends turn contrary to expectation? Will it lead to eugenics or ethnic cleansing?

    5. Get out of here. “Palestinians in Judea and Samaria would be offered generous compensation to emigrate voluntarily.”

    ==> Another “very generous offer” that Palestinians cannot refuse. Of course, no people have ever voluntarily agreed to emigrate to make room for their invaders.

    What Fleisher left unwritten is what may befall Palestinians if they fail to heed his very generous offers of extortion:

    *6. Ethnic Cleansing (Nakba II)?

    *7. Genocide?

  23. Maghlawatan
    February 22, 2017, 9:02 am

    Israeli society has been degraded to feed the settler complex with Groupthinking soldiers. Palestinian society has recovered from the Nakba. The 2 societies are on such different trajectories

  24. Maghlawatan
    February 25, 2017, 2:10 am

    The NYT has been ordered by the Trump admin to emigrate voluntarily from WH press briefings. This is getting really interesting. Israeli right wingers are supported by a regime that works actively against liberal Jews. Where does that leave the Zionist support system?

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/white-house-sean-spicer-briefing.html

  25. MHughes976
    February 25, 2017, 10:29 am

    The ‘leave with compensation’ scheme, so far barely existent, is going to be heard of more and more, I think, and its outcome will be very important. You can’t keep minority rule going for ever, something always goes wrong.

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