Torture couldn’t happen to a Jewish child - 16 year old Ahed Tamimi’s Detention is Extended by Israel's Military Court

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Labour’s Zionist Apologists Ellman, Newmark and Ryan keep silent as the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ incarcerates children

A posse of heavily built soldiers - all for one slightly built 16 year old girl

Ahed Tamimi appeared in an Israeli military court on Xmas day, after 4 days inside without seeing a parent or a lawyer.  She appeared in handcuffs.  This slightly built child is in the warped fantasy of the settler regime perceived as a danger to Israel’s military might.

Israel’s military courts have a 99.7% conviction rate, higher one suspects than the Labour Party’s National Kangaroo Court!

Ahed Tamimi’s ‘crime’ was to slap and mildly chastise armed Israeli soldiers who invaded the grounds of her house, after a cousin of hers Mohammed Tamimi 15 was shot in the head with a plastic bullet at close range.

Israel’s racist media ignored the fact that her cousin had nearly been killed and focused on the insult to national pride occasioned by Ahed’s slaps and the soldiers failure to strike back.

Miri Regev, Israel’s ‘Culture’ Minister, who previously compared African refugees in Israel to ‘cancer’ and then apologised to cancer victims for comparing refugees to them, spoke of her ‘humiliation’ and suggested they should have opened fire.

Naftali Bennet, the Education Minister went further and stated that she should end her life in prison.  Of course from his perspective it is logical.  A non-Jew striking a Jewish Israeli soldier is a heinous offence whereas shooting a Palestinian child in the head is just one of those things.  After all Bennet is on record as boasting ‘I’ve killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that.’

Ben Caspit, a senior journalist on Maariv, Israel’s major evening newspaper, makes what amounts to a call for Ahed to be raped.

Ahed, a 16 year old girl who, in the West would be thinking of exams, the latest boy (or girl) friend, going to concerts and doing all the things that teenagers of her age do, has to cope with the presence of soldiers and an army in her village, walking into her house, shooting her relatives and acting with impunity.

Ahed in the court case today came in looking tired and strained.  Her lawyer managed to snatch only a few words with her, such is the nature of Israeli justice, before she was whisked away again. Clearly she is being put under immense pressure to confess without the benefit of a lawyer or relatives.  It is reported that she has been physically assaulted and almost certainly deprived of sleep.  This amounts to torture.  Yet where is the pressure from Theresa May or indeed Jeremy Corbyn?  Why have just 12 MPs, 5 of whom are Labour, signed an Early Day Motion condemning Ahed’s incarceration? 

Shackling and handcuffing a child is in itself a war crime.  Transferring her out of the West Bank is yet another breach of international law but Israel is allowed to break the law with impunity. 

Tony Greenstein

Israel Extends 16-year-old Palestinian Girl's Detention Because She Could 'Pose a Danger'

Ha’aretz, Yotam Berger Dec 25, 2017

Ahed Tamimi, who was recently filmed slapping Israeli soldiers, gets four more days as judges say she might obstruct investigation, with one saying she could endanger soldiers

Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year-old Palestinian girl who was recently filmed slapping Israeli soldiers in her village, Nabi Saleh, had her detention extended on Monday for four additional days, through Thursday.

Her cousin, Nour Tamimi, the second girl who appeared in the clip, and Ahed’s mother, Nariman, also had their detention extended. Nariman is suspected of incitement by filming the incident and posting it on Facebook.

According to police, the investigation of the incident in Nabi Saleh has developed and Ahed and Nariman are suspected of being involved in additional incidents of attacking IDF soldiers.

Police said the extension of their detention was necessary due to the danger Ahed poses, and to prevent obstruction of the investigations.

A judge in the military court of Judea, Major Chaim Bililti, wrote in his decision that while he was not sure her release would pose a danger, there was a chance she would try to obstruct the investigation, and so he was extending her detention. He added that the investigation has led to developments that Nariman Tamimi is connected to other offenses, and is suspected of other charges not yet presented to her.

The court postponed the appeals regarding the extension of Ahed Tamimi’s custody, and during the deliberations police brought up additional suspicions against her. According to the president of the court, Col. Netanel Benisho, “The evidence consolidated a framework regarding three other incidents that took place in May 2017 and in April 2016.”

Judge Benisho accepted police claims that Ahed Tamimi presents a danger, and that she could impede soldiers in their work.

Last week, Judge Maj. Limor Drachman of the Minor’s Court in Judea extended Ahed’s detention to Monday, on suspicion that she would try to injure IDF soldiers.

Video: Resistance icon Ahed Tamimi in Israeli military court

Israeli military court

Ali Abunimah 24 December 2017

 

 This video shows Ahed Tamimi in an Israeli military court on Sunday.

The 16-year-old appears to be in handcuffs as she is led in by Israeli officers. As a lawyer talks to Ahed, a woman, likely the person filming the video, can be heard asking her how she is doing.
Ahed looks at the camera and nods and smiles in answer, indicating she is doing fine.

The video was shared on the Facebook page “Free the Tamimi women.”

Ahed Tamimi has become an international focus of solidarity since Israeli occupation forces seized her from her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh during a night raid last week.

Boy shot

That followed an incident the previous Friday, when Israeli occupation forces shot and gravely wounded her cousin 14-year-old Muhammad Fadel Tamimi.

Ahed and two women from the family – her mother Nariman and cousin Nour – then attempted to remove Israeli soldiers from the family’s property. Ahed was seen in a video lightly slapping and shoving one of the armed men.

Bassem Tamimi, Ahed’s father, explains in an article for Newsweek that less than half an hour before this incident, “a soldier shot Ahed’s 14-year-old cousin in the face at close distance with a rubber-coated steel bullet, causing severe injuries and leaving him in a coma. Then, two soldiers had jumped the wall of our backyard and forced their way on to our property when Ahed confronted them in an effort to make them leave.”

“Israel’s military occupation is in contrast to all that is just and humane, from the abuse of our children to the abuse of our land,” Bassem adds. “As parents, we try to shelter our children against the occupation and all its violence, inequality and lack of freedom, but there is only so much we can do to protect them.”

According to Naji Tamimi, Nour’s father and one of Muhammad’s uncles, Muhammad barely survived his injury.

But he is now recovering after a complex hours-long surgery and will require long-term care and rehabilitation. A photo posted by Naji Tamimi on Facebook shows the extent of the injuries to Muhammad’s face and head.

Nariman and Nour were also arrested as part of a revenge campaign instigated by Israeli political and military leaders bent on expunging the humiliation of heavily armed men being confronted by women from a family known for its sacrifices as part of Nabi Saleh’s ongoing resistance to military occupation and settler-colonization.

Damage control

According to family sources, Ahed’s lawyer requested the hearing on Sunday in an attempt to get the teenager released.

Ahed was held in the notorious Russian Compound interrogation center in Jerusalem overnight and was previously in Ramleh prison.

The Free the Tamimi women Facebook page stated that Ahed “spent the night alone in a cold cell” after enduring several transfers between Israeli prisons.

According to her father Bassem Tamimi, Ahed, Nariman and Nour had previously been held in HaSharon prison.

Arbitrary transfers between prisons under harsh conditions are another way Israel abuses detainees.
Ahed Tamimi is one of hundreds of Palestinian children who each year are subjected to night raids and Israeli military detention each year, where many suffer abuse including torture and solitary confinement.

Concern over this systematic violence against Palestinian children prompted US lawmakers last month to introduce a historic bill to prevent US military aid to Israel being diverted to such practices.

Revenge in the dark

The Israeli army’s attack on the Tamimi family was meant to appease its virulently right-wing and anti-Palestinian domestic audience, but it has become an international embarrassment, prompting The New York Times to go into damage control mode to mitigate further harm to Israel’s tattered reputation.

Writing at Mondoweiss, James North notes that the Times’ coverage “does everything it can to reduce the power of the case” and “make the Israeli soldier look like the victim.”
Ben Caspit, a journalist with Israel’s Maariv newspaper and the online publication Al-Monitor caused shock Saturday when he was quoted by the Associated Press stating in reference to the Tamimi family, “In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.”

This was widely interpreted as incitement to violence including possible sexual assault, though Caspit has vehemently denied this.

Caspit claims that comments he made in a radio commentary were taken out of context and mistranslated.

But as Jonathan Ofir points out, also at Mondoweiss, Caspit had also made the statement in his Maariv column.

After calling for revenge in the dark with no witnesses present, Caspit writes that the “Tamimi family needs to learn the hard way that such systematic provocations against Israeli soldiers will cost them dearly.”

He added that the Israeli army has the “capabilities, creativity and means” to do this “without paying an exorbitant public price.”

Ahed, Nariman and Nour are due to appear in military court again on Monday.
This article has been updated since initial publication.

The New York Times tries to make the Ahed Tamimi story go away

James North December 23, 2017

The New York Times ran a piece today on the very different ways that Israelis and Palestinians see the slapping incident involving 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi and an Israeli soldier. It is titled, “Acts of Resistance and Restraint Defy Easy Definition in the West Bank,” and is by David Halbfinger.

The article does everything it can to reduce the power of the case, in which a brave 16-year-old girl whose cousin was just shot stands for the inhumanity of the occupation. No, the whole point of the article is to make Israel supporters who may have heard about the incident shake their heads over Dual Narratives, and then move along.

Here is the Times‘s model for the whitewash:

1. Make sure the print edition does not include a single one of the striking, now-viral photos of Ahed Tamimi’s brave resistance.

2. State nowhere that Israelis are occupiers, and settlements (colonies) are illegal under international law.

3. Slyly slip in the following paragraph: “That her family appears to encourage the children’s risky confrontations with soldiers offends some Palestinians and enrages many Israelis.”

4. Barely mention the fact that the illegal settlement/colony of Halamish has taken over the village of Nabi Saleh’s access to its spring, and make no effort to report on who is right. Instead treat the matter as On the One Hand/On the Other.

5. In the first sentence, make the Israeli soldier look like the victim: “A teenage girl, a kaffiyeh over her denim jacket, screaming in Arabic, repeatedly punches, slaps and kicks a heavily armed Israeli army officer, who faces her impassively, absorbing some blows, evading others, but never hitting back.” (Make sure you stick in the kaffiyeh and the “screaming in Arabic:” perfect Orientalist gems.)

6. Have settler Yossi Klein Halevi drive home the point, that the Israeli is the victim: “My first reaction was I was proud of the soldiers, but I was also ambivalent: Is this going to invite more attacks, and more serious ones?”

7. Add another obnoxious paragraph: “.  .  . the scene of the young woman being hauled away may have given the Palestinians the clear-cut propaganda coup they had been denied by the original confrontation.”

8. Leave till the 13th paragraph the information that hours before the encounter an Israeli soldier shot Ahed Tamimi’s cousin in the face. Leave out the cousin’s name, Mohammed, and the extent of his injuries. No, you have to go to al Jazeera for that.

Mohammed Tamimi, who is 14 or 15, following a six hour operation after being shot in the face. Photo from Al Jazeera.

9. Quote 6 Jewish Israelis, and only 4 Palestinians. But above all, don’t quote any member of the courageous Tamimi family, even though they were featured in Ben Ehrenreich’s landmark New York Times magazine piece on Nabi Saleh. And even though the slapping incident took place when the soldier had invaded their property.

P.S. Louis Allday, a PhD candidate at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, who is digitizing colonial records, agrees:

[A correction: The original post said, “(Most people still engage with the Times on paper).” In fact, the Times has 2.5 million digital subscribers vs. 1 million print subscribers.]

Why Israel is an Apartheid State AND

Why Trump’s Honesty is Europe's Hypocrisy

There has been a massive reaction to Trump’s announcement that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  European leaders have been unanimous in their disapproval.  If one didn’t know better one might assume they had been in the forefront of the BDS movement, as a means to pressurise Israel into a 2 States Solution.

But of course Theresa May, Macron et al. have been vociferous in condemning the ‘anti-Semitic’ Boycott  movement.  They are resolutely opposed to putting any pressure on Israel, knowing full well that no Zionist party in Israel (bar the tiny Meretz) supports a 2 State Solution.  It is in this respect interesting that the Israeli Labour Party under its new leader Avi Gabbay has welcomed Trump’s announcement.  So much for the idea that the ILP represents something different in Zionist politics.

People may be surprised by my heading.  Why should I welcome Trump’s statement that Jerusalem in its entirety belongs to the Zionists? Why should I welcome the death of the 2 States Solution?  Because that has always been the real if unstated position of the West.

Of course I don’t believe that Jerusalem is the property of the Zionist state.  But what I also don’t 

support is the fictional support for 2 states that the West pays lip service to.  There has never ever been a chance of a 2 state solution.  Neither Oslo nor Ehud Barak, the last Israeli Labour Prime Minister ever supported 2 States.  At best they supported a cut down version of a Bantustan.  A ridiculous demilitarised version of Transkei and  Bophutswana.

All opponents of Apartheid opposed South Africa’s homelands policy.  The idea of shunting Black Africans into enclaves controlled by Black collaborators.  But in Palestine all sorts of progressive people have given lip-service to the idea of a Palestinian bantustan.

Unfortunately and tragically so have the representative organisations, the PLO, of the Palestinian people.  As I wrote in Labour Briefing regarding the Oslo Accords in October 1993, ‘this is an agreement built on shifting sands.  It represents a massive victory for imperialism.’

The New York Times agonises over whether Trump has killed off the 2 States solution but it decides he hasn't!

The pursuit of the 2 States illusion has cost the Palestinian movement dearly.  It has been the smokescreen behind which Zionism has effectively colonised the West Bank, laid siege to Gaza and weakened the Palestinians by arming a collaborationist police authority (the PA) to do Israel’s work for it.

The reason for opposing 2 States is not though merely practical.  Partition as a solution to settler colonialism, be it in Ireland or Palestine, is a cure worse than the original problem.  2 States means that the Israeli Jewish state survives.  The ‘conflict’ in Palestine, in actual fact the steady colonisation of Palestine, is a consequence of a political movement based on the ideology of Jewish supremacism. 

In this Israel is no different from any other settler colonial state.  In Ireland the rallying cry of the Unionists was Protestant Supremacy, in the words of the first Viscount James Craigavon, a former Prime Minister, Stormont was a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people.  Likewise in South Africa Apartheid was the means by which White Supremacy was maintained.  The only solution is the deZionisation of Israel. 

Demonstration in the Wadi Arab area of Israel

It is therefore interesting to see how the New York Times the American paper of record sees it.  In an article Did Trump Kill Off a Two-State Solution? He Says No, Palestinians Say Yes Saeb Erekat, the PLO’s main negotiator is quoted as saying that Trump and Netanyahu “have managed to destroy that hope.” Of a 2 States solution.  He is described as embracing ‘a radical shift in the P.L.O.’s goals — to a single state, but with Palestinians enjoying the same civil rights as Israelis, including the vote.’

Ererkat bemoans that “They’ve left us with no option. This is the reality. We live here. Our struggle should focus on one thing: equal rights.”  Of course no one should hold their breath that Erekat is doing anything other than letting off steam.  This is the same Erekat who was willing to hand Tsipi Livni, when she was negotiating with the PA, a ‘big Yerushalayim’ in exchange for just one small Palestinian suburb to call a capital.

Nonetheless Mark Landler of the NYT disapproves.  After having quoted a number of Israeli talking heads he states that ‘Mr. Erekat’s change of heart is unlikely to change Palestinian policy. The dream of a Palestinian state is too deeply ingrained in a generation of its leaders for the Palestinian Authority to abandon it now.’

Which is true in so far as one distinguishes between the PA’s quisling leaders and the Palestinians themselves.  But then Landler goes further and says, without any hesitation that:

‘Israel would be unlikely to accede to equal rights, because granting a vote to millions of Palestinians would eventually lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

And this is exactly what it is about.  A Jewish State cannot be a democratic state.  Israel cannot accede to equal rights.  Therefore, just as in Apartheid South Africa, the Palestinians must be shunted into their own homelands.  Except that the West Bank is nowhere near as big as South Africa so the Palestinians must be content with a few hemmed in urban conurbations as the settlements slowly eat into Palestinian patrimony.

If there is anyone who doesn’t quite get it, let us replace a few words in the above statement.

‘Israel South Africa would be unlikely to accede to equal rights, because granting a vote to millions of Palestinians Africans would eventually lead to the end of Israel South Africa as a Jewish White state.

This is what the supporters of two states are supporting.  And if anyone has doubts that Israel within the 1948 borders is also an apartheid state that considers its Palestinian citizens as guests to be discarded as soon as convenient, let us look at the reaction of its Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman to the riots in Arab areas in the wake of Trump’s announcement.

Lieberman, whose Deputy Eli Dahan, is of the opinion that Arabs are sub-human  has called for Israeli Jews to boycott the Wadi Ara area of Israel where many Arabs live.  They should ‘feel unwanted here’ and become part of Ramallah.  ‘Speaking in an interview Lieberman said that ‘the residents of Wadi Ara were not part of the State of Israel.’   And this is increasingly the view of Israelis, 48% of whom according to the Pew Research Report Israel’s Religiously Divided Society support the physical removal of Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

Wadi Ara not part of State of Israel, Lieberman says

Following Saturday's violent protest in northern Israeli Arab region against US recognition of Jerusalem, in which rioters hurled stones at police cars and buses, defense minister urges Israeli citizens to boycott area and make its residents 'feel unwanted here'; they should become part of Ramallah, he adds.

Attila Somfalvi|Published:  10.12.17 , 10:35

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Sunday called for a boycott of the Israeli Arab region of Wadi Ara, following Saturday's violent protests in the area, in which rioters hurled at police cars and buses, as well as on Yedioth Ahronoth photographer Gil Nechushtan.

Speaking in an interview to the Ynet Studio, Lieberman said the residents of Wadi Ara were not part of the State of Israel.

"I call on all of Israel's residents to stop buying there," he said. "Simply impose a consumers' boycott and don't go in there—don't enter their restaurants or their businesses, don't get your cars fixed there. The residents of Wadi Ara must understand that they're unwanted and that they're not part of us. They’re working from within to harm the State of Israel.

Lieberman. 'I have never seen a protest in Wadi Ara with a single Israeli flag' (Photo: AFP)

"We've seen terrorists come out of there, we've seen funerals for the terrorists from Umm al-Fahm who murdered police officers at the Temple Mount, and we've seen a terrorist murder people at the terror attack on Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street, including an Arab taxi driver from Lod. They are not part of us," the defense minister said, reiterating his initiative to hand Wadi Ara over to the Palestinian Authority as part of a future agreement.

"They should become part of Ramallah," he said. "There, they will receive convalescence pay, an unemployment allowance and maternity benefits instead of the billions of shekels they are currently receiving from the National Security Institute. Let (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas pay all their rights and payments the Palestinian democracy and the Palestinian society are certainly much better than the State of Israel." 

One of the buses pelted with stones in Wadi Ara, Saturday

Calling for a boycott of the area, Lieberman said: "I urge all citizens of the State of Israel to stop entering stores there, to stop buying and to stop receiving services. We should simply impose a boycott on them and let them feel unwanted here. I have never seen a protest in Wadi Ara with a single Israeli flag. I've seen many Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Authority flags there, and I've never seen a single State of Israel flag there."

Wadi Ara protest

"Wadi Ara is becoming an incitement center," the minister stated. "On Saturday, a journalist was nearly lynched, and there is wild incitement in the schools. The generation being raised there isn't learning anything apart from hatred toward the State of Israel. The residents of Wadi Ara enjoy the best living conditions in the Middle East."

Lieberman added that the residents had a right to protest, but that "terror, support for terror, solidarity with terror organizations and solidarity with Israel's enemies cannot be part of the rules of the game. That's what we see in Wadi Ara and it's the same line separating between them and others."

The defense minister said he hoped the tensions following US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital were over. "On Saturday, I traveled across the Judea area and it was completely calm. According to reports from this morning, everything is calm and quiet. Even the Arab League conference settled for a verbal statement and nothing else. So when I look at the situation in Judea and Samaria today, and on the fence in the Gaza Strip, I believe it's behind us."

As for reports that Saudi Arabia had supported Trump's announcement, Lieberman said earlier in an interview to Army Radio: "The Saudis have personally experienced the meaning of Islamic terror and Iranian subversion, so I think they have a different outlook. We heard the crown prince call (Iranian supreme leader) Ali Khamenei the modern Hitler. Such declarations are not for the love of Israel."

Addressing the tensions on Israel's southern border following the barrage of rockets fired at Gaza vicinity communities from the Strip over the weekend, the defense minister said: "We have hit all of Hamas' critical sites, destroyed a rocket manufacturing facility and a storehouse with strategic Hamas weapons inside the Gaza Strip. I'm certain that everyone can send their children back to school and kindergarten, and I believe all these events are behind us. It's Hamas' responsibility."

The very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the rights of its non-Jewish citizens

A very interesting article in the New York Times of all papers.  I agree with it almost in its entirety.  Perhaps the only lacuna is that Joseph Levine doesn’t mention that there is no Israeli nationality, just a Jewish nationality and a myriad of other, quite nonsensical nationalities in Israel.  In other words there is only one important nationality, that of the dominant ethnic group or race – those who are Jewish.

It was a pamphlet by Theodore Herzl in 1896 that began the Zionist movement

But his main thesis, that a Jewish state in which nationality and self-determination pertains only to one ethnicity in a state is bound to be racist is correct.  Britain is a Christian state but it is a state of all its peoples.  Christianity is a constitutional adornment, it has no effect on my rights as a Jewish citizen of Britain.  But in Israel being Jewish means real privileges – access to land, the best schools, grants to universities, better employment, political privileges etc.  That is why a Jewish state must be an apartheid state.

Tony Greenstein

Professor Joseph Levine

 On Questioning the Jewish State

By Joseph Levine 

NY Times

March 9, 2013 7:30 pm

I was raised in a religious Jewish environment, and though we were not strongly Zionist, I always took it to be self-evident that “Israel has a right to exist.” Now anyone who has debated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have encountered this phrase often. Defenders of Israeli policies routinely accuse Israel’s critics of denying her right to exist, while the critics (outside of a small group on the left, where I now find myself) bend over backward to insist that, despite their criticisms, of course they affirm it. The general mainstream consensus seems to be that to deny Israel’s right to exist is a clear indication of anti-Semitism (a charge Jews like myself are not immune to), and therefore not an option for people of conscience.

What does it mean for a people to have a state “of their own”?

Over the years I came to question this consensus and to see that the general fealty to it has seriously constrained open debate on the issue, one of vital importance not just to the people directly involved — Israelis and Palestinians — but to the conduct of our own foreign policy and, more important, to the safety of the world at large. My view is that one really ought to question Israel’s right to exist and that doing so does not manifest anti-Semitism. The first step in questioning the principle, however, is to figure out what it means.

An unusual article for the pro-Zionist New York Times

One problem with talking about this question calmly and rationally is that the phrase “right to exist” sounds awfully close to “right to life,” so denying Israel its right to exist sounds awfully close to permitting the extermination of its people. In light of the history of Jewish persecution, and the fact that Israel was created immediately after and largely as a consequence of the Holocaust, it isn’t surprising that the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” should have this emotional impact. But as even those who insist on the principle will admit, they aren’t claiming merely the impermissibility of exterminating Israelis. So what is this “right” that many uphold as so basic that to question it reflects anti-Semitism and yet is one that I claim ought to be questioned?

The key to the interpretation is found in the crucial four words that are often tacked on to the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” — namely, “… as a Jewish state.” As I understand it, the principle that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state has three parts: first, that Jews, as a collective, constitute a people in the sense that they possess a right to self-determination; second, that a people’s right to self-determination entails the right to erect a state of their own, a state that is their particular people’s state; and finally, that for the Jewish people the geographical area of the former Mandatory Palestine, their ancestral homeland, is the proper place for them to exercise this right to self-determination.

The claim then is that anyone who denies Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is guilty of anti-Semitism because they are refusing to grant Jews the same rights as other peoples possess. If indeed this were true, if Jews were being singled out in the way many allege, I would agree that it manifests anti-Jewish bias. But the charge that denying Jews a right to a Jewish state amounts to treating the Jewish people differently from other peoples cannot be sustained.

To begin, since the principle has three parts, it follows that it can be challenged in (at least) three different ways: either deny that Jews constitute “a people” in the relevant sense, deny that the right to self-determination really involves what advocates of the principle claim it does, or deny that Jews have the requisite claim on the geographical area in question.

In fact, I think there is a basis to challenge all three, but for present purposes I will focus on the question of whether a people’s right to self-determination entails their right to a state of their own, and set aside whether Jews count as a people and whether Jews have a claim on that particular land. I do so partly for reasons of space, but mainly because these questions have largely (though not completely) lost their importance. 

The fact is that today millions of Jews live in Israel and, ancestral homeland or not, this is their home now. As for whether Jews constitute a people, this is a vexed question given the lack of consensus in general about what it takes for any particular group of people to count as “a people.” The notion of “a people” can be interpreted in different ways, with different consequences for the rights that they possess. My point is that even if we grant Jews their peoplehood and their right to live in that land, there is still no consequent right to a Jewish state.

However, I do think that it’s worth noting the historical irony in insisting that it is anti-Semitic to deny that Jews constitute a people. The 18th and 19th centuries were the period of Jewish “emancipation” in Western Europe, when the ghetto walls were torn down and Jews were granted the full rights of citizenship in the states within which they resided. The anti-Semitic forces in those days, those opposing emancipation, were associated not with denying Jewish peoplehood but with emphatically insisting on it! The idea was that since Jews constituted a nation of their own, they could not be loyal citizens of any European state. The liberals who strongly opposed anti-Semitism insisted that Jews could both practice their religion and uphold their cultural traditions while maintaining full citizenship in the various nation-states in which they resided.

But, as I said, let’s grant that Jews are a people. Well, if they are, and if with the status of a people comes the right to self-determination, why wouldn’t they have a right to live under a Jewish state in their homeland? The simple answer is because many non-Jews (rightfully) live there too. But this needs unpacking.

First, it’s important to note, as mentioned above, that the term “a people” can be used in different ways, and sometimes they get confused. In particular, there is a distinction to be made between a people in the ethnic sense and a people in the civic sense. Though there is no general consensus on this, a group counts as a people in the ethnic sense by virtue of common language, common culture, common history and attachment to a common territory. One can easily see why Jews, scattered across the globe, speaking many different languages and defined largely by religion, present a difficult case. But, as I said above, for my purposes it doesn’t really matter, and I will just assume the Jewish people qualify.

The other sense is the civic one, which applies to a people by virtue of their common citizenship in a nation-state or, alternatively, by virtue of their common residence within relatively defined geographic borders. So whereas there is both an ethnic and a civic sense to be made of the term “French people,” the term “Jewish people” has only an ethnic sense. This can easily be seen by noting that the Jewish people is not the same group as the Israeli people. About 20 percent of Israeli citizens are non-Jewish Palestinians, while the vast majority of the Jewish people are not citizens of Israel and do not live within any particular geographic area. “Israeli people,” on the other hand, has only a civic sense. (Of course often the term “Israelis” is used as if it applies only to Jewish Israelis, but this is part of the problem. More on this below.)

So, when we consider whether or not a people has a right to a state of their own, are we speaking of a people in the ethnic sense or the civic one? I contend that insofar as the principle that all peoples have the right to self-determination entails the right to a state of their own, it can apply to peoples only in the civic sense.

After all, what is it for a people to have a state “of their own”? Here’s a rough characterization: the formal institutions and legal framework of the state serves to express, encourage and favor that people’s identity. The distinctive position of that people would be manifested in a number of ways, from the largely symbolic to the more substantive: for example, it would be reflected in the name of the state, the nature of its flag and other symbols, its national holidays, its education system, its immigration rules, the extent to which membership in the people in question is a factor in official planning, how resources are distributed, etc. If the people being favored in this way are just the state’s citizens, it is not a problem. (Of course those who are supercosmopolitan, denying any legitimacy to the borders of nation-states, will disagree. But they aren’t a party to this debate.)

But if the people who “own” the state in question are an ethnic sub-group of the citizenry, even if the vast majority, it constitutes a serious problem indeed, and this is precisely the situation of Israel as the Jewish state. Far from being a natural expression of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, it is in fact a violation of the right to self-determination of its non-Jewish (mainly Palestinian) citizens. It is a violation of a people’s right to self-determination to exclude them — whether by virtue of their ethnic membership, or for any other reason — from full political participation in the state under whose sovereignty they fall. Of course Jews have a right to self-determination in this sense as well — this is what emancipation was all about. But so do non-Jewish peoples living in the same state.

Any state that “belongs” to one ethnic group within it violates the core democratic principle of equality, and the self-determination rights of the non-members of that group. 

If the institutions of a state favor one ethnic group among its citizenry in this way, then only the members of that group will feel themselves fully a part of the life of the state. True equality, therefore, is only realizable in a state that is based on civic peoplehood. As formulated by both Jewish- and Palestinian-Israeli activists on this issue, a truly democratic state that fully respects the self-determination rights of everyone under its sovereignty must be a “state of all its citizens.”

This fundamental point exposes the fallacy behind the common analogy, drawn by defenders of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, between Israel’s right to be Jewish and France’s right to be French. The appropriate analogy would instead be between France’s right to be French (in the civic sense) and Israel’s right to be Israeli. 

I conclude, then, that the very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the self-determination rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and therefore morally problematic. But the harm doesn’t stop with the inherently undemocratic character of the state. For if an ethnic national state is established in a territory that contains a significant number of non-members of that ethnic group, it will inevitably face resistance from the land’s other inhabitants. This will force the ethnic nation controlling the state to resort to further undemocratic means to maintain their hegemony. Three strategies to deal with resistance are common: expulsion, occupation and institutional marginalization. Interestingly, all three strategies have been employed by the Zionist movement: expulsion in 1948 (and, to a lesser extent, in 1967), occupation of the territories conquered in 1967 and institution of a complex web of laws that prevent Israel’s Palestinian citizens from mounting an internal challenge to the Jewish character of the state. (The recent outrage in Israel over a proposed exclusion of ultra-Orthodox parties from the governing coalition, for example, failed to note that no Arab political party has ever been invited to join the government.) In other words, the wrong of ethnic hegemony within the state leads to the further wrong of repression against the Other within its midst.

There is an unavoidable conflict between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. I want to emphasize that there’s nothing anti-Semitic in pointing this out, and it’s time the question was discussed openly on its merits, without the charge of anti-Semitism hovering in the background.

Joseph Levine is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he teaches and writes on philosophy of mind, metaphysics and political philosophy. He is the author of “Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness.” 

Miracles do happen – the New York Times Carries an anti-Zionist Critique!

The after-shock of Trump and the Zionist fawning over Bannon takes its toll

Strange things must be going on when the New York Times, the most devoted foot soldier to Zionism and the Israeli state over the years runs an anti-Zionist critique

The Jewish National Fund, a pivotal organisation of Zionist Apartheid asks what Jews have dreamt of, a Jewish or a Democratic state

Professor Boehm calls attention to the ‘alliance that’s beginning to form between Zionist leadership and politicians with anti-Semitic tendencies’.  Anti-Zionists like myself have been saying this for years with scant attention from the media.  The fact that anti-Semitic politicians like Herr Strache of Austria’s ex-neo Nazi Freedom Party, visited Israel as the honoured guest of the Likud party passes unnoticed.

But finally it was all too much even for the NYT.  Trump’s campaign has been sponsored by white supremacists of all stripes, including David Duke, the ex-Grand Wizard of the KKK and a noted holocaust denier.  Trump has refused to dissociate himself from any of this at the same time espousing ultra-Zionist positions, leading up to the appointment as the US Ambassador to Israel of David Friedman, who it is said makes Netanyahu appear as some kind of left-winger.

Finally it seems to have got through to people that anti-Semites and Zionists have always got on like a house on fire.  Maybe the invitation to Steve Bannon, Trump’s new anti-Semitic Strategic Advisor and ex-CEO of Breitbart, to the Zionist Organisation of America’s annual gala dinner was all a bit too much.

The analysis of why Israel, as a Jewish state, cannot be a state of its own citizens, 20% of whom are not Jewish and at the same time it is the state of a mythical Jewish nation/race throughout the world is excellent.  Boehm shows how Israel stands in opposition to everything Emancipation stood for.  The nationalism of the French Revolution with its slogan of liberty, equality and fraternity meant that regardless of race or religion, all the citizens of a country were equal.  In the words of Clermont–Tonnerre in the French Constituent Assembly ‘We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals.’

Tony Greenstein

The Opinion Pages

Liberal Zionism in the Age of Trump

Omri Boehm

THE STONE DEC. 20, 2016

Sea of Galilee, Israel. Credit Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos

For weeks now, Jewish communities across America have been troubled by an awkward phenomenon. Donald J. Trump, a ruthless politician trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes, has been elected to become the next president, and he has appointed as his chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, a prominent figure of the “alt-right,” a movement that promotes white nationalism, anti-Semitism, racism and misogyny. Though Bannon himself has expressed “zero tolerance” for such views, his past actions suggest otherwise; as the executive chairman of Breitbart News for the past four years, he provided the country’s most powerful media platform for the movement and its ideologies.

Still, neither the United States’ most powerful Jewish organizations nor Israeli leaders have taken a clear stance against the appointment. In fact, they have embraced it.

Immediately after Trump appointed Bannon, the Zionist Organization of America prepared to welcome him at its annual gala dinner, where he was to meet Naftali Bennett, Israel’s minister of education, and Danny Danon, the country’s ambassador to the United Nations. (Bannon didn’t show up.) Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador in Washington, publicly announced that he was looking forward to working with the entire Trump administration, including Bannon. And Alan Dershowitz, the outspoken Harvard emeritus professor of law who regularly denounces non-Zionists as anti-Semitic, preferred in this case to turn not against Bannon, but against his critics. 

“It is not legitimate to call somebody an anti-Semite because you might disagree with their politics,” he pointed out.

The alliance that’s beginning to form between Zionist leadership and politicians with anti-Semitic tendencies has the power to transform Jewish-American consciousness for years to come. In the last few decades, many of America’s Jewish communities have grown accustomed to living in a political contradiction. On one hand, a large majority of these communities could rightly take pride in a powerful liberal tradition, stretching back to such models as Louis Brandeis — a defender of social justice and the first Jew to become a Supreme Court justice — or Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched in Selma alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On the other hand, the same communities have often identified themselves with Zionism, a political agenda rooted in the denial of liberal

To appreciate this inherent tension, consider Hillary Clinton’s words from the second presidential debate: “It is important for us as a policy not to say, as Donald has said, we’re going to ban people based on a religion. How do you do that? We are a country founded on religious freedom and liberty.” Here Clinton establishes a minimum standard of liberal decency that few American Jews would be inclined to deny. But she is not the incoming president. Trump’s willingness to reject this standard is now a cause for alarm among Jewish communities, along with those of other American minorities.

Yet insofar as Israel is concerned, every liberal Zionist has not just tolerated the denial of this minimum liberal standard, but avowed this denial as core to their innermost convictions. Whereas liberalism depends on the idea that states must remain neutral on matters of religion and race, Zionism consists in the idea that the State of Israel is not Israeli, but Jewish. As such, the country belongs first and foremost not to its citizens, but to the Jewish people — a group that’s defined by ethnic affiliation or religious conversion.

As long as liberalism was secure back in America and the rejection of liberalism confined to the Israeli scene, this tension could be mitigated. But as it spills out into the open in the rapidly changing landscape of American politics, the double standard is becoming difficult to defend.

That difficulty was apparent earlier this month at an event at Texas A&M University when Richard Spencer, one of the ideological leaders of the alt-right’s white nationalist agenda — which he has called “a sort of white Zionism” — was publicly challenged by the university’s Hillel Rabbi Matt Rosenberg, to study with him the Jewish religion’s “radical inclusion” and love. “Do you really want radical inclusion into the state of Israel?” Spencer replied. “Maybe all of the Middle East can go move into Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Would you really want that?” Spencer went on to argue that Israel’s ethnic-based politics was the reason Jews had a strong, cohesive identity, and that Spencer himself admired them for it.

The rabbi could not find words to answer, and his silence reverberates still. It made clear that an argument that does not embrace a double standard is difficult to come by.

Right-wing politicians and commentators in the United States have been putting pressure on this double standard for years. In her 2015 book, “Adios, America,” the commentator Ann Coulter wrote:

Palestinians demand a right to return to their pre-1967 homes, but Israel says, quite correctly, that changing Israel’s ethnicity would change the idea of Israel. Well, changing America’s ethnicity changes the idea of America, too. Show me in a straight line why we can’t do what Israel does. Is Israel special? For some of us, America is special, too.

Coulter gets her dates mixed up. Palestinians in fact do not demand a “right of return” to their pre-1967 homes, but to their pre-1948 homes. In other words, the issue isn’t the occupation, which many liberal Zionists agree is a crime, but Zionism itself. Opposition to the Palestinians’ “right of return” is a matter of consensus among left and right Zionists because also liberal Zionists insist that Israel has the right to ensure that Jews constitute the ethnic majority in their country. That’s the reason for which Rabbi Rosenberg could not answer Spencer. But if you reject Zionism because you reject the double standard, organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the Jewish Federations of North America would denounce you as anti-Semitic.

It is important to emphasize that in some crucial respects, the comparison between the alt-right’s white-Christian ethnic politics and the Jewish State is not just misleading, but sinister. The history of the Jews — a tiny minority that has faced persecutions, pogroms and the Holocaust — isn’t analogous to that of white Christians. This is an important qualification, and the reason for which, when Richard Spencer speaks of the alt-right as “a sort of white Zionism,” he is promoting a despicable lie. It must be possible to sympathize with Israel and show understanding of Zionism’s historical conditions but to refuse any sympathies to the alt-right. Unfortunately, anti-Zionist critics sometimes fail to be sensitive to this distinction.

But despite sympathy and solidarity with Israel — or better, because of it — any Jew who remains committed to liberalism must insist that nothing in Jewish history can allow the Jews to violate the rights of other ethnic and religious minorities, and that nothing in our history suggests that it would be wise for us to do so.

This is all the more true because by denying liberal principles, Zionism immediately becomes continuous with — rather than contradictory to — the anti-Semitic politics of the sort promoted by the alt-right. The idea that Israel is the Jews’ own ethnic state implies that Jews living outside of it — say, in America or in Europe — enjoy a merely diasporic existence. That is another way of saying that they inhabit a country that is not genuinely their own. Given this logic, it is natural for Zionist and anti-Semitic politicians to find common ideas and interests. Every American who has been on a Birthright Israel tour should know that left-leaning Israelis can agree with America’s alt-right that, ideally, ”Jews should live in their own country.”

Since this continuity is so natural, it has a long and significant history. Last April, Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, was embraced in Israel by top members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Strache’s party now celebrates mostly anti-Islam and anti-immigration policies, but it was originally founded by former Austrian Nazis. Jörg Haider, a previous leader of the party, was infamous for showing sympathy for some of Hitler’s policies. Another case in point is Geert Wilders, the xenophobic far-right Dutch politician. This month, it was revealed that Wilders’s visits to Israel and his meetings with Israeli personnel have been so frequent that the Dutch intelligence community investigated his “ties to Israel and their possible influence on his loyalty.”

This phenomenon has been somewhat familiar also in the United States given the close ties between fundamentalist evangelical Christians — whose views on the Jews’ part in a larger messianic scheme is flatly anti-Semitic — and the state of Israel. But with Trump, this type of collaboration is introduced to the heart of American politics.

Nothing demonstrates this alliance better than the appointment of David Friedman to be the United States ambassador to Israel. Friedman, an ardent supporter of Israel’s occupation project, has argued that J Street’s liberal Zionist supporters, who are critical of the occupation, are “worse than Kapos” — the Jews who collaborated with their Nazi concentration camp guards. In fact, however, it is Friedman’s own politics — and the politics of the government that he supports — that’s continuous with anti-Semitic principles and collaborates with anti-Semitic politics.

The “original sin” of such alliances may be traced back to 1941, in a letter to high Nazi officials, drafted in 1941 by Avraham Stern, known as Yair, a leading early Zionist fighter and member in the 1930s of the paramilitary group Irgun, and later, the founder of another such group, Lehi. In the letter, Stern proposes to collaborate with “Herr Hitler” on “solving the Jewish question” by achieving a “Jewish free Europe.” The solution can be achieved, Stern continues, only through the “settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine.” To that end, he suggests collaborate with the German’s “war efforts,” and establish a Jewish state on a “national and totalitarian basis,” which will be “bound by treaty with the German Reich.”

It has been convenient to ignore the existence of this letter, just as it has been convenient to mitigate the conceptual conditions making it possible. But such tendencies must be rejected. They reinforce the same logic by which the letter itself was written: the sanctification of Zionism to the point of tolerating anti-Semitism. That’s the logic that liberal American Jews currently have to fight, but it will prove difficult to uproot. Stern is memorialized in street names in every major Israeli town, and it is not unreasonable to assume that Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, whose father celebrated Stern as a mythical model of Zionist struggle, is called by Stern’s nom de guerre.

The comparisons between Trump and Hitler — more prevalent in pre-elections articles than today — will hopefully prove entirely exaggerated. But even so, the following years promise to present American Jewry with a decision that they have much preferred to avoid. Hold fast to their liberal tradition, as the only way to secure human, citizen and Jewish rights; or embrace the principles driving Zionism. In the age of Trump, insisting on both is likely to prove too difficult to contain.

Omri Boehm is an assistant professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of “The Binding of Isaac, a Religious Model of Disobedience” and, most recently, “Kant’s Critique of Spinoza.”