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Books,,,,
From Refugees To
Citizens
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- The “Jewish Character”
Syndrome
Considering the European Jews’ history
of oppression, Jewish fear of gentiles is understandable. But when
this fear is forged into active policy, it is dangerous and bloody,
as the case has been in Palestine. The expulsion of the Palestinians
and expropriation of their property, as a precondition for
establishing the state of Israel, was a result of this paranoia.
That was Ben-Gurion’s doctrine, now fully documented by historians.
This doctrine is still being followed. It calls for committing an
actual murder for fear that the victim, if he lived, might harm the
murderer.
The claim that the “Jewish character” of Israel would be threatened
is commonly recited to justify the denial of the fundamental right
of Palestinians to their land and property. But what is the meaning
of “Jewish character”? Does it mean legal character, demograhpic,
social or religious? If it entails policies that deny the return of
refugees and allow unlimited numbers of Jewish immigrants in their
place, these policies are best described by the noted jurists Thomas
and Sally Mallison, who pointed out that “the term, ‘the Jewish
character’, is really a euphemism for the Zionist discriminatory
statutes of the State of Israel which violate the human rights
provisions of the Partition Resolution.…. The United Nations is
under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in Israel
than it is to maintain apartheid in the Republic of South Africa.”
The US State Department rejected any special meaning for the Jewish
citizens of Israel by stating that it “does not recognize the
legal-political relationship based on the religious identification
of American citizens.… Accordingly it should be clear that the
Department of State does not regard the ‘Jewish people’ concept as a
concept of international law.”
This is not an isolated view. In 1998 the UN Treaty-based Committee
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights said that Israel’s
“excessive emphasis upon the State as a ‘Jewish State’ encourages
discrimination and accords a second-class status to its non-Jewish
citizens…. The Committee notes with grave concern that the Status
Law of 1952 authorizes the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency
and its subsidiaries including the Jewish National Fund to control
most of the land in Israel, since these institutions are chartered
to benefit Jews exclusively…. The Committee takes the view that
large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and
property by the State and transfer of that property to these
agencies constitute an institutionalized form of discrimination
because these agencies by definition would deny the use of these
properties by non-Jews.” Israel cannot maintain this position for
long. The moral and legal weight of human rights will catch up with
it one day. How can this concept of “Jewish character” be an
acceptable basis for peaceful relations?
Some Israelis understand the “Jewish character” as a society in
which Jews are a numerical majority. But in what territory? In the
whole of British Mandatory Palestine? Today, 47 percent of the
population of Palestine are (non-Jewish) Arabs and 53 percent Jews.
In fact, the percentage would be reversed if we take account of the
fact that 62 percent of the Russian immigrants are not really Jews.
Let us examine this matter further. Israel’s Master Plan for the
year 2020 made a detailed study of population increase in Israel
with various scenarios for Jewish immigration. The standard case
gives a population of 8,100,000, of which 5,832,000 are Jews and
2,268 (40% of Jews) are Palestinians, in the years 2020. In the same
year, Palestinian refugees will increase to 11 million.
The Jews in the world are about 13 million and decreasing at a rate
of –0.50% due to mixed marriages and conversion or abandonment of
religion. That is because 98% of Jews live in affluent societies and
have no need for protectionist measures leading to isolation. Israel
plans to have 52% of the world Jewry, or more, in Israel by the year
2020.
Sharon’s aggressive plans call for removing the remainder of
Russian, all South American and South African Jews from their
countries to Israel. Jews in Europe and USA have no interest to
immigrate save for the zealots who now build settlements and
terrorize the West Bank.
Taking the most and least optimistic forecasts of Jewish immigration
(1,700,000 and 800,000 respectively), it becomes apparent that there
is an upper limit for immigration which may be reached before 2020
(Fig. 13). Showing the Palestinian increase in Israel on the
same curve, it is clear that they will overtake the Jews in or
around the year 2070 with or without immigration. That is assuming
that no other factor comes into play before then. By 2070, the total
number of refugees will be equal to the size of Egypt today at 61
million.
The fallacy of Israeli arguments, aiming to maintain Jewish
majority, is abundantly clear. They aim to attain an impossible
goal: that Jews will remain a majority at all times in all
territories held by Israel. This is impossible. Either the time
within which this majority can be maintained shrinks or the
territory in which this can be maintained shrinks. A better solution
for Jews, indeed for all people, is to live with the people of the
land, not instead of them.
All these examples indicate that the notion of the numerical
superiority of Jews is a cruel time game in which the refugees rot
in their camps until the Israelis realize, or admit, that this
contention is a horrible hoax, intended to keep the conquered land
empty until its owners give up or are gotten rid of by a “final
solution” of the Palestinian problem.
The most incredible notion is the claim that the “Jewish character”
means a socially homogeneous society in which Jews speak one
language, dress and behave similarly, and uphold the same values,
such that the presence of one national group as the Palestinians
will ‘pollute’ this uniformity. It is hard to imagine that very many
Israelis really believe this. There are no dominant common features
between the Russians and Moroccans, the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi or the
Haredim and the secular. There are thirty-two official spoken
languages in Israel and about two dozen political groups with an
equivalent number of newspapers for a Jewish population a little
larger than Los Angeles. The problem of their fractured society is a
serious one, and it is already causing internal conflict in Israel,
now tenuously held together by the drummed-up Arab danger.
Considerable research has already been devoted to this question. The
return of Palestinians to their ancestral homes would not
substantially exacerbate these problems. Already, the Palestinian
citizens of Israel (Fig 9) are 11 percent of the population in group
A, 21 percent in group B and 70 percent in group C.
If the “Jewish character” refers to religious practice, this has
rarely been a problem in the Arab and Islamic world. Numerous
historians have demonstrated that the treatment of Jewish minorities
by Islamic and Arab societies has been far better than that by
Christian societies.
There is no ethical or legal justification for the maintenance of a
“Jewish character” that denies human rights or violates
international law. The real reason for Israel’s racist practices is
to maintain its hold on Palestinian land and keep it as a reserve
for future Jewish immigration. On March 1, 2001, the Israeli media
reported that Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon told the Jewish
Agency that his plan is to bring 1 million immigrants from Russia,
Mexico and Ethiopia, and that Israel must bring all of the world’s
Jews to Israel by 2020.
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