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Recently I mentioned some Israeli Arab organizations (funded by the New Israel Fund among other foreign sources) which espoused Palestinian nationalist aims in the guise of civil rights.

This is sometimes hard for Americans to understand, who immediately think of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s in the US. But African American demands were (mostly) for civil rights within the framework of the United States of America. The groups I mentioned — and many Arab citizens of Israel — believe that their civil rights are precluded by living in a Jewish state. They have elided the difference between civil rights and national aspirations.

They see the flag and the national anthem as not only “not belonging to them” but a limitation of their rights — which they believe include full self-determination for the Arab minority within Israel, even though it is a minority.

It’s instructive to compare their feelings with those of Diaspora Jews living in countries which were explicitly Christian. There is no doubt that they had a feeling of “not belonging” at the times of religious holidays, etc. — even when these weren’t associated with pogroms! But the Jewish nationalists — i.e., Zionists — felt the need for a Jewish state, not a desire to change their host countries into non-Christian nations.

Palestinian nationalists claim that their situation is different — that they are the original ‘owners’ of the land and therefore need special treatment, like a veto power over all Knesset decisions, etc. This is not a demand for ‘civil rights’: it implies that Israel is not a legitimate state and should be replaced by an Arab state.

Arab Member of the Israeli Knesset Ahmed Tibi, speaking to the Fatah convention in Bethlehem this week, expressed the point of view clearly:

Speaking of Arabs like himself who have Israeli citizenship, Tibi said: “We are an inseparable part of the Palestinian people, we are the original residents of the place and we will never leave it. We are the owners of these lands and we are not guests… Let he who arrived last leave first.”

Israel, he said must not only freeze the settlements in Judea and Samaria but dismantle them. There will be no peace “as long as there are settlers,” he said. “The land must be clean of settlers,” he then proclaimed, “because the settlements are a cancerous growth on the body of the Palestinians.” He received loud applause as he added: “Get out of the Palestinian lands, get out of our souls!” — IsraelNN

This is a good example of what I call the “two (Arab) state solution”: a racist apartheid state of Palestine in which Jews are not permitted to live, next door to an ‘Israel’ with an Arab — but not a Jewish — right of return, an ‘equal’ distribution of power between Jews and Arabs, and national symbols suitable for a ‘state of its citizens’.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, often referred to in the Western press as an extremist or worse, responded sharply:

“Our central problem is not the Palestinians but Ahmed Tibi and ilk – they are more dangerous than Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad combined,” Lieberman said…

Lieberman said that whoever listened to the Fatah conference understood that the problem was not the words of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, but rather Tibi’s speech.

“Tibi’s speech is in total contradiction to the Declaration of Independence that talks about the renewal of the Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. Ahmed Tibi and his ilk are Israel’s true problem. The country has to decide whether it is a democracy that will defend itself, or a suicidal one.”  — Jerusalem Post

Unfortunately, Lieberman — who proposed the controversial ‘loyalty oath’ for Israeli citizens — is not extreme in worrying about the radicalization of the Arab minority. Americans need to understand that their analogies to African-American civil rights do not work here. At some point, one of the following must occur:

• The Arab citizens of Israel will accept the idea of living in a Jewish state

• The state of Israel will stop being a Jewish state — and soon become an Arab one

• There will be a civil war, and one side will kick the other out amid great bloodshed

The compromises suggested by the Left and the Right — that there is a solution in the framework of civil rights that will satisfy the Arabs without ending the state’s Jewish character, or that the Arabs can be paid to migrate to the soon-to-be-created state of ‘Palestine’ — are unrealistic.

So which will it be?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, Ahmed Tibi, Avigdor Lieberman

For security reasons, you must be registered and logged in to post a comment on this blog. But because of a deluge of fake users, I’ve had to turn registration off!

So if you are not registered, and you want to comment on a post here, please send an email to info [at] FresnoZionism [dot] org. I will register you and give you a password, which you can then change if you wish.

I’ve spent a huge amount of time the last couple of days — time which I could have used for writing, for my day job, or for sleeping — updating the code and deleting hacker-inserted exploits which were adding invisible links to blog pages (they are invisible to us, but Google sees them and then treats this site like a spammer).

Somehow this is related to the fake users.

To my chagrin, the hackers are not anti-Zionists or Hamas terrorists who view me as a menace, but rather the types selling fake Viagra and pirated software.

Thanks, again, for your patience.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — and of course the UK, UN, EU etc. — sharply criticized Israel after several Arab families were evicted from homes in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled against them in a dispute over ownership of the homes.

The details of the dispute are very Middle Eastern, with claims on both sides going back to the Ottoman period. Simply, some Palestinians claim they own the homes while some Jews claim the Palestinians are squatting on their property. There is no way that I — or any other blogger or journalist — could possibly say anything intelligent about the facts or the law of this case, which is quite complicated.

What I can say is that given the makeup and the record of Israel’s Supreme Court, it is unthinkable that they did not bend over backward to be fair — or more — to the Palestinians.

The Court is the bête noir of right-wing and religious Israelis, who have strongly objected to its decisions in such matters as the security barrier, punishment of soldiers accused of mistreating Arabs, the participation of Arab parties and candidates opposed to the existence of Israel in Israeli elections, the right of Arabs to sue the IDF for damages resulting from actions in the territories, etc.

In short, if the Supreme Court saw fit to rule in favor of  ‘settlers’ and against  Palestinians, it’s a safe bet that the Jews had a damn good case.

But Mrs. Clinton didn’t go into facts or law. She said,

I think these actions are deeply regrettable … The eviction of families and demolition of homes in east Jerusalem is not in keeping with Israeli obligations and I urge the government of Israel and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions.

And the British Consulate issued a statement, which included the following:

We are appalled by the eviction in East Jerusalem this morning … These actions are incompatible with the Israeli professed desire for peace. We urge Israel not to allow the extremists to set the agenda.

Clinton, the British Consulate, the EU spokesperson and the UN “Special Envoy” did not need to take lessons in Israeli real estate law, which has elements from the Ottoman and British legal codes, nor did they need to look at the Turkish documents that both sides placed into evidence.

No, everyone seems to be in agreement that the real issue is that Israel has no right to decide anything in East Jerusalem (if you ask the US State Department, they would include West Jerusalem, too).

Although one wonders what they would have said if the Court had decided in favor of the Palestinians.

Like the insistence on a settlement freeze in which East Jerusalem neighborhoods that were populated by Jews before 1948 are “just settlements”, this incident exposes the desire on the part of the US and others to wrest control of part — maybe all — of Israel’s capital city away from her.

Technorati Tags: Jerusalem, Israel, evictions

I’ve mentioned the interference in Israel’s affairs by European governments before, but the extent to which this occurs is shocking.

Bar-Ilan University political scientist Gerald M. Steinberg is the Executive director of NGO Monitor, an organization which keeps tabs on the multiplicity of non-governmental organizations which seem to exist primarily to delegitimize Israel, collect information for ‘lawfare‘ against her — and apparently also to influence its internal politics.

Such groups, for example, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, etc. are based all over the world, but — in an unfortunately typical example of Jewish Zionophobia — a large number are actually Israeli organizations.

Prof. Steinberg is calling for full  transparent disclosure of funding by Israeli NGOs. Follow the money. It is absolutely astonishing:

Tens of millions of euros, British pounds, Norwegian krona and Swiss francs are provided by European governments every year to dozens of political NGOs, but most of this is hidden. These governments treat their funding for groups like Yesh Din, ICAHD, PHR-I, Breaking the Silence, Bimkom, Peace Now, etc. [left-wing Israeli groups, some of them extremist — ed.] as “top secret,” reflecting the realization that such activities lack legitimacy.

This obsessive secrecy is reflected in the fact that the Dutch ambassador to Israel and the Spanish deputy chief of mission acknowledged that they were not informed of their own governments’ support for Israeli NGOs.

Indeed, much of this funding comes from outside the foreign ministries, and is funneled through separate aid groups, such as the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the British Department for International Development. The officials in these agencies often have close relations with the officials in the NGOs that they fund, and share their ideological biases, or know how to prey on their weaknesses.

Similarly, the European Commission (EC) sends tens of millions of euros every year (the total is classified) under numerous programs, and there is no central listing or accounting for the funds. When NGO Monitor officially requested the details under the EU’s own “freedom of information” of regulations, the first response was an attempt to invoke security claims.

Following an appeal, and six months later, the EC sent a CD with some documents, from which almost all of the information was deleted – again demonstrating that this massive manipulation is a highly guarded secret.

A law requiring full disclosure of foreign government transfers of funds to any Israeli non-governmental organization 60 days in advance would lift the cover from this illicit and anti-democratic practice. Israel is the only democratic country in the world where other democracies use massive funding for political groups to influence policies and public opinion.

Israeli NGO recipients would be also be required to disclose funding information involving foreign governments whenever they place an advertisement in a newspaper, organize a demonstration, or initiate one of the flood of cases in the High Court. How many Israelis knew that the EC had allocated money to the Four Mothers movement that pressed for the 2000 unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, and all of the consequences that resulted? [my emphasis]

Technorati Tags: Israel, NGO Monitor, Gerald M. Steinberg