FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

By Vic Rosenthal

MK Yoel Hasson (left) is restrained by a guard as he is taunted by MK Haneen Zouabi, June 2, 2010.

It’s the same old strategy:

Throw rocks at Jews, fire rockets at them, beat them with clubs, even shoot them. Push them, provoke them. Then, either they ‘exercise restraint’ or fight back. In the former case you’ve humiliated them, maybe hurt or killed some at no cost. In the latter, you cry ‘disproportionate force’, ‘collective punishment’, ‘state terrorism’, or whatever.

You win, either way. The only difference is the mood of the big demonstration afterwards.

This works in politics as well as in the street or on the high seas. Take Haneen Zouabi, the first female Arab member of Israel’s Knesset. In 2009, she generated excitement by indicating that she welcomed the development of an Iranian bomb, seeing more danger in Israel’s nuclear capability (Daniel Pipes called her “Iran’s Representative in the Knesset“).

Next, she sailed on the recent Turkish blockade-running flotilla, on the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which Turkish thugs tried to beat Israeli commandos to death. In interviews, Zouabi claimed that the ‘activists’ on the ship had no plans for violence, but video footage shows her standing next to Turks holding clubs and iron bars.

This almost produced the desired result. There were calls for her to be stripped of Israeli citizenship, and there was even a mini-brawl between Arab and Jewish Knesset members. But in the end, all that happened was that some relatively minor parliamentary privileges were taken away from her.

She’s been quite outspoken about her views. Here are some excerpts from recent interviews:

… I do not represent the State of Israel or speak in its name, but rather in the name of the [Palestinian] struggle, which does not in any way recognize Israel as a Jewish state. [I speak] in the name of a struggle that is performing a role precisely opposed to that of the Israeli Knesset, from the [Knesset’s] standpoint…

… Our platform [of the Balad party] is based on the demands for national and civil equality, for recognition as owners of this homeland, and for the Jewish state to become a state for all of its citizens. This is the compass that directs our political action… Since we define ourselves first and foremost as Palestinians who are owners of the homeland, we view it as part of our platform to defend the right of our people to put an end to the occupation. [This] is not limited to the ’48 territories, but applies to the historical borders of our people. Therefore, our platform includes [supporting] the return of the Palestinian refugees, defeating the occupation, dismantling the settlements, and [securing] East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. [my emphasis]

These quotations are not contradicted by their context. They represent Zouabi’s thinking, which is clearly outside the paradigm of the Jewish state. It is not simply ‘dissent’, it is a call to negate the state. A good argument can be made that she is aiding Israel’s enemies and working for the overthrow of its government.

In other words, she is committing treason and inciting same.

But can you imagine if she were to lose  her citizenship or even be removed from the Knesset?  It would be trumpeted by anti-Israel elements that Israel is not a democracy, that it oppresses its Arab citizens and stifles free speech.

Either way — just like the goons of the Mavi Marmara — Zouabi wins.

Now let’s contrast Zouabi with another Knesset member, Meir Kahane. Kahane’s views were extreme compared to most other Jewish Knesset members. For example, he advocated the transfer of Arabs out of the Jewish state. In 1985 the Knesset banned ‘racist’ candidates, the Supreme Court upheld it, and Kahane’s Kach party was excluded from the election in 1988.

Neither Zouabi not Kahane are (were, in Kahane’s case) democrats. Kahane recognized that Jews and irredentist Palestinian Arabs can’t live together peacefully and proposed an undemocratic solution, but one that would leave the Jewish state in existence. Zouabi claims to believe  in ‘a state of its citizens’ — all its inhabitants — but she proposes to incorporate all 4-5 million Arabs claiming ‘Palestinian nationality’ among these inhabitants so as to create an artificial majority. As ‘owners of the land’ she privileges this majority, replacing one ethnically-based nation-state with another.

Whether you find Kahane’s or Zouabi’s ideas more objectionable is not the point. The question is, “which of them is more dangerous to the continued existence of the state?” Because only if you think that the expression of a point of view presents a clear and present danger to the state — if, for example, it constitutes incitement to insurrection — should it be removed from the political arena.

It’s worth reading the whole MEMRI translation of Zouabi’s remarks. She starts from the position that the Jewish state is illegitimate, and calls for the unity of all the ‘Palestinian people’ — whether in Gaza, Israel, Judea/Samaria, Lebanon, etc. — in order to accomplish the conquest of the land of which they are the ‘owners’.

Zouabi’s speech is clearly incitement to overthrow the state. The fact that she and others like her are given a platform by the Israeli political system out of fear that their suppression would be called ‘undemocratic’ is a serious mistake.

She is far more dangerous than Kahane was and should be expelled from the Knesset.

Technorati Tags: Haneen Zouabi, Isarel, Mavi Marmara, Meir Kahane

Yesterday’s murders were typical. A car carrying four Jews was raked by automatic fire. Then the terrorists approached their victims and shot each of them numerous times, in order to ensure that they were dead. Four Jews — two men and two women, one of them pregnant — died for the crime of being in “the land the Palestinians want for their future state” as the NY Times or AP would put it.

This happened near Hebron, in Judea. Some will say that these Jews deserved what they got, or if they didn’t deserve it, they should have expected it. After all they were on ‘Palestinian land’.

As I’ve written numerous times, the 1949 armistice line is not a border. There is no ‘Palestinian land’, not until some legitimate authority representing the Arabs will agree to end the conflict and recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Even if it were, what do you call a nation that does not permit Jews to live among them, on pain of death?

There was a thriving Jewish community in Hebron until 1929, when it was wiped out by an Arab pogrom made by the grandfathers of today’s ‘freedom fighters’. When Arabs, Europeans and our own officials talk about yesterday’s little pogrom, you will hear them say that they condemn terrorism, but… The ‘buts’ will differ. The Arabs will talk about their frustration in getting the state that they want (they will pretend to mean only the territories — as if they could not have had such a state in 1937, 1947, 2000 or 2008), and our people will say that ‘extremists must not be allowed to sabotage the peace process’.

Here is some news: insofar as they do not accept the right of Jews to have a state with any borders in the Middle East, they are all ‘extremists’, including Mahmoud Abbas and even the ultra-‘moderate’ Western-educated economist Salam Fayyad.

Here is what US Secretary of State Clinton said to PM Netanyahu yesterday:

Well, let me express our deepest sympathy to the families who have lost their loved ones. This kind of savage brutality has no place in any country, under any circumstances. The forces of terror and destruction cannot be allowed to continue. It is one of the reasons why the prime minister is here today: to engage in direct negotiations with those Palestinians who themselves have rejected a path of violence in favor of a path of peace. We have to not only stand against the kind of horrific murders we saw today on behalf of the four who were lost and, as the prime minister said, the seven orphans who have been brutally deprived of their parents, but on behalf of all people — Israelis, Palestinians, everyone who knows that there is no answer when violence begets violence. And I thank the prime minister for his leadership in seeking a different future for the children of Israel. And we pledge to do all we can, always, to protect and defend the State of Israel and to provide security to the Israeli people. That is one of the paramount objectives that Israel has that the United States supports in these negotiations. [my emphasis]

I am afraid that Mrs. Clinton does not understand, or pretends to not understand, the conflict that she is trying to ‘solve’.

First, she does not understand that there is no Palestinian leadership that will take the “path of peace.” This path requires an agreement that Israel — within whatever boundaries are agreed upon — is the legitimate nation-state of the Jewish people. Further, it requires a commitment to a final end of conflict, a termination of claims against Israel. Even the most moderate Palestinian ideology is not prepared to grant any legitimacy to Israel, which at best they regard as a usurper that is too powerful to challenge today. Their idea of  ‘peace’ is a hudna, a temporary truce until they have the strength to redress their grievances.

Second, she does not understand that “violence begets violence” is an entirely inappropriate — indeed, slanderous — explanation. Violence has been the choice of the Palestinian Arabs since the beginning of the 20th century. The Jewish response to it has taken many forms, from attempts at diplomacy and conciliation to self-defense and even reprisal. But the motivation for Arab violence has always been the same: to kill or expel the Jews from ‘their’ land.

Third, she does not understand that the Jewish people learned from centuries of insecurity and persecution culminating in the Holocaust that they cannot depend on anyone else to defend them or provide security. They do not want this from the US. What they want is to be allowed to defend themselves without interference, and in this particular case, without an imposed ‘peace’ agreement that will prevent them from defending themselves.

Fourth, she does not understand that the “terror and destruction” cannot be stopped by forcing Israel to give up territory to an ‘authority’ that has no popular support and which does not control the behavior of the majority of Palestinian Arabs.

Fifth, she does not understand that the instability in the wider region does not depend on the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, but rather is fed by the sponsorship of Islamist and terrorist groups in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and elsewhere by the Iranian regime. You cannot cure an infection without neutralizing it at its source.

I have lost patience with this inability to understand that characterizes US officials like Mrs. Clinton. It’s long past time that they should have understood the facts and stopped basing policy on the myths of Palestinian moderation and the centrality of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Unless of course they understand the facts well enough but believe that it is in their interest to shrink Israel regardless of the consequences.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Arabs, Hillary Clinton, terrorism