RE: [Marxism] Different kinds of return

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Lüko Willms wrote: 

"I can't remember the slightest utterance by Avnery against
the Israeli "Law of Return" which guarantees Israeli
citizenship for every person recognized as Jew from whatever
point on this globe. 

"But what I have actually read quite often, and just quoted
some very recent statements by Avnery on this subject, is
his rejection of the actual right of return for those people
driven from their homes since 
1948." 


Israel: the Jewish Demographic State 
by URI AVNERY 

[Counterpunch, October 11, 2002 ]

It sounds like a bad joke, but it really happened: A rabbi
went from Israel to Peru, converted a group of Native
Americans to Judaism, brought them to this country and put
them in a settlement, on land taken away from its
Palestinian owners. 

There they receive, as all settlers do, generous government
subsidies, paid for with money taken away from thousands of
Israelis living below the poverty line. There they can live
happily ever after (unless they leave the settlement in an
unarmored car, in which case they may be ambushed by the
original Palestinian owners.) 

What causes a state to bring total strangers from another
hemisphere in order to displace the native people, who gave
lived there for many centuries, at the price of an eternal
bloody conflict? The answer touches the foundations of
Israel. 

[snip] 

In reality, this is not a "Jewish democratic state" but a
"Jewish demographic state". Demography overcomes democracy
in all fields of action. An Arab citizen feels at every
turn, since childhood, that he has no part in the state,
that he is, at most, a tolerated resident. In every
government office, police station or place of work, even in
the Knesset, he is treated differently from a Jew, even in
times of quiet. True, apart from the Law of Return, which
gives a "Jew" and his family (but not to Arab refugees) the
absolute right to come to Israel, no law discriminates
between a "Jew" and a non-Jew. But this is only
make-believe: numerous laws accord special privileges to
persons "to whom the Law of Return applies", without
mentioning "Jews" specifically. 

This is so self evident, that all state officials act
accordingly without even being aware of it. The "Israel Land
Authority" distributes land to Jews, not to Arabs. All state
development projects include Jews only. Among the hundreds
of new towns and villages set up since the founding of
Israel, not a single one was established for Arabs. There is
no Arab minister in the Government, no Arab judge on the
Supreme Court bench. 

Usually, all these omissions are explained away by the
ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, Israel's
Arab citizens are Palestinians, too. But the question is
what causes what: does the conflict create the anti-Arab
attitude or does the anti-Arab attitude prolong the
conflict? 

Critics of Israel accuse it of practicing "Apartheid", the
South African racist doctrine. This analogy may be partly
misleading. Unlike Apartheid, Zionism is not based on race,
but on a mixture of ghetto mentality and 19th century
European nationalism. 

Ghetto mentality is the spirit of a persecuted, isolated
community, which saw the whole world as divided between Jews
and Goyim (gentiles). European nationalism strove for a
homogeneous national-ethnic state. The Jewish demographic
state has absorbed both these elements: a homogeneous Jewish
national-ethnic state, with as few non-Jews as possible. 

In Europe, where classical nationalism was born, it is
giving way to the modern American outlook, which considers
that every holder of a US passport belongs to the American
nation, irrespective of race and ethnic origin. This has
helped it becoming the most powerful state in the world,
culturally, economically, and militarily. European
nation-states are gradually ceding sovereignty to the
European Union, and their citizenship is accorded to foreign
immigrants, too, who contribute to their economy and
safeguard their social welfare system. In Germany, children
of immigrants born in the country receive citizenship,
Britain and France are even more liberal. 

Israel is faced with a historical choice: to go back to
being a Jewish ghetto, with demographic anxieties and state
trappings, or to go forwards towards a new national outlook,
on the American-European model. 

Zionism was the last European national movement. Israeli
colonialism, too, has come 200 years too late. So it is
perhaps natural that the challenge of adopting a new
national outlook comes rather late. But in the end, I hope,
the Jewish Demographic State will be replaced by the Israeli
Democratic Republic, for the welfare and security of its
citizens. 

Full: http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery1011.html

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