A Superb Piece
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 14 January 2010
"The world is suffering from a "freedom recession" according to a new report from the American think tank Freedom House ("Freedom in the World 2010," 12 January 2010).......
Freedom House's approach to Israel provides the starkest example of the abyss into which liberal thinking has fallen on the relationship between colonialism and freedom. Israel, we are told, "remains the only country in the [Middle East] region to hold a Freedom in the World designation of Free."......
Despite this, on the tables accompanying the report, "Israel" receives the highest score of "1" for political rights, and a very respectable "2" for civil liberties -- on a par with Italy and Japan. The overall impression is of minor glitches that could occur in any exemplary "Western" democracy......
Israeli Jewish leftists (a rapidly dwindling group) and Western liberal sympathizers tend to view Israel within its 1967 boundaries as a flawed democracy -- perfectible with a reallocation of resources and less discrimination against non-Jews, even as they remain fully invested in maintaining Israel as a "Jewish state" with a Jewish demographic majority.
They view the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the original sin that corrupted a purer Zionist vision, and thus remain fixated on the chimera of "ending the occupation" through a "two-state solution." Once this nirvana is reached, so they believe, Israel can resume its destiny as a liberal democratic state among others......
Israel's 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and ongoing repressive rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not exceptional or temporary conditions. They are constitutive of the situation that allows Israeli Jews to currently claim they live in a (flawed) liberal democracy.
To be clear, the argument is not that conditions in Israel and the occupied territories are indistinguishable; rather it is that they form a single interdependent system. Israeli Jews can "freely" elect a Jewish government in Israel only because most Palestinians have already been ethnically cleansed. Thus the maintenance of this "liberal democratic" Jewish space depends directly on the permanent denial of fundamental rights to Palestinians.....
Israel has sometimes been described as an "ethnocracy" -- a state where one ethnic group dominates and enjoys a wide range of liberal rights which are denied to others. But these liberal rights depend directly on the successful repression of the non-privileged ethnic group(s). As rebellions by the disenfranchised require ever greater levels of repression and violence to control, the repression must also be turned inwards.
In recent days, Israel extended for six months a ban on Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli citizen, and leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, from traveling to Jerusalem, Israel's ostensible capital, where he had been exercising his civil rights to campaign against Israeli efforts to "Judaize" the city.....
These means of "internal" repression resemble the movement bans, censorship and other forms of harassment that the South African apartheid regime began to deploy in its late stages against dissenting whites, eroding the "liberal democratic" space they had for so long enjoyed at the expense of the country's black majority.
Maintaining a Jewish-controlled "liberal democratic" regime in Palestine/Israel is incompatible with the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians. It emphatically depends on their permanent violation, especially the right of return......"
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 14 January 2010
"The world is suffering from a "freedom recession" according to a new report from the American think tank Freedom House ("Freedom in the World 2010," 12 January 2010).......
Freedom House's approach to Israel provides the starkest example of the abyss into which liberal thinking has fallen on the relationship between colonialism and freedom. Israel, we are told, "remains the only country in the [Middle East] region to hold a Freedom in the World designation of Free."......
Despite this, on the tables accompanying the report, "Israel" receives the highest score of "1" for political rights, and a very respectable "2" for civil liberties -- on a par with Italy and Japan. The overall impression is of minor glitches that could occur in any exemplary "Western" democracy......
Israeli Jewish leftists (a rapidly dwindling group) and Western liberal sympathizers tend to view Israel within its 1967 boundaries as a flawed democracy -- perfectible with a reallocation of resources and less discrimination against non-Jews, even as they remain fully invested in maintaining Israel as a "Jewish state" with a Jewish demographic majority.
They view the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the original sin that corrupted a purer Zionist vision, and thus remain fixated on the chimera of "ending the occupation" through a "two-state solution." Once this nirvana is reached, so they believe, Israel can resume its destiny as a liberal democratic state among others......
Israel's 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and ongoing repressive rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not exceptional or temporary conditions. They are constitutive of the situation that allows Israeli Jews to currently claim they live in a (flawed) liberal democracy.
To be clear, the argument is not that conditions in Israel and the occupied territories are indistinguishable; rather it is that they form a single interdependent system. Israeli Jews can "freely" elect a Jewish government in Israel only because most Palestinians have already been ethnically cleansed. Thus the maintenance of this "liberal democratic" Jewish space depends directly on the permanent denial of fundamental rights to Palestinians.....
Israel has sometimes been described as an "ethnocracy" -- a state where one ethnic group dominates and enjoys a wide range of liberal rights which are denied to others. But these liberal rights depend directly on the successful repression of the non-privileged ethnic group(s). As rebellions by the disenfranchised require ever greater levels of repression and violence to control, the repression must also be turned inwards.
In recent days, Israel extended for six months a ban on Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli citizen, and leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, from traveling to Jerusalem, Israel's ostensible capital, where he had been exercising his civil rights to campaign against Israeli efforts to "Judaize" the city.....
These means of "internal" repression resemble the movement bans, censorship and other forms of harassment that the South African apartheid regime began to deploy in its late stages against dissenting whites, eroding the "liberal democratic" space they had for so long enjoyed at the expense of the country's black majority.
Maintaining a Jewish-controlled "liberal democratic" regime in Palestine/Israel is incompatible with the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians. It emphatically depends on their permanent violation, especially the right of return......"
No comments:
Post a Comment