I'm reading a book from BARD, Rise and Kill First. It's a history of the
Israeli response to what it has perceived has threats to its existence, and
it's written by an Israeli investigative reporter from an Israeli view of
geopolitics. It's rather horrifying. However, if you read it, you can
understand exactly how we got where we are now and that includes the US, which
has copied Israel's targeted assasins program.
Miriam
Mondoweiss
Growing US public support for one democratic state in Israel/Palestine falls on
deaf ears
US Politics
Jonathan Cook on December 17, 2018
President Donald Trump talks with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and Jared Kushner in Jerusalem, May 22, 2017. (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO)
Two years of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu as a Middle East peacemaking
team appear to be having a transformative effect – and in ways that will please
neither of them.
The American public is now evenly split between those who want a two-state
solution and those who prefer a single state, shared by Israelis and
Palestinians, according to a survey published last week by the University of
Maryland.
And if a Palestinian state is off the table – as a growing number of analysts
of the region conclude, given Israel’s intransigence and the endless
postponement of Mr Trump’s peace plan – then support for one state rises
steeply, to nearly two-thirds of Americans.
But Mr Netanyahu cannot take comfort from the thought that ordinary Americans
share his vision of a single state of Greater Israel. Respondents demand a
one-state solution guaranteeing Israelis and Palestinians equal rights.
By contrast, only 17 percent of Americans expressing a view – presumably
Christian evangelicals and hardline Jewish advocates for Israel – prefer the
approach of Israel’s governing parties: either to continue the occupation or
annex Palestinian areas without offering the inhabitants citizenship.
All of this is occurring even though US politicians and the media express no
support for a one-state solution. In fact, quite the reverse.
The movement to boycott Israel, known as BDS, is growing on US campuses, but
vilified by Washington officials, who claim its goal is to end Israel as a
Jewish state by bringing about a single state, in which all inhabitants would
be equal. The US Congress is even considering legislation to outlaw boycott
activism.
And last month CNN sacked its commentator Marc Lamont Hill for using a speech
at the United Nations to advocate a one-state solution – a position endorsed by
35 percent of the US public.
There is every reason to assume that, over time, these figures will swing even
more sharply against Mr Netanyahu’s Greater Israel plans and against
Washington’s claims to be an honest broker.
Among younger Americans, support for one state climbs to 42 percent. That makes
it easily the most popular outcome among this age group for a Middle East peace
deal.
In another sign of how far removed Washington is from the American public, 40
percent of respondents want the US to impose sanctions to stop Israel expanding
its settlements on Palestinian territory. In short, they support the most
severe penalty on the BDS platform.
And who is chiefly to blame for Washington’s unresponsiveness? Some 38 percent
say that Israel has “too much influence” on US politics.
That is a view almost reflexively cited by Israel lobbyists as evidence of
antisemitism. And yet a similar proportion of US Jews share concerns about
Israel’s meddling.
In part, the survey’s findings should be understood as a logical reaction to
the Oslo peace process. Backed by the US for the past quarter-century, it has
failed to produce any benefits for the Palestinians.
But the findings signify more. Oslo’s interminable talks over two states have
provided Israel with an alibi to seize more Palestinian land for its illegal
settlements.
Under cover of an Oslo “consensus”, Israel has transferred ever-larger numbers
of Jews into the occupied territories, thereby making a peaceful resolution of
the conflict near impossible. According to the 1998 Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court, that is a war crime.
Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the court in The Hague, warned this
month that she was close to finishing a preliminary inquiry needed before she
can decide whether to investigate Israel for war crimes, including the
settlements.
The reality, however, is that the ICC has been dragging out the inquiry to
avoid arriving at a decision that would inevitably provoke a backlash from the
White House. Nonetheless, the facts are staring the court in the face.
Israel’s logic – and proof that it is in gross violation of international law –
were fully on display this week. The Israeli army locked down the Ramallah, the
effective and supposedly self-governing capital of occupied Palestine, as
“punishment” after two Israeli soldiers were shot dead outside the city.
The Netanyahu government also approved yet another splurge of
settlement-building, again supposedly in “retaliation” for a recent upsurge in
Palestinian attacks.
But Israel and its western allies know only too well that settlements and
Palestinian violence are intrinsically linked. One leads to the other.
Palestinians directly experience the settlements’ land grabs as Israeli
state-sanctioned violence. Their communities are ever more tightly ghettoised,
their movements more narrowly policed to maintain the settlers’ privileges.
If Palestinians resist such restrictions or their own displacement, if they
assert their rights and their dignity, clashes with soldiers or settlers are
inescapable. Violence is inbuilt into Israel’s settlement project.
Israel has constructed a perfect, self-rationalising system in the occupied
territories. It inflicts war crimes on Palestinians, who then weakly lash out,
justifying yet more Israeli war crimes as Israel flaunts its victimhood, all to
a soundtrack of western consolation.
The hypocrisy is becoming ever harder to hide, and the cognitive dissonance
ever harder for western publics to stomach.
In Israel itself, institutionalised racism against the country’s large minority
of Palestinian citizens – a fifth of the population – is being entrenched in
full view.
Last week Natalie Portman, an American-Israeli actor, voiced her disgust at
what she termed the “racist” Nation-State Basic Law, legislation passed in the
summer that formally classifies Israel’s Palestinian population as inferior.
Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s grown-up son, voiced a sentiment widely
popular in Israel last week when he wrote on Facebook that he wished “All the
Muslims [sic] leave the land of Israel”. He was referring to Greater Israel – a
territorial area that does not differentiate between Israel and the occupied
territories.
In fact, Israel’s Jim Crow-style policies – segregation of the type once
inflicted on African-Americans in the US – is becoming ever more overt.
Last month the Jewish city of Afula banned Palestinian citizens from entering
its main public park while vowing it wanted to “preserve its Jewish character”.
A court case last week showed that a major Israeli construction firm has
systematically blocked Palestinian citizens from buying houses near Jews. And
the parliament is expanding a law to prevent Palestinian citizens from living
on almost all of Israel’s land.
A bill to reverse this trend, committing Israel instead to “equal political
rights amongst all its citizens”, was drummed out of the parliament last week
by an overwhelming majority of legislators.
Americans, like other westerners, are waking up to this ugly reality. A growing
number understand that it is time for a new, single state model, one that ends
Israel’s treatment of Jews as separate from and superior to Palestinians, and
instead offers freedom and equality for all.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.