2005-10-06,+The+boys+who+cried+anti-Semite,+Sparks,+Star

= The boys who cried 'anti-Semite' =


 * The Star, Johannesburg, October 5, 2005**


 * By Alistair Sparks**

It is sad but unsurprising. My last column, in which I suggested that a two-state solution in the Middle East was no longer viable and that Israelis should start facing the prospect of a single, shared state with the Palestinians, has brought a torrent of personal attacks from Jewish readers.

Sad because none of the letters dealt with the substantive points in the column, which reflects a distressing state of collective denial.

There was no response to the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he will not remove the Jewish settlements on the West Bank as he has done from Gaza, and my contention that this renders the putative Palestinian state unviable.

Unsurprising because the abuse hurled at me instead is part of a pattern. I was called "an insidious and dangerous anti-Semite", and American academic Virginia Tilley, whose scholarly book The One-State Solution I reviewed in the column, a "pro-Hamas ideologue" - which equates her with terrorism.

Such personal attacks on anyone who criticises Israel emanate routinely from the South African Zionist Federation and are clearly intended to intimidate the critics into silence by smearing them with the odious charge of anti-Semitism.

This comes from a body that is an affiliate of the World Zionist Federation, which in turn is an arm of the Israeli government, and so the tactic bears the stamp of state approval.

Thus the chairperson of the South African branch of this official state body, Avrom Krengel, wrote to the editor of The Star claiming the right of reply to what he called "the injustice of (my) anti-Semitic tirade".

Actually, I thought my column was quite mildly worded and not unsympathetic to Jewish sensitivities. Also, that Krengel misspelled my name and got the date of publication wrong had me wondering whether he had actually read the column or just shot off a pro forma missile.

I also wonder whether it is wise for an arm of the state of Israel to be so free with the smear-term "anti-Semite". Is there not a danger, in slapping it on anyone who criticises Israel's actions, of diluting a term which should apply to the most odious and discredited of all human prejudices?

Be that as it may, since I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, let me return to the subject at hand. Last week Sharon narrowly survived a challenge within his Likud Party from former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, which spoke volumes about the future prospects of a two-state solution.

The issue before the Likud Central Committee was the mundane one of whether to hold the election for party leader in November rather than April. But no one doubted that Netanyahu's real purpose was to inflict a humiliating defeat on Sharon to punish him for withdrawing the Jewish settlements from Gaza. Sharon won the vote by a hair's-breadth 52%.

With such pressure from the Right over the withdrawal of some 8 500 Israelis from Gaza, is it conceivable that Sharon - or anyone else - is going to attempt the removal of 250 000 Jews from the much larger and more deeply entrenched and religiously significant settlements on the West Bank?

No way. It's not going to happen.

And if it doesn't happen, my contention is there can be no viable Palestinian state in a chain of tiny, fragmented and economically unviable bantustans squeezed around the intrusive settlements and their network of interlinking highways.

As Tilley warns in her book, to cram the expanding Palestinian population into tiny, claustrophobic ghettos under a government unable to meet the needs of its expanding population would lead to a catastrophic explosion.

So let's get this straight: I am not trying to kill the "two-state solution". Sharon killed it with his support for the settlements. I am simply doing the coroner's job of pronouncing it dead.

The Zionist Federation accuses me of being opposed to the Jewish state. Again, not true. Israel was an established Jewish state, but put that in jeopardy after the Six-Day War of 1976 when it occupied Gaza and the West Bank with the millions of Palestinians living there.

Had Israel withdrawn from those territories after winning the war so crushingly, as it did from Sinai, it could have had the two-state solution right away.

But it didn't do that. It has remained in occupation for 38 years and encouraged and subsidised the establishment of the settlements to the point where they are now physically and politically immovable.

That is what has rendered the two-state solution unworkable.

In turn that raises the question of how Israel can remain both a "Jewish state", if that means a state with a permanent Jewish majority, and a democracy.

Is it going to continue occupying the West Bank indefinitely, which means continuing to oppress an occupied people and suffering their violent resistance as an ongoing way of life?

Or is Sharon going to proclaim his own "two-state settlement" unilaterally, annexing the settlements as part of Israel and telling the Palestinians they can have little Gaza and the twisted scraps of land left over in the West Bank as their nation state?

If that is what Sharon has in mind, it won't work - any more than Hendrik Verwoerd's vision of fragmented bantustans as the way to realise the Afrikaner dream of having their own "tuiste vir die nageslag" (a home for posterity) could. The Palestinians won't accept it, and it won't bring peace.

Which brings us back to what is meant by a "Jewish state"? Does it really require a permanent Jewish majority to exist? Not all early Zionists thought so; some actively resisted the idea. But they were swamped by the emotional intensity of the Holocaust.

One can empathise with the impact of that terrible event on Jews everywhere, but the fact remains that many ethno-nationalisms grapple with the problem of other ethnic groups in their midst. Israel, South Africa and Northern Ireland have long been bracketed together as particularly intractable examples of this dilemma, which is why I believe we have some experiences to share.

The new South Africa has not required the forfeiture of the "Afrikaner homeland". I well remember the dark warnings, uttered from pulpit and platform over more than half my working life, that "one man one vote" would mean the "national suicide" of the Afrikaner volk and that they would never, ever contemplate it.

Well, they did contemplate it, and the volk are surviving, their language, church and culture still intact, the tuisland still there for the nageslag. And the Afrikaners are in a far weaker position, numerically and politically, than the much more substantial Jewish population of a greater Israel would be with vastly greater international support to boot.

I am not suggesting it would be easy. Ethno-nationalism is a powerful factor in human affairs, which liberals like myself are prone to underestimate.

But then again the Jewish people have more experience than anyone else in the art of living among others. Sooner or later they will have to confront the facts on the ground - and stop yelling at caring people who urge them to do so.

From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=225&fArticleId=2904307