Beware apartheid discourse
Gadi Taub warns of unholy alliance between Arab nationalists, human rights champions
Israel is having difficulties switching its frame of mind and discarding the old assumption whereby Zionism’s enemies wish to gradually eat away at the Jewish State’s territory. We used to call it the “Salami Method” once upon a time. However, Zionism’s rivals have realized that the way to eliminate Israel is to do the opposite: Prevent the land’s partition.
In the past, the nature of the forces seeking to avert partition was clear to the democratic world. These were the fans of Arab nationalism who sought to prevent the right for self-determination from Jews. The picture was clear: The nationalists objected to partition while fans of democracy endorsed it. However, at this time both nationalism and anti-Semitism are increasingly being presented through a veneer of democratic discourse.
The position of Arab nationalists has remained the same, of course. The Palestinians objected to the partition proposed by the United Nations and are still resisting it. The reason has also remained the same: One state between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea will be like any other Arab state, with a Jewish minority in it. Partition will guarantee a state with a Jewish majority for the Jews.
The one-state solution is increasingly being presented in terms of democracy and human rights. This is the alliance between the Goldstones and their masters: An international forum of states that trample human rights but nonetheless dispatch a human rights champion to portray Israel as a human rights enemy. Meanwhile, the other side, which is a racist movement that explicitly espouses the murder of Jews, veils missile attacks on civilian targets behind the veneer of these rights, while hiding its missiles behind the bodies of its own people.
This unholy alliance between Arab nationalists and champions of democracy is becoming increasingly sophisticated. We better pay attention to its effort to blur the difference between the occupied territories and Israel-proper. Western public opinion is being gradually prepared for it, first of all because the world is seeing, on the news, images of roadblocks next to the term “Jewish State.” The (wrong) conclusion is that a Jewish State means apartheid.
Not like Switzerland
However, this preparation process is also backed by the media and by intellectuals. Israel’s rivals in the West have stopped talking about occupation and switched to talking about apartheid. The term “occupation” makes clear the difference between areas located within the Green Line and beyond it. Yet the term “apartheid” refers to the very notion of the Jewish State and portrays it as one people controlling another, with the territories only being the more blatant manifestation of this.
Hence, according to this logic, a just solution based on equality cannot make do with partition to two states, as this will merely guarantee the continued existence of the condemnable Jewish state. Therefore a bi-national state is viewed as the just solution; a concept similar to Belgium or Switzerland, or to the solution forced upon Bosnia by the international community (and maintained through international occupation.)
Israelis who examine such proposals realize how unfounded they are. One state with an Arab majority will not be like Switzerland. Entrusting the rights of a Jewish minority in the hands of a Hamas and Fatah majority will not give rise to liberal democracy. There is not even one Arab state that renounced that national-Arab character, and as noted by Alexander Yakobson, the notion that the Palestinians of all people would do that for the sake of the “Zionist invaders” is fundamentally senseless.
Yet this is not what the international community sees. The barrage of articles portraying Israel as an apartheid state and the barrage of seemingly reasonable proposals for a bi-national state gradually create a situation whereby a bloody and deadlocked conflict appears to have a simple democratic solution.
Should we fail to force partition on the Palestinians soon, the international community may become tempted, in the name of democracy, to eliminate Israel in the guise of “bi-national equality.”
