4 leftist sins in Tel Aviv
Op-ed: Leftist ‘declaration of Palestinian independence’ devoid of any intellectual honesty
The crude, primitive statements uttered by wild protestors against the initiators of and participants in the “Palestinian declaration of independence” in Tel Aviv last week created the impression of a zealous mob facing an enlightened, justice-seeking elite. However, these statements did not annul the four inherent sins in the ceremony.
The first sin was disrespect. Holding the ceremony at the entrance to the building where the State of Israel’s establishment as the Jewish nation-state was declared in 1948, as well as the ridiculous imitation of some sections of that declaration, can only be interpreted as disrespect for Israel’s Declaration of Independence and its message.
Indeed, one can say that a flag is merely a piece of cloth tied to a pole. One can also say that our national anthem was randomly created and adopted. One can even arrogantly argue that that a personal, hastily edited biography sent to jailed murderer Marwan Barghouti symbolizes “our story.” Indeed, freedom of speech tolerates these and many other words of folly.
Nonetheless, a group that prides itself on its intellectualism to such extent and that makes sure to emphasize time and again the many Israel Prize laureates among it could have expressed its views on the Palestinian state without ridiculing the basic tenet of Israel’s independence and without turning it into a simplistic, unconvincing parody; in other words, without getting entangled in the second sin of shallowness and the promotion (and display) of ignorance.
The ceremony in Tel Aviv declared that “Palestine is the birthplace of the Palestinian people; this is where its image was shaped,” paralleling the statement to the opening sentences of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. It was no coincidence that the rest of the paragraph, about shaping “spiritual, religious and political identity,” was left out; after all, the Palestinian people was established on territory that it did not characterize as a separate entity known as “Palestine” until the Zionist movement clung to it and until a British Mandate was imposed in the area (which included both banks of the Jordan River within Palestine.)
Keep Ben-Gurion out of it
Of course, it was also no coincidence that the organizers of the Tel Aviv ceremony forgot that the very same Palestinian people bluntly rejected the UN decision on establishing two nation-states in the Western Land of Israel. Not to mention the failure to address the fact that Jordan is essentially a Palestinian state. And not to mention the comfortable subjugation of this Palestinian people to Jordanian and Egyptian rule between 1948 and 1967.
At the base of this ceremony was a sense of symmetry, and any fact that contradicted this fictitious symmetry and made it very difficult to maintain in the foreseeable future was cast aside. Indeed, this pompous PR effort cast aside intellectual honesty. However, the dozens of Israel Prize laureates enthusiastically embraced this faulty approach, apparently because of their confidence in their own intellectual entitlement.
The third sin had to do with David Ben-Gurion. Several participants in the Tel Aviv ceremony did not hesitate to voice the learned estimate that this man, who drafted Israel’s Declaration of Independence, would have lauded their initiative had he still lived today.
Let’s ignore for now historical facts that clearly show that Ben-Gurion fully understood the risks inherent in Israeli-Palestinian symmetry and thereby worked to thwart it. Regardless of this, after his death he is no longer part of the picture. Almost 40 years after his demise, only demagogues would dare to determine the views he would have expressed on any matter had he still lived now.
Dragging Ben-Gurion to this ridiculous, pathetic ceremony again taught us about the twisted thinking that stood at its base.
The same is true for the fourth sin, the ceremony’s blatant one-sidedness. It had no parallel whatsoever on the Palestinian side. No group with intellectual pretenses gathered, and will apparently not be gathering, in order to declare the symmetry of Israeli-Palestinian rights. But as noted, organizers of this delusional ceremony had nothing to do with the facts.
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