PEACE FOR ISRAEL & PALESTINE
The first problem with arguments about the Middle East and what to do to bring peace to the peoples of Israel and Palestine suffer from the fallacies of ambiguity, a variety of informal fallacies in the formal study of logic. That is because everybody has their own idea of what certain ideologies are all about when in fact they mean very different things to many different people. The word “Zionism” is the worst problem.
Contained within the term “Zionism” are many sub-ideologies, some of which are not even compatible with each other. One group calls itself “Labor Zionist” and purports to seek to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, i.e. Israel, that is socialist, democratic, and protects the equal rights of all Israelis whether or not they are Jewish. The “Zionist Revisionists” on the other hand want a Jewish state, Israel, that literally encompasses “Israel on both sides of the Jordan River,” meaning they want to not only annex the West Bank (Cis Jordan) but also the East Bank (Trans Jordan, i.e., the current Kingdom of Jordan). These are just two examples. It didn’t help the discussion when then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier dumbed the concept down by asserting that “all Jews are Zionists” and that “if you support Israel’s right to exist you are a Zionist” after the United Nations passed a resolution denouncing Zionism as racism.
Prior to World War II, the major opposition to Zionism was Bundism, represented by the Jewish Labor Bund, a socialist political movement that espoused that Jews had the right to live and be culturally autonomous anywhere and especially in Europe where most Jews lived at the time. Hitler and the Nazis put an effective end to that movement.
Another trend was the Reformed Jewish traditional teaching prior to World War II that Jews were simply a religion, that they were and of right ought to be citizens of any nation they lived in, and not a people. During World War II the American Council for Judaism argued that the ideology of Zionism, which pre-supposes that Jews are a “people” as well as a religion, was based upon the proposition that Jews had to go to Palestine and become a majority state because gentiles were supposedly inherently Anti-Semitic. The American Council for Judaism even compared the belief that gentiles were inherently anything the flip-side of Nazi ideology and questioned what the Jews would do to a non-Jewish minority that was by definition of Zionism Anti-Jewish. Again, Hitler and the Nazis did much to discredit these arguments by the Jewish emotional reaction to the Holocaust, but these questions were prescient then and more important now that there is an Arab minority within Israel and a Palestinian majority under Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
There are also significant ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects which assert their own theological position that Israel can only be created by the Messiah and that Jews are barred from creating Israel as a Jewish state in the absence of the Messiah.
Just as important it is critical to advance the American ideals of secularism, feminism, opposition to racism, and the strict separation of church and state. Israel’s formal recognition of so-called “official” religions and the formal recognition of religious authorities to control all aspects of family law, from marriage to divorce and child custody matters, is an abomination and irrational in the modern world. Equally abhorrent are proposals by the Israeli Jewish right-wing parties to legally define Israel as a “Jewish state” as though non-Jews are somehow not equal before the law.
It is high time to stop arguing about the past and find a way forward. If we believe in the traditional American belief in “self-determination of nations” that Woodrow Wilson advanced at the World War I peace discussions, then we must recognize that rightly or wrongly it appears that most Israelis and most Palestinians support a two-state solution. Because that appears to be the self-determinative course for those who will have to live with the consequences, the United States should adopt the following foreign policy:
- Adoption of Activist Neutrality foreign policy by the United States towards the adversarial parties in Israel/Palestine disputes (“Activist Neutrality” is a foreign policy doctrine originated by and adhered to by Ireland regardless of which party has been in power in that nation) which includes but is not limited to a policy of no unilateral U.S. vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions on the subject
- Recognition of Palestinian Independence
- Israeli and Palestinian joint sovereignty over Jerusalem, with Jerusalem’s municipal government unitary and residents allowed to chose citizenship in either or both states
Promoting the re-naming of the “State of Israel” to be the State of Israel and Ishmael” in recognition of the historical roles of the children of Abraham and the right to equal protection of law - Complete separation of church and state in Israel and the usurpation of family law by the State, with one feminist oriented family code to cover all people (instead of decisions based upon Orthodox Jewish law for Jews, Sharia for Muslims, and Christian doctrines for various Christian denominations…)
- Adoption of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights as a self-executing document and as the basis of a written constitution by all states in the Middle East (Spain and Andorra have in large part adopted the ICCPR as their basic constitutional law)
Furthermore, the Peace & Freedom Party strategically and tactically should support Middle East peace efforts by:
- Opposing organizations such as Hillel which slavishly promote the right-wing government line of Israel by suppressing internal debate within its college chapters (which has resulted in the Swarthmore Chapter and other college units courageously disaffiliating because of their own commitment to peace and reconciliation with our Palestinian cousins)
- Promoting PFP organization in our neighboring State of Oregon in opposition to right-wing U.S. Senator Ron Wyden who was once described by CounterPunch Magazine as to the right of Ariel Sharon in the context of Israeli politics
- Promoting better understanding and unity amongst American Jews, Muslims, and other Middle Eastern peoples living in the U.S.
Federal Elections Commission ID # C00579748, Roseanne & Jan The Team With a Plan
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