OP-ED
“Fighting-But Not Winning, At Least Not Yet-An Already Losing Battle”
I continue to reflect deeply about the upcoming September United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood as a committed Zionist part of whose family were halutzim more than 200 years ago and another part that came as a direct result of the Shoah. I have, also, for most of my adult life strongly believed in a two-state solution as the only viable solution to resolving not only the current morass and impasse but also to address and say to both Israelis and Palestinians (and, by extension, American Jews and non-Jewish supporters of Israel-this despite Rev. John’s Hagee’s blasting of President Obama’s support as contrary to Biblical mandates) that past wrongs, present difficulties, and future possibilities are being addressed. (I have done so for so long that I have memories of being attacked for my position years and years ago!) To say “Surprised!” when Prime Minister Netanyahu articulated-even in his own at-times convoluted language (Hebrew reports are not much better)-his possible support for a two-state solution is to put it mildly. Historically-resident populations who do not wish to be governed by those who hold the current reigns of power, it seems to me, are sowing the seeds of revolution, regularly incurring violence, and even genocide itself. (I also include in my thinking the Kurds, the world’s largest self-identified population without their own nation-state, consisting of more the 20,000,000 people resident in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran.) I would also note that I have never believed that a one-state solution was a solution at all. Nor, unfortunately and sadly, have I believed that Israel as a truly democratic state for all its citizens (as we in the West understand the political concept of the equality of representative democracy) could retain its Jewish ethos and character for those unwilling, and not Jews, and unable to accept them.
My own discomfort has always been, however, the painful realization that this solution requires the relocation of people-Palestinians, or more simply, Arabs and Muslims-who proudly trace their own past and tell family stories of groves of olive trees planted by ancestors; homes and villages built by those same ancestors. And while “relocation” of peoples is a nice and comfortable sounding word, it distastefully echoes in my own mind “population transfers” practiced by the Turks against the Armenians and the Nazis against our own for the supposed and fallacious reasons of “minority safety and security,” and the late Meir Kahane’s and those who supported his fervent desire to “rid” Israel of all who were not Jews.
I have only recently read ADL’s carefully crafted “Palestinian Unilateralism: An Obstacle to Peace-The United Nation’s and Palestinian State: Scenarios and Realities” (5 pgs.) and “Palestinian Unilateralism: An Obstacle to Peace” (3 pgs.) which have prompted these thoughts. These two documents reflect and articulate, I strongly believe, not only the feelings of the overwhelming majority of our now conservative rightist American Jewish community, but will, in one form or another, serve as a “manifesto” of political action primarily directed at the Congress of the United States, which, as of this moment, appears to (at least temporarily) oppose the vote in advance of the September United Nations Security Council Resolution. The alternative possibility of non-binding UN General Assembly resolutions is another matter, however, since the pro-Palestinian majority could pass such with tremendous symbolic value for the Palestinians even without US and other abstentions rather than direct opposition.
Should either prove successful (after all, South Sudan, thankfully after the genocide of the North, is increasingly being recognized and the rebellious Libyans appear to be on the same road), the rift between the US and her own allies and supporters can only increase in the Middle East and even possibly elsewhere, while here at home the rift might very well divide the American Jewish community from others who appear to be growing increasingly tired of the too-dominant role the Middle East continues to occupy on the American foreign policy stage, and the seeming intractability of a solution to this 63-year-old conundrum. (Our American psyche appears to be governed by Larry the Cable Guy’s motto “Git ‘er done!”)
Political and other strategies of opposition, it seems to me, can only succeed where there is both a present and a long-range change of success. Thus, there is great truth in the cliché “winning the battle but losing the war.” If the decision for recognition of Palestinian statehood fails in September, some analysts-American Jews, Israelis, and even Palestinians-have already begun to weigh in that a negative vote has negative consequences, up to and including violent backlashes against Israel.
Would not a more prudent, savvy, and public strategy on the part of the American Zionist organizations-including AIPAC, ADL, etc.-and the American Jewish community, as well as M’dinat Yisrael, even under Netanyahu’s leadership, be to fully endorse and support the Palestinian dream of statehood and work together to make that dream a reality? And, using that commitment not as a bargaining chip to get both parties back to the negotiating table, but, realistically and honestly-and, again, quite publicly both here in the US and internationally-professing the commitment to do everything possible to make it happen.
If it fails now, I have little doubt that it will surface again (and possibly again and again) in the not-too-distant future. And Herzl’s own mantra Im tirtzu, ayn zo aggada (“If you will it, it will not [only] remain a dream.”) echoes in my head-as it must have David Ben-Gurion’s on that fateful day of May 14, 1948.
–August 1, 2011
Steven Leonard Jacobs, DHL, DD
Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies
The University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
