Saturday, January 14, 2017

Hatem Bazian Calls for the Elimination of Israel

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

Hatem Bazian backed by supporters
Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian-Arab instructor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is calling for the elimination of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

In a recent blog post entitled, Trump’s Appointment of David Friedman is the Official End of Oslo, Bazian argues that because President-Elect Donald Trump appointed David Friedman the incoming U.S. ambassador to Israel this means that the "peace process" is concluded and that, therefore, Israel has no right to exist as the Jewish state.

Let us see how he gets from point A to point B.

In his opening remarks Bazian claims:
Trump’s appointment of David M. Friedman as the new ambassador to Israel brings an end to 70 years of U.S. official policy on Palestine centered on U.N. resolutions 181, 242 and 338 with a two-state solution as the final outcome.
Other than as an implied fallacious "last straw" argument, just how he draws this conclusion from Trump's appointment of Friedman remains unexplained. While Bazian is correct that the two-state solution is a corpse, it was neither Trump, nor Friedman, who killed it. In truth it was still-born upon conception for the simple reason that the Palestinian-Arabs, as an irrational religious imperative, never had the slightest intention of accepting a state for themselves in peace next to Israel to begin with.

Upon arbitrarily deciding that Friedman's appointment means the end of the so-called "peace process," Bazian then insists that people everywhere should therefore "call for Israel’s annexation and demand one person, one vote rather than allow Apartheid to masquerade as democracy."

Just how Bazian came to believe that he is in any position to demand anything from anyone, much less his Jewish enemies, is hard to imagine. Nonetheless, by "annexation" he presumably means the potential Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria. If so, Bazian is one of those academic anti-Zionists nurturing the hope that Israel can be defeated via demographics.

Many Israelis and diaspora Jews wish to see Israel annex the ancient heart of the Jewish homeland. Bazian wishes for this, as well, with the anticipation that the hostile Arab majority could then force its will upon the Jewish minority within the Middle East. Just as for thirteen hundred long years, from the rise of Muhammad to the demise of the Ottoman Empire, Muslims held non-Muslims as slaves and dhimmis, so Bazian hopes to see a return of Muslim domination to the Holy Land.

Although subjugating non-Muslims is integral to Islam, Bazian should however be careful what he wishes for.

If Israel annexes Judea and Samaria it will remain a majority Jewish democracy. This is true for a number of simple reasons. The first is that the Palestinian Authority habitually inflates the numbers of Arabs living in Areas A and B and it is, therefore, highly questionable whether Israel would become a majority Arab country in the future. Furthermore, despite popular opinion otherwise, the birthrate among Palestinian-Arabs is declining while the birthrate among Jews is increasing.

More importantly, of course, Israel is under no suicidal obligation to offer citizenship to enemies of the Jewish people or the Jewish state. If Israel does annex Judea and Samaria it will likely institute pathways to citizenship for those Arabs with no political-religious agenda that involves either the murder or subjugation of the Jewish people. This is to say that Jihadis, terrorists, and anti-Semitic anti-Zionists will probably not be eligible to participate in the political life of the country, if they are permitted to remain in the country at all.

In order to determine eligibility for citizenship, Israel could easily institute a two or three year national service requirement with political enfranchisement dependent upon the demonstrated good-will of the individual Arab. Those who demonstrate a true desire for good citizenship within the Jewish state will be allowed citizenship. Those who do not, will not.

However, let's give Bazian the benefit of the doubt and assume that what he really wants is what is good for everyone in that part of the world. In this case, Bazian is telling the Jewish people that despite Jewish history under the brutality of Islam they are under a moral obligation to hope that a Bazian-style single-state will emerge that will not trample their well-being and civil liberties.

Now, how is that for a roll of the dice?

Bazian would have the Jewish people dependent upon the goodwill of Palestinian-Arabs in an Arab-dominated state. Does he honestly expect that after centuries of dhimmitude and theocratically-based Arab aggression it makes sense for the Jewish people to gamble the very lives of their children on Arab-Muslim hospitality?

The notion is ridiculous on its face and the great majority of Jewish people will have none of it.

15 comments:

  1. "Hatem Bazian - de colonial Islamic Thinker"

    Which Islamic settlements is he thinking of de-colonizing?

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    1. You should email him and ask.

      That would be terrific!

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    2. The name "Palestine" itself is colonial.

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    3. And the thing of it is, it is very easy to point out that Arabs colonized the Jewish homeland many centuries after Jerusalem had established itself as the capital city of the Jewish nation.

      Yet we're always playing on Palestinian-Arab turf when we discuss matters with westerners, including most Jewish Americans. It's long past time to move from honoring "narratives" to discussing the actual history of the conflict.

      Jews and Christians lived as dhimmis under Arab imperial rule for 13 long centuries and we need to place our discussions on Israel within that context.

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    4. If Jews had the oil....different story.

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    5. Jews poisoned Muhammad (PBUH) with arsenic, and Einstein was a muslim.

      Delete
  2. Imagine the furor if Israel ever decided to have a space program!

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    1. Interesting physics fact. Israel is the only country in the world forced to launch objects into an equatorial orbit from East to West. They pay a big penalty in launch energy and payload to orbit in doing so. Every other country that launches objects into an equatorial orbit launches West to East because of the assist they get from the rotation of the earth. East-West launches are typically used for polar orbits

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  3. I wonder what would happen if his classes were routinely interrupted with noise, protests, barring the doors, air horns, shouting him and his class down and posting all their personal information publicly on line?

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    1. National news.

      More evidence of how Big Daddy has set loose the American wolverines of fascism.

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  4. If it ends in water cannons and tear gas, then what they call it is immaterial. All the people screaming for 'revolution' are the least prepared for when it occurs. They call me/us terrorists? ok, we're terrorists. Now let's terrorize them.

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  5. re: your latest video offering.

    Denial is a country called Sweden.

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    Replies
    1. I remain perpetually amazed that our friends on the left absolutely refuse to open their eyes to the absolutely fantastic immigration policy failure of the EU.

      I've tended to argue that it's a result of ideological blindness, but now I am beginning to realize that this is too charitable.

      It's about allowing political tribalism to dictate the boundaries of thought.

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    2. After watching "Stockholm Syndrome" and the "best hamburger" video from the Democratic convention and hearing and comparing the comments by the interviewees at the end of each, I would certainly have to agree with you.

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  6. I have heard this man speak three times. He is a dissembler and an anti-Semite. This is the man who in 2004 called for an intifada in America. This is the man who reportedly once quoted that famous hadith that on the Day of Judgment, the Jew would hide behind the tree and the tree would call out, "O Muslim. There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him". This is the man who reportedly told a college audience to go and count the number of buildings with Jewish names on them. And he has the effrontery to establish an Islamophobia Research and Documentation Center at UC Berkeley.

    Once when he came to speak at UC Irvine, I confronted him with the above three statements and asked if he really said them. He danced all around the questions repeatedly and never did give a straight answer.

    Our universities are full of rotten academics, but this clown takes the cake.

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