Single-Nation States and Modern Values

Ziontruth

In Mike’s thread The Integration of Arab Israelis I made two comments that some readers might find disturbing. However, Mike’s done a great job in setting up this blog as a forum for discussion of topics that are usually taboo elsewhere, so, rather than leave those comments as they are and move on, I decided to bring my ideas about national politics that inform those comments up for debate.

I wish to begin with a list of terms that feature regularly on discussion of national and often international politics. Those terms are: Hatred, xenophobia, prejudice, bigotry, racism, apartheid and genocide. In the spectrum of political views, supremacists on both Left and Right differ from normal, decent people on both Left and Right as to how they relate to those terms.

Supremacists nurture those feelings for so much as it takes until their total-minded goals are fulfilled. White, black, Hispanic and Islamic supremacists alike have a certain group or number of groups whom they view as devils to be totally stamped out, and in order to convert that belief into the critical mass required of a viable political movement, they have to stoke the flames of hatred against those assigned devils. Gratuitous hatred is their modus operandi: If there is little cause for hatred, inflate it beyond all proportion; if there is no cause at all, invent a pretext from scratch.

I assume we’re all decent people here, no matter our political leaning. Decent people may harbor those feelings listed, but not out of premeditated intent to harbor them; when they do, it usually has to do with some cause, real or perceived, and when that cause is dealt with, those feelings vanish. Decent people believe such emotions are bad and need to be treated before they go out of control. The various decent people differ only in the ways they think this can be done.

One way advocated for dealing with bigotry and related emotions is education, education and more education. Myself, I think education holds good for some cases but not all. For example, I think education is the preferred way for, say, dealing with prejudice toward Jews of Ethiopian extraction in Israel. The reason I think so is because there’s a significant common ground between them and the rest of the Israeli Jewish populace: Belonging to the same nation, the Jewish nation. But I don’t extend that belief to the Arab minority in Israel, because here there’s no common ground that education can build upon. It’s not that I think the hatred of Israeli Jews toward Arabs is a good thing that must be nurtured—that would make me a supremacist, which I’m not—but I think it should be treated differently than the former example of bigotry I’ve given.

I hold that the ill-feeling of the majority population toward a minority of people belonging to another nation on their soil is a result of insecurity, and that its solution is by bringing the nation back to its position of self-security. In nation-states like modern Japan (not interbellum and WWII Japan, which was dominated by supremacism), the listed charged emotions that are so prevalent in, for instance, the nation-states of Western Europe are absent because Japan is homogeneous, not having brought on itself the problems inherent in accommodating substantial national minorities. The Japanese are self-secure in their national space, so xenophobia doesn’t arise in the first place.

My view has been shaped by a long time reading on the situation elsewhere in the world. No matter what reason the masses of immigrants have been invited for in the first place, today a great strain is brought upon the indigenous populations because of the various degrees of Lebanonization this has resulted in: Politics become sectarian, with people voting according to their parochial groupings instead of the issues, and the politicians naturally pander to those sects. In the workplace, the majority, pre-immigration population is frustrated to find employers hire according to checkboxes to be filled (racial quotas, usually), instead of hiring the best person for the job. Add the imperialistic element of Islamic immigration to the mix, where the intention is to colonize and adapt the host society to the immigrants instead of the other way round, and society is bound for the perfect storm.

I believe the various nation-states of the world were better off when they were comprised of a single nation. Note, however, that my belief has nothing to do with race. I’m not saying this to be politically correct; as an Orthodox Jewish believer, a race-agnostic worldview that looks at world history as the history of nations rather than races is obligatory for me. In fact, even the political parties usually associated with a racialist view are not and cannot be predicated wholly on race, because race itself is not enough to make a nation, otherwise Polish immigrants to Britain could be considered British from the get-go; similarly, the many black nations in Africa are different nations despite being of the same race. And the Jewish nation is not defined by race at all, much to the chagrin of anti-Zionists who think the debunked Khazar Hypothesis puts paid to the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel.

I hold that, for example, the hatred the indigenous French harbor toward North African immigrants could be totally defused if the latter were brought back to their countries of origin, thereby making the indigenous French self-secure and therefore having no cause for hatred. But I’m not really saying it for the sake of telling the French what to do—it’s because I wish to pre-empt the accusation that I’m pleading specially for the case of a Jewish nation. No, I believe all real nations have the right to self-security in a nation-state exclusive to them. And, in the Jewish case, I believe that the hatred between Jews and Arabs could be defused if—I know it’s a very big “if,” but that’s reality—the Arabs let go of their supremacism that denies the Jewish nation’s right to a state on their indigenous territory, and if the Jews are guaranteed self-security by having their state exclusively to themselves.

By maintaining the self-security of nation in its state (a view that I call “The State As Its Nation’s Castle”) the ills of bigotry, xenophobia, apartheid and genocide can be prevented from taking hold in the first place. As such, I consider my view far more in line with modern and, dare I say it, progressive values than the naïve utopianism that education is all it takes to bring peace for all human beings. I espouse a vision that could minimize hatred and strife through sensible state-politics.

There are two major objections I can think of:

1. Nation-states like the United States of America and Switzerland do not fit this model.
2. Blaming hatred on the insecurity of the majority populace would imply that the pogroms against the Jews in the Diaspora were all justified.

I agree with the first objection, but I argue that its significance is small because such nation-states are anomalies. The proposition nation model where various national groups coalesce on a certain territory to form a nation can work, but only if it is organic, as in the cases of the U.S.A. and Switzerland; most nation-states, including Israel, have the nation coming first and then the territory, and as a consequence, artificially retrofitting the propositional model onto them is courting disaster.

As for the second objection, it ignores the fact that the Jewish nation, like the Druze nation, is exceptional in having a doctrine of being perpetual guests while on other nation’s lands and therefore not threatening the self-security of the indigenous populations. At any rate, the fate of the Jews only proves the necessity of a single-nation state where the nation is self-secure; after all, serious thoughts about the renewal of Jewish nationalism started in the 17th century in both Polish and Yemenite Diasporas following unprecedented catastrophes that made the Jews think that perhaps enough was enough.

I’m bracing for the possibility that this post is going to be controversial. In my defense I’ll say that my ideas aren’t political incorrectness for its own sake, as if I were trying to look like a “rebellious counterculture” or stuff like that. I believe a lot of people in the world are warming up to what is a common-sense vision that is far more consistent with modern values and liberal precepts than the unrealistic and strife-prone politically correct ideas. I hold that single-nation states are the wave of the future, because nations that do not adopt that model will not survive. With the exception of a Druze minority, Israel like any other nation-state had best be exclusive to the Jews, no matter what its borders are going to be, in order to ensure the Jews’ self-security that is the first step in enabling peace with the Arab nation.

Should Israel Take Out Hamas?

Mike L.

The snippet that I respond to below was written by Jerusalem Post staff:

Israel should seriously consider the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rocket fire on the western Negev, former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman told Israel Radio on Monday.

Liberman, who currently heads the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that if Israel were to allow the status quo to persist, Hamas would amass a fleet of aircraft and missiles that would threaten populous coastal towns like Tel Aviv and Netanya.

"Hamas has no intention of reconciling with a Jewish presence in Israel," the chairman of the Yisrael Beytenu party said. "So we need to return to the Gaza Strip and conduct a thorough cleaning."

When asked if his position was supported by the prime minister and defense minister, Liberman said he did not know.

It is exceedingly late as I write this, so I intend to keep my comments brief.

Hamas has got to go.

Hamas does not just call for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish State, but calls for the genocide of the Jews quite specifically in its charter.

This makes them something akin to Nazis - who we know they have an historical connection to - and this means that they lose their right to exist as an organized group.

I do not know that Israel should take the hideous Gaza Strip, but there is no question in my mind that Hamas needs to be dismantled.

This organization is no better than the Ku Klux Klan and absolutely must go - by any means necessary.

The lovely "Progressive" Volleyboy, and a note to fizziks. (Revised)

by oldschooltwentysix

I apologize for this, and may even delete this post, but as more people read here than there, it is sometimes good to get facts out so more people will know who they are actually dealing with.

Just look how this "progressive" speaks about others:

volleyboy1 June 23, 2013 at 2:23 PM
This is for oldschool and his last comment:

"The Headmaster" - shut up, you worthless bigoted piece of shit.

Go take a fucking hike oldschool - You. Are. DELETED

Go back to that shithole that you call home.

Apparently, the place I call "home" is this web site. It is far from perfect here, but it contains far more diversity of opinion and respect than seen by the comment above, and far less hateful comments, from the "headmaster" no less, who creates an environment of intolerance absent agreement, in the name of "tolerance" no less.

You see, I called him the "headmaster" of his site! How terrible! I said I believed the "headmaster" was quick to label ALL conservatives as members of the "Far Right" and to use other pejoratives to question the sanity and good faith of people that differed from his perspective of politics. As seen by his behavior, here an exercise of pure venom, the perspective adopts a bias and skewed, Organizing for Action, take no prisoners approach, the bane for people who actually want to serve democracy and the public interest, no matter who the actor happens to be.

My original comments to fizziks' post were censored, of course. I suspect in the name of "progressivism." But it is progressivism, authoritarian style, with a dose of cowardice included, by a thin-skinned pretender. It's a scary thought to imagine if a person like this actually had authority.

And to fizziks: How would you define my comments to you? How would you define the comment above and the behavior attached? Do you believe the censorship is justified in this case? More importantly, why are you, a self-defined liberal, hanging with someone who acts like an intolerant, demeaning, petty dictator whenever it suits him? Is this how you define being liberal? Or is it closer to that fringe element you mentioned when it comes to the manner of discourse and hate toward others?

I suggest you are posting in the wrong place.

Smaug’s Hoard

Ziontruth

“Dragons may not have much real use for all their wealth, but they know it to an ounce as a rule, especially after long possession; and Smaug was no exception.”

– The Hobbit

They have always longed for Palestine. They have always regarded the Dome of the Rock in utmost sanctity, falling only below that of Mecca and Medina. They have striven to protect what is dear to their hearts just anyone would have done so in the face of being dispossessed and desecrated. Or so we have been told for years, and continue to be told day after day.

The reality is different. Neither Palestine as a distinct land nor the gilded mosque atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem had been special until relatively recent political expediency made them so. A color photograph taken in the 1950s, when the kingdom of Transjordan had full custody of the Temple Mount and made sure no Jew could “desecrate” the mosque by his presence, shows the state of the building so sacred to the Muslims:

Photo of the Dome of the Rock taken in the 1950s. Click to enlarge. (Hat tip to Elder of Ziyon)

With the dome not yet gilded, and some of its tiling chipped by neglect, and the floor nearby overgrown with weeds, this does not speak much of the sanctity and precious value attached to the Dome of the Rock.

Only twice in history did the Muslim world attach special importance to Jerusalem: During the Crusades, and following the Six-Day War in 1967. At the time of the Crusades there was a genre of Islamic poetry called “Praises of Jerusalem”; in the early 14th century, the scholar Ibn Taymiyyah lashed out against that genre of poetry, castigating it as bordering on idolatry—clearly, Al Quds was now safe enough that Muslims could go back to forgetting about it.

Speaking of “Al Quds”: If the name, related to Hebrew qodesh “holiness,” seems to imply a high value accorded to the city by Islam, keep in mind that the first Arabic coins from after the Islamic conquest in the 7th and 8th centuries have the name “Iliya” on the name for Jerusalem. Aelia Capitolina, the name given to the city by Hadrian after the Bar Kochba Revolt. The name of the land too was taken by the Arabs as neither Israel nor Judea, but Falastin, from Hadrian’s Palaestina. And it was but a sub-province until 1920.

“Thieves! Fire! Murder! Such a thing had not happened since first he came to the Mountain! His rage passes description – the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.”

– The Hobbit

There was no separate “Palestine” in Arab or Islamic consciousness before 1920; it was nothing but the southern sub-division of the province of Al Sham, or “Greater Syria.” Following World War One, King Faisal wanted to be the ruler of Arab Greater Syria, not just of its southern part of Palestine plus Transjordan (torn from British Mandate Palestine in 1922) or the nothern part of modern-day Syria and Lebanon; the original Nakba, or Catastrophe, was when Britain and France implemented the Sykes-Picot Agreement by splitting Greater Syria among themselves, driving Faisal out in the process. Only then did Palestine become a cause for the Arab and Muslim world in its own right.

And yet even now, Falastin is no more special a case than Al Andalus (former Islamic-ruled Spain). Its inflated value today lies in being a propaganda bonanza: Where Arab and Islamic imperialists can disguise their ambition to steal the land and nation-state from the Jews as “resistance of an oppressed stateless nation,” and their Far Leftist allies can recast their inexcusable support of Arab/Islamic imperialist aggression against an indigenous people—the Jews, the only true indigenous Palestinians—as support for “the struggle against Western colonialism.” This is why you hear about Palestine so much today.

The lies are relentless, but the truth must be told nonetheless, as far as we can: That the Arab nation or Islamic global community is like Smaug the dragon in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, a rich miser sitting uselessly on a pile of gold (huge masses of land), according value to it only once it is under threat. This rich man, possessor of many vineyards and countless flocks of sheep, has had his eye on the single vineyard and one sheep of the Jewish nation. Faced with a world that rightly frowns upon such greed and injustice, he has thought up a plan: That his son Falastin shall be dressed in poor man’s clothing, then spread the news to world of how the Jew has made constant attempts to steal Falastin’s single vineyard and one sheep, to a sympathizing world that will now take Falastin’s story to heart and revile the Jew for being such a thief and oppressor.

But the truth remains the truth, that Falastin is nothing but the rich Arab landowner’s son, and that behind this conflict there is nothing but the unjust desire of the rich man to appropriate the little that the Jew has to himself. The Jews alone have accorded value to Palestine in particular and to Jerusalem throughout all ages; they alone have a real, objective connection to them through their unique, unbroken cultural ties, preserved in centuries from afar. Zionism is justice for a nation on its own land; anti-Zionism is injustice, greed, theft, robbery, vandalism, denialism and oppression all aimed at that nation, perpetrated by those who are in no shortage. The historical facts speak for themselves.

Israeli Declaration of Independence

Mike L.

Well, looking out my office window I can see that the sun is beginning to set on Friday evening here on the west coast of the United States.

Here is the text from 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708):

The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world. Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.

Impelled by this historic association, Jews strove throughout the centuries to go back to the land of their fathers and regain their statehood. In recent decades they returned in masses. They reclaimed the wilderness, revived their language, built cities and villages and established a vigorous and ever-growing community with its own economic and cultural life. They sought peace yet were ever prepared to defend themselves. They brought the blessing of progress to all inhabitants of the country.

In the year 1897 the First Zionist Congress, inspired by Theodor Herzl's vision of the Jewish State, proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national revival in their own country.

This right was acknowledged by the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, and re-affirmed by the Mandate of the League of Nations, which gave explicit international recognition to the historic connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and their right to reconstitute their National Home.

The Nazi Holocaust, which engulfed millions of Jews in Europe, proved anew the urgency of the re-establishment of the Jewish state, which would solve the problem of Jewish homelessness by opening the gates to all Jews and lifting the Jewish people to equality in in the family of nations.

The survivors of the European catastrophe, as well as Jews from other lands, proclaiming their right to a life of dignity, freedom and labor, and undeterred by hazards, hardships and obstacles, have tried unceasingly to enter Palestine.

In the Second World War the Jewish people in Palestine made a full contribution in the struggle of the freedom-loving nations against the Nazi evil. The sacrifices of their soldiers and the efforts of their workers gained them title to rank with the peoples who founded the United Nations.

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a Resolution for the establishment of an independent Jewish State in Palestine, and called upon the inhabitants of the country to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put the plan into effect.

This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their independent State may not be revoked. It is, moreover, the self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign State.

ACCORDINGLY, WE, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the Zionist movement of the world, met together in solemn assembly today, the day of the termination of the British mandate for Palestine, by virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish and of the Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations,

HEREBY PROCLAIM the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called ISRAEL.

WE HEREBY DECLARE that as from the termination of the Mandate at midnight, this night of the 14th and 15th May, 1948, and until the setting up of the duly elected bodies of the State in accordance with a Constitution, to be drawn up by a Constituent Assembly not later than the first day of October, 1948, the present National Council shall act as the provisional administration, shall constitute the Provisional Government of the State of Israel.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be ready to cooperate with the organs and representatives of the United Nations in the implementation of the Resolution of the Assembly of November 29, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the Economic Union over the whole of Palestine.

We appeal to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building of its State and to admit Israel into the family of nations.

In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to return to the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, with full and equal citizenship and due representation in its bodies and institutions - provisional or permanent.

We offer peace and unity to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.

Our call goes out the the Jewish people all over the world to rally to our side in the task of immigration and development and to stand by us in the great struggle for the fulfillment of the dream of generations - the redemption of Israel.

With trust in Almighty God, we set our hand to this Declaration, at this Session of the Provisional State Council, in the city of Tel Aviv, on this Sabbath eve, the fifth of Iyar, 5708, the fourteenth day of May, 1948.

It's been awhile since I have considered this document, but I am happy to look at it again.

Good Sabbath.