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A Mistake of Prof Neumann My good friend Prof Michael Neumann, author of the witty essay on antisemitism, and a friend of Palestine, wrote a piece [1] calling for creation of two states in Palestine with a view of their unification in a somewhat distant future. He embraced the mainstream thinking of the Jewish Left, for these good people usually call for exactly that. Nobody minds a declaration in support of One State, if it is well postponed, especially if it is linked to an implausible event of total Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Prof Neumann stresses he is led by his compassion to the Palestinians who suffer under occupation, not by a usual Jewish strategy of dragging feet when it comes to paying (We Israelis are aware of this habit of our brethren as in our country a person who pays on time is considered a sucker). Neumann writes: Strategy Our work is to translate Palestinian rights into strategies, in Neumann's words. But a strategy for what? There is no strategy that would allow us to win over Israeli elites, bar strategy of surrender. Our friend Haim Baram wrote recently[2] in Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha-Ir that they won't yield as long as they have the American support. But the American elites are partly Jewish, partly convinced that the Jews hold the key to power in the US. Can we find a strategy to win them over? The US Jews can't be persuaded to change their mind. View the results of a recent national Jewish public opinion survey in the US[3]: - Eighty-six percent of American Jews feel close to Israel; eighty-five percent of American Jews supports Israel in the ongoing conflict, and one percent supports the Palestinians. The survey proves that our wonderful Jewish friends of Palestine in the US represent roughly one per cent of the US Jews, or in plain words represent nothing. Some of them are crypto-Zionists providing alibi for the Jews and bringing disarray into our lines. Some of them are good and sincere people, great fighters for the cause of equality, like Jeff Blankfort or Ronald Bleier and many others. All of them are removed from positions of power and are rightly disregarded by power-seeking American elites as representing no one but goodness of their hearts. The survey indicates we should stop dallying for Jewish support and look for a strategy to win over the American - and the world - non-Jewish public opinion. We have a winning strategy in our fight for the world public opinion, and it is anti-racist paradigm of equality in Palestine, 'one-state ' for short. There is no valid non-racist defence against this strategy. If it is not sufficiently inspiring for egotistic Americans, we may point out the unjust nature of the excessive Jewish power in the US. It is not only universities and media, where the top positions are taken by Jews while discriminating members of all other US communities. It is general misbalance of income, as well. A new national study [4] by Lisa Keister, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University, says that an average Jew has three times more wealth than the much-maligned WASP, and six times more wealth than a despised Redneck. Just one percent of the Jews remain poor, says Keister. Thus, the picture of the US Jew as a wealthy supporter of genocide in Palestine is not a figment of imagination but a statistically verifiable sociological phenomenon. Our struggle for equality of Jew and non-Jew in Palestine meshes perfectly with the same struggle in the US. An average Jew should not be richer or more powerful or more influential than an average non-Jew, in Palestine, the US or Russia. This universal message fits nicely with the concept of one state. Tactically speaking, 'two-states' (or even 'let us start from two-states') approach works against urgency of our case, for it reduces our problem to independence-seeking, and places Palestinians on the same level as Corsicans in France and Basques in Spain. Secondly, this approach leads us into quagmire of border negotiations, autonomy, settlers' rights, rights in Jerusalem etc. Dear Michael, we've been to this movie already. Just now there is a spate of articles in the mainstream press calling for dismantling of the Jewish state. Let us mention recent article in the LA Times and in the New York Review of Books (October 10, 2003) by Tony Judt, 'Jewish State' Has Become an Anachronism. When I made this call two years ago, it shocked everybody, including the friends of Palestine. But now the idea entered the mainstream discourse, and it has to be promoted. In this situation, Michael Neumann's call for 'two states at first' has become an anachronism as well. [1] http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann10082003.html [2] Kol Ha-Ir 10.10.03 or see http://meionline.com/newsanalysis/148.shtml - his piece in English presenting a similar approach. [3] 08-06-2002; US Newswire. The survey carried out July 11-21 by Stanley B. Greenberg, Ph.D. of Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research Inc. for the American Jewish Committee, one of the largest public opinion research projects ever carried out in the U.S. to gauge attitudes towards Israel. It was done in conjunction with a new strategic team, focusing on how Americans view Israel, which includes Greenberg, Democratic strategist Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, and Republican pollsters Frank Luntz, Ph.D. and Neil Newhouse. The American Jewish Committee is taking a leading role in this effort. [4] http://www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/relgwlth.htm
Israel Shamir's web site is at: http://www.israelshamir.net |