Britain’s TheJC.com reports:
One of British Jewry’s most senior leaders this week shattered a longstanding taboo by publicly criticising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the peace process, voicing moral reservations about some of Israel’s policies, and calling for criticism of Israel to be voiced freely throughout the community.
Mick Davis, chairman of both the UJIA and the executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, also warned that unless there were a two-state solution with the Palestinians, Israel risked becoming an apartheid state.
As news of his views, aired at a meeting in London on Saturday night, began to ripple around the Jewish community, other leaders backed his stance, although it also drew criticism.
[…]
He said that if the world community were to lose hope in the possibility of a two-state solution, then demographics would eventually cause Israel to become an apartheid state “because we then have the majority going to be governed by the minority”.Mr Davis was appearing in a discussion with Peter Beinart, author of a recent essay critical of America’s Zionist leaders which sparked widespread debate overseas.
Now it’s out in the open, there are those in the Jewish Community who disapprove of the present direction that Israeli leaders have taken. The cracks are growing, starting in Israel itself, spreading to here in the U.S., now in Britain. The nonsense that it’s taboo to criticize, is just a recipe for allowing the demigods free reign, to do as they conjure up. I have trouble understanding how an ethnic race of people, one that was persecuted as the Jews were by the Nazi’s, can then embrace the very same tactics upon another ethnic race, trying to convince the World that they are any different?
It’s about bloody time.
The article continues: “Leaders wanted openly to address moral dilemmas over settlement building, or a “repugnant” loyalty oath for non-Jewish immigrants, he said. But they felt constrained by the fear of giving ammunition to enemies of Israel who sought to delegitimise the state.”
Well, if he is referring to the BDS movement, “enemies of Israel” might better have been written “angry victims of Israel” and “delegitimise” might better have been written as “end the occupation and/or end the illegalities of the occupation.”
Jews and other supporters of Israel have been placed in an increasingly unpleasant position (unpleasant, that is, for people normally supportive of the rule of law and of human rights) in recent years (43 years since 1967) by Israel’s decision to proceed in open and contumacious defiance of international law, especially in settling occupied territories (the expropriation of land is illegal and the moving of settlers from Israel into occupied territories is illegal and the building of the wall is illegal: read UNSC-465 (1980) and ICJ (9 July 2004).
The recent efflorescence of hooliganism by settlers in the West Bank — the burning and cutting down of olive groves, the shooting and sometimes killing of Palestinians living under occupation — begins to take on the aspect of state-sponsored pogroms, as the state (Israel) not only permits and encourages illegal settlement but directs or permits its army and police to protect settlers from Palestinians but not vice-versa, in further contravention of international humanitarian law. In so many ways, Israel is contriving to recreate the broad panorama of human rights violations which can remind Jews and others of nothing so much as the 1930s in Ge3rmany.
No wonder British Zionists are beginning to cringe and speak out. Good for them — it cannot have been easy. I hope the chief speakers retain their jobs and continue to speak out, ever more forcefully.
Bring it on… keep the momentum going.
pabelmont – None of that could happen without the support of the US, who, itself, has no regard for international law: invasions of Granada, Panama, blockade of Cuba (blockade is an act of war), invasion of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, now forays into Pakistan.
Abraham Lincoln was strongly against presidents leading the country into war (see his letter to William Herndon, part of which appears in my blog here: http://seamusobannion.blogspot.com/2010/11/democracy-and-funding-fathers-post-for.html
The Constitution gives congress the right to declare war, and Lincoln strongly supported that clause. He cited the example of kings who bankrupted their kingdoms with their endless wars. Hmm…. The more things change, the more they stay the same.