As Israeli bulldozers demolish the Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem to make way for Jews-only apartments funded by the American Zionist, Irving Moskowitz, a retired casino magnate who lives in Miami Beach, Jeffrey Goldberg writes:
Peace will not come without the birth of a Palestinian state on the West Bank which has its capital in East Jerusalem. I’m as sure of that as I am of anything in the Middle East. Of course, peace may not come even with the birth of this state — I’m no longer quite so sure in the possiblity, or at least in the availability, of peace — but it will surely never happen without it. This is why, of course, certain right-wing Jewish groups, aided and abetted by different factions in Israel’s chaotic government, are seeking to populate East Jerusalem with Jews: to prevent the birth of a Palestinian state. These particular Jews operate under the delusion that Israel can keep control of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem forever, and most of the West Bank forever, without negative consequences. They are drastically wrong. Eventually, something is going to give. At a certain point in the not-so-distant future, Israel will either cease to be a Jewish state, or it will cease to be a democracy. Attempts to abort the birth of a Palestinian state only hasten this moment of decision.
Israel will survive without the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. It will not survive if it becomes a pariah state, and, in this unfortunate world in which we must exist, Israel is in danger of becoming an outcast among nations.
When referring to “this unfortunate world in which we must exist,” Goldberg seems to be saying that Israel must reconcile itself to the fact that it cannot effectively divorce itself from the rest of the world — as if to say, if Israel could separate itself from the rest of the world and survive, then such a divorce would be desirable — as if in its dealings with “this unfortunate world” Israel necessarily succumbs to some of the world’s polluting influence.
The idea that Israel might benefit — not merely survive — through improving its relations with others, doesn’t come into the picture.
Meanwhile, your tax$$ are hard at work to de-Jewify America and Jewify Israel
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/01/10/2742490/israel-to-increase-support-for-birthright-if-jewish-philanthropist-increase-theirs
Zionism has become an absurd notion, given that Diaspora Jews have voted with their roots. It seems that all the money they send to Israel means nothing unless they send their kids to Israel to be propagandized with Zionazi hasbara– by he grace of YOUR tax$$$.
If American Jews are beginning to understand this, then why do they continue to support Israel’s decline into a fascist state? Why do they waste treasure on a lost cause? Is it because they have the resources to do so? Madness seems to run in tandem between the U.S. & Israel today. Neither one seems to be able to tell the forest from the trees.
I stayed at the Shepherd in ’78 when I visited Palestine from Jordan and had some good conversations with the then owner. So, it must have now been sold and the oasis between Jebel Zeitun and Mount Scopus is no longer. I remember the lemon trees, the fruit of which helped my child with her cold. I remember the funny stories about the UN experience in South Lebanon. I remember the kindness after being roughed up at Allenby. We move on. It’s a pity the old patchwork quilt of the Middle East has become unravelled, not only in Israel, but also in the Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Some people regard it as progress. I think it was better when we all rubbed shoulders together. Now we have lost both our innocence and learning and have pledged our future to the hands of immoderate, hard men. We have inherited fear. Goodbye Shepherd.
Israel is already a pariah state—there’s no ‘becoming’ necessary.
I was trying to explain the zionism of the Jews to someone the other day who doesn’t understand it and can’t figure them out.
The closest I could come to describing something like zionism that is ‘currently real’ but was created out of ‘myth’ — was to suggest he imagine the readers of The Wizard of Oz deciding that the Land of Oz was actually the real world and moving into it.