Israel's Right To Be Racist

By Joseph Massad

17 March, 2007
Al Ahram

Israel's struggle for peace is a sincere one. In fact, Israel desires 
to live at peace not only with its neighbours, but also and especially 
with its own Palestinian population, and with Palestinians whose lands 
its military occupies by force. Israel's desire for peace is not only 
rhetorical but also substantive and deeply psychological. With few 
exceptions, prominent Zionist leaders since the inception of colonial 
Zionism have desired to establish peace with the Palestinians and other 
Arabs whose lands they slated for colonisation and settlement. The only 
thing Israel has asked for, and continues to ask for in order to end 
the state of war with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours, is that 
all recognise its right to be a racist state that discriminates by law 
against Palestinians and other Arabs and grants differential legal 
rights and privileges to its own Jewish citizens and to all other Jews 
anywhere. The resistance that the Palestinian people and other Arabs 
have launched against Israel's right to be a racist state is what 
continues to stand between Israel and the peace for which it has 
struggled and to which it has been committed for decades. Indeed, this 
resistance is nothing less than the "New anti- Semitism".

Israel is willing to do anything to convince Palestinians and other 
Arabs of why it needs and deserves to have the right to be racist. Even 
at the level of theory, and before it began to realise itself on the 
ground, the Zionist colonial project sought different means by which it 
could convince the people whose lands it wanted to steal and against 
whom it wanted to discriminate to accept as understandable its need to 
be racist. All it required was that the Palestinians "recognise its 
right to exist" as a racist state. Military methods were by no means 
the only persuasive tools available; there were others, including 
economic and cultural incentives. Zionism from the start offered some 
Palestinians financial benefits if they would accede to its demand that 
it should have the right to be racist. Indeed, the State of Israel 
still does. Many Palestinian officials in the Palestinian Authority and 
the Palestine Liberation Organisation have been offered and have 
accepted numerous financial incentives to recognise this crucial 
Israeli need. Those among the Palestinians who regrettably continue to 
resist are being penalised for their intransigence by economic choking 
and starvation, supplemented by regular bombardment and raids, as well 
as international isolation. These persuasive methods, Israel hopes, 
will finally convince a recalcitrant population to recognise the dire 
need of Israel to be a racist state. After all, Israeli racism only 
manifests in its flag, its national anthem, and a bunch of laws that 
are necessary to safeguard Jewish privilege, including the Law of 
Return (1950), the Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of the 
State's Property (1951), the Law of Citizenship (1952), the Status Law 
(1952), the Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), the Construction 
and Building Law (1965), and the 2002 temporary law banning marriage 
between Israelis and Palestinians of the occupied territories.

Let us start with why Israel and Zionism need to ensure that Israel 
remains a racist state by law and why it deserves to have that right. 
The rationale is primarily threefold and is based on the following 
claims.

Jews are always in danger out in the wide world; only in a state that 
privileges them racially and religiously can they be safe from gentile 
oppression and can prosper. If Israel removed its racist laws and 
symbols and became a non-racist democratic state, Jews would cease to 
be a majority and would be like Diaspora Jews, a minority in a non-
Jewish state. These concerns are stated clearly by Israeli leaders 
individually and collectively. Shimon Peres, for example, the dove of 
official Israel, has been worried for some time about the Palestinian 
demographic "danger", as the Green Line, which separates Israel from 
the West Bank, is beginning to "disappear ... which may lead to the 
linking of the futures of West Bank Palestinians with Israeli Arabs". 
He hoped that the arrival of 100,000 Jews in Israel would postpone this 
demographic "danger" for 10 more years, as ultimately, he stressed, 
"demography will defeat geography".

In December 2000, the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Herzliya 
Interdisciplinary Centre in Israel held its first of a projected series 
of annual conferences dealing with the strength and security of Israel, 
especially with regards to maintaining Jewish demographic majority. 
Israel's president and current and former prime ministers and cabinet 
ministers were all in attendance. One of the "Main Points" identified 
in the 52-page conference report is concern over the numbers needed to 
maintain Jewish demographic and political supremacy of Israel: "The 
high birth rate [of 'Israeli Arabs'] brings into question the future of 
Israel as a Jewish state ... The present demographic trends, should 
they continue, challenge the future of Israel as a Jewish state. Israel 
has two alternative strategies: adaptation or containment. The latter 
requires a long-term energetic Zionist demographic policy whose 
political, economic, and educational effects would guarantee the Jewish 
character of Israel."

The report adds affirmatively that, "those who support the 
preservation of Israel's character as ... a Jewish state for the Jewish 
nation ... constitute a majority among the Jewish population in 
Israel." Of course, this means the maintenance of all the racist laws 
that guarantee the Jewish character of the state. Subsequent annual 
meetings have confirmed this commitment.

Jews are carriers of Western civilisation and constitute an Asian 
station defending both Western civilisation and economic and political 
interests against Oriental terrorism and barbarism. If Israel 
transformed itself into a non-racist state, then its Arab population 
would undermine the commitment to Western civilisation and its defence 
of the West's economic and political interests, and might perhaps 
transform Jews themselves into a Levantine barbaric population. Here is 
how Ben Gurion once put it: "We do not want Israelis to become Arabs. 
We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the Levant, which 
corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve the authentic Jewish 
values as they crystallised in the [European] Diaspora." Indeed Ben 
Gurion was clear on the Zionist role of defending these principles: "We 
are not Arabs, and others measure us by a different standard ... our 
instruments of war are different from those of the Arabs, and only our 
instruments can guarantee our victory." More recently, Israel's 
ambassador to Australia, Naftali Tamir, stressed that: "We are in Asia 
without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin and 
slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel 
are not -- we are basically the white race."

God has given this land to the Jews and told them to safeguard 
themselves against gentiles who hate them. To make Israel a non-Jewish 
state then would run the risk of challenging God Himself. This position 
is not only upheld by Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, but even by 
erstwhile secular Zionists (Jews and Christians alike). Ben Gurion 
himself understood, as does Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, that: "God 
promised it to us."

It is important to stress that this Zionist rationale is correct on 
all counts if one accepts the proposition of Jewish exceptionalism. 
Remember that Zionism and Israel are very careful not to generalise the 
principles that justify Israel's need to be racist but are rather 
vehement in upholding it as an exceptional principle. It is not that no 
other people has been oppressed historically, it is that Jews have been 
oppressed more. It is not that no other people's cultural and physical 
existence has been threatened; it is that the Jews' cultural and 
physical existence is threatened more. This quantitative equation is 
key to why the world, and especially Palestinians, should recognise 
that Israel needs and deserves to have the right to be a racist state. 
If the Palestinians, or anyone else, reject this, then they must be 
committed to the annihilation of the Jewish people physically and 
culturally, not to mention that they would be standing against the 
Judeo-Christian God.

It is true that Palestinian and Arab leaders were not easily persuaded 
of these special needs that Israel has; that it took decades of 
assiduous efforts on the part of Israel to convince them, especially 
through "military" means. In the last three decades they have shown 
signs of coming around. Though Anwar El-Sadat inaugurated that shift in 
1977, it would take Yasser Arafat longer to recognise Israel's needs. 
But Israel remained patient and became more innovative in its 
persuasive instruments, especially its military ones. When Arafat came 
to his senses and signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, he finally 
recognised Israel's right to be racist and to legally discriminate 
against its own Palestinian citizens. For that belated recognition, a 
magnanimous Israel, still eager for peace, decided to negotiate with 
him. He, however, continued to resist on some issues. For Arafat had 
hoped that his recognition of Israel's need to be racist inside Israel 
was in exchange for Israel ending its racist apartheid system in the 
occupied territories. That was clearly a misunderstanding on his part. 
Israeli leaders explained to him and to his senior peace negotiator 
Mahmoud Abbas in marathon discussions that lasted seven years, that 
Israel's needs are not limited to imposing its racist laws inside 
Israel but must extend to the occupied territories as well. 
Surprisingly, Arafat was not content with the Bantustans the Israelis 
offered to carve up for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and 
Gaza around the Jewish colonial settlements that God had granted the 
Jews. The United States was brought in to persuade the malleable leader 
that the Bantustan solution was not a bad one. Indeed, equally 
honourable collaborators as Arafat had enjoyed its benefits, such as 
Mangosutho Gatcha Buthelezi in Apartheid South Africa. It was no shame 
to accept it, President Clinton insisted to Arafat at Camp David in the 
summer of 2000. While Abbas was convinced, Arafat remained unsure.

It is true that in 2002 Arafat came around some more and reaffirmed 
his recognition of Israel's need for racist laws inside the country 
when he gave up the right of return of the six million exiled 
Palestinians who, by virtue of Israel's racist law of return, are 
barred from returning to the homeland from which Israel had expelled 
them while Jewish citizens of any other countries obtain automatic 
citizenship in an Israel most of them have never before seen. In an op-
ed piece in The New York Times, Arafat declared: "We understand 
Israel's demographic concerns and understand that the right of return 
of Palestinian refugees, a right guaranteed under international law and 
United Nations Resolution 194, must be implemented in a way that takes 
into account such concerns." He proceeded to state that he was looking 
to negotiate with Israel on "creative solutions to the plight of the 
refugees while respecting Israel's demographic concerns". This however, 
was not sufficient, as Arafat remained unpersuaded of Israel's need to 
set up its racist apartheid in the occupied territories. Israel had no 
choice but to isolate him, keep him under house arrest, and possibly 
poison him at the end. 

President Abbas, however, learned well from the mistakes of his 
predecessor and has shown more openness to Israeli arguments about its 
dire need to have a racist apartheid system set up in the West Bank and 
Gaza and that the legitimacy of this apartheid must also be recognised 
by the Palestinians as a precondition for peace. Abbas was not the only 
Palestinian leader to be beguiled. Several other Palestinian leaders 
were so convinced that they offered to help build the infrastructure of 
Israeli apartheid by providing Israel with most of the cement it needed 
to build its Jews-only colonies and the apartheid wall.

The problem now was Hamas, who, while willing to recognise Israel, 
still refused to recognise its special needs to be racist inside the 
Green Line and to set up an apartheid system inside the occupied 
territories. This is where Saudi Arabia was brought in last month in 
the holy city of Mecca. Where else, pondered the Saudis, could one 
broker an agreement where the leadership of the victims of Israeli 
racism and oppression can be brought to solemnly swear that they 
recognise their oppressor's special need to oppress them? Well, Hamas 
has been resisting the formula, which Fatah has upheld for five years, 
namely to "commit" to this crucial recognition. Hamas said that all it 
could do was "respect" past agreements that the PA had signed with 
Israel and which recognised its need to be racist. This, Israel and the 
United States insist, is insufficient and the Palestinians will 
continue to be isolated despite Hamas's "respect" for Israel's right to 
be racist. The condition for peace as far as Israel and the US are 
concerned is that both Hamas and Fatah recognise and be committed to 
Israel's right to be an apartheid state inside the Green Line as well 
as its imposition of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza. Short of 
this, there will be no deal. The ensuing summit between Condie Rice, 
Ehud Olmert and the exalted PA President Abbas was spent with Olmert 
interrogating Abbas on how much he remains committed to Israel's need 
for apartheid in the occupied territories. A minor replay summit was 
concluded on the same basis a few days ago. Abbas had hoped that the 
two summits could coax Israel to finalise arrangements for the 
Bantustans over which he wants to rule, but Israel, understandably, 
felt insecure and had to ensure that Abbas himself was still committed 
to its right to impose apartheid first. Meanwhile, ongoing "secret" 
Israeli-Saudi talks have filled Israel with the hope and expectation 
that the Arab League's upcoming summit in Riyadh might very well cancel 
the Palestinian right of return that is guaranteed by international law 
and affirm the inviolability of Israel's right to be a racist state as 
guaranteed by international diplomacy. All of Israel's efforts to 
achieve peace might finally bear fruit if the Arabs finally concede to 
what international mediation had already conceded to Israel before 
them.

It should be clear then that in this international context, all 
existing solutions to what is called the Palestinian-Israeli "conflict" 
guarantee Israel's need to maintain its racist laws and its racist 
character and ensure its right to impose apartheid in the West Bank and 
Gaza. What Abbas and the Palestinians are allowed to negotiate on, and 
what the Palestinian people and other Arabs are being invited to 
partake of, in these projected negotiations is the political and 
economic (but not the geographic) character of the Bantustans that 
Israel is carving up for them in the West Bank, and the conditions of 
the siege around the Big Prison called Gaza and the smaller ones in the 
West Bank. Make no mistake about it, Israel will not negotiate about 
anything else, as to do so would be tantamount to giving up its racist 
rule.

As for those among us who insist that no resolution will ever be 
possible before Israel revokes all its racist laws and does away with 
all its racist symbols, thus opening the way for a non-racist future 
for Palestinians and Jews in a decolonised bi-national state, Israel 
and its apologists have a ready-made response that has redefined the 
meaning of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is no longer the hatred of and 
discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group; in the age 
of Zionism, we are told, anti-Semitism has metamorphosed into something 
that is more insidious. Today, Israel and its Western defenders insist, 
genocidal anti-Semitism consists mainly of any attempt to take away and 
to refuse to uphold the absolute right of Israel to be a racist Jewish 
state.


The writer is associate professor of modern Arab politics and 
intellectual history at Columbia University. His latest book is The 
Persistence of the Palestinian Question; Essays on Zionism and the 
Palestinians. This commentary was originally published by Al-Ahram 
Weekly. 

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