"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul." - Mark Twain

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Israel’s ‘national suicide’ parsed ...

The anti-democratic Citizenship Law pending in the Israeli Knesset, which would require all Israeli citizens to sign an oath of allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state, and the recent Israeli High Court decision squashing its opposition, continue to draw international alarm, controversy, and analysis. Mark LeVine at the University of California at Irvine has written an excellent and concise article in al-Jazeera, "Israel's 'National Suicide'", exposing the Supreme Court decision further illustrates Israel's ethical and political difficulties of maintaining Israel as a Jewish state:

... Because to recognise that Jews and Palestinians can become one in the most intimate way possible - through love, sex and children - is to open Israeli Jews to the possibility that there is nothing essential that separates them from Palestinians, that as human beings with deep roots in this land, Palestinians have the same human rights as Israeli (or diaspora) Jews.

Once people accept this reality, Zionism - which, at its core, is based on the exclusive Jewish claim of rights to and sovereignty over the Land of Israel - loses whatever remains of its moral and political legitimacy.

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