[DEBATE] : Israeli nationhood

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

One of the things that I have learned from Ran is that those of us who
are neither Jewish Israeli nor Palestinian and live outside of
historic Palestine would have to think harder about how best to
strengthen the forces inside Israel of whom Ran speaks -- at present
small, but politically significant, in so far as they have the
potentially power that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are
denied.  In another review that Ran graciously allowed me to publish
in MRZine, he noted:

"While in the OPTs the distinction between citizen (soldier, settler)
and non-citizen is paramount, within pre-67 Israel the distinction
between Jew and Arab is crucial.  In the OPTs both distinctions
overlap but not so in Israel.  This tension between the citizenship
and ethnic principles opens up opportunities for change.  Israeli
Palestinians are discriminated against but are not subject to the same
system of domination as their OPTs counterparts.  They CAN exercise
their citizenship rights to struggle for greater and more meaningful
political and social integration as equals.  And, in their struggle,
they can also open the way for changing the regime itself.  OPT
residents can mount resistance to the occupation, but the road to
changing the regime itself is blocked, because they are forcibly
excluded from it, and have no effective leverage from their external
position" (<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/greenstein221008.html>).

This is especially the case since Israel has come to depend
dramatically less on labor of the Palestinians from the OPTs than they
did before the Al Aqsa intifada, costing them the economic leverage
that they once had (this transformation in the political economy of
the occupation has been well documented by the Alternative Information
Center).  The change is so stark that now the defining feature of
Israel's economic exploitation of the Palestinians in the OPTs takes
the form of channeling the humanitarian and developmental aid flows
for the West Bank and Gaza to the benefit of Israel (cf.
<http://www.alternativenews.org/the-economy-of-the-occupation/1888-the-economy-of-the-occupation-17-18-political-economy-of-aid-to-palestinians-under-occupation.html>).
 That is why the struggles of the Palestinian citizens of Israel and
their Jewish allies are more important than ever.

Yoshie

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Ran Greenstein <rangreen at sn.apc.org> wrote:
> What's the alternative? Transforming Israel from a Jewish state
> (in a legal sense, not necessarily in a demographic and cultural sense)
> into a state of all its citizens, in which all of them are incorporated
> equally (while keeping whatever religious, cultural and ethnic identities
> they wish).
>
> Who supports that? A big majority of Palestinian-Arab citizens of
> Israel (about 20% of the population of the country in its pre-1967
> boundaries), and a small minority of Jewish citizens (no more
> than 5-10% of them, optimistically speaking), So, overall it is
>  clearly a minority perspective, but you always start from somewhere...
>
> On 18 May 2009 at 11:36, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Subject:        [DEBATE] : Israeli nationhood
>
>> Ran Greenstein, in your sharp review of Benny Morris' book
>>
>> <http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/greenstein170509.html>
>>
>> you write:
>>
>> > In France, the likes of Zinedine Zidane (of Muslim Algerian
>> > background) or of Thierry Henry (of Caribbean ancestry) are entitled
>> >  to full equality and share in national wealth and power no less
>> > than  the descendants of the ancient Gauls, even if they have no
>> > ethnic  linkage to them at all, or to the Catholic Church.  In
>> > Sweden, the  likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic (of Bosnian Muslim origin)
>> > are entitled  to full enjoyment of citizenship rights as the
>> > descendants of the  Nordic tribes of ancient times.  This is not the
>> > case in Israel, in  which citizenship and access to resources are
>> > determined to a large  extent by ethnic origin and religious
>> > affiliation, and in which  civic nationalism that encompasses all
>> > citizens regardless of  ethnicity and faith does not exist.
>>
>> But isn't this issue fundamental to the definition of Israel as a
>> Jewish state? Of course, Israel could shed that identity and define
>> citizenship like other states. But are there any political forces in
>> Israel that are prepared to do that?
>
> Ran Greenstein
> Johannesburg, South Africa
>
>
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