Debate between Tony Greenstein and Israeli anti-Zionist Ronnie
Barkan
Please join accessing Youtube here
Wednesday January 19th 7 pm
The debate about the
nature of the Israeli state is an important one. In the IHRA misdefinition of
anti-Semitism anti-Semitism is held to be
‘Applying double
standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of
any other democratic nation.’
Leaving aside the absurd wording ‘democratic nation’ which implies some
nations are not democratic, in itself a racist phrase, the IHRA assumes that Israel
is a normal democratic state. Of course we all know that Israel may be democratic
for Israeli Jews but it is Jewish for Arabs.
The
question though is what type of state Israel is. It is now accepted that Israel
is a settler-colonial state much like Apartheid South Africa and Algeria. But
that doesn’t tell us the specific
character of Israel.
Israel
describes itself as a Jewish Democratic state which is an oxymoron. A state can
either be democratic or Jewish but it cannot be both and in practice Israel
promotes the Jewish over the
democratic. But Israel as Jewish state isn’t a religious or theocratic state Jewish
ethnically.
When
Netanyahu’s government introduced the Jewish Nation State Law
in 2018 it gave Israeli Jews only national rights. Although in theory
Palestinian citizens of Israel had equal rights on an individual basis, in
practice this could not but help impinge on those rights.
Article
7 of the Act provides
that ‘
‘the state views the development of
Jewish settlement as a national value, and will act to encourage and promote
its establishment and consolidation.’
What
this means is being played out currently in the Naqab and East Jerusalem where
the Jewish National Fund and Jewish settlers are ethically
cleansing the indigenous Palestinian population.
Because
Israel defines itself as a ‘Jewish’ state it allows Israelis the right to tell
Palestinians, even those who are nominal citizens, that they should be grateful
they are allowed to live in a Jewish state.
In
January 2019 Al Jazeera published an article by Yoav Litvin The
Zionist fallacy of ‘Jewish supremacy’ which argued that ‘Framing
Zionism as Jewish and not white supremacy is a dangerous proposition.’ This was because saying Israel is a Jewish
Supremacist State would therefore mean all Jews are racial supremacists.
Where
Yoav went wrong was when he argued that
‘To maintain this abusive, white supremacist dynamic,
Zionist propagandists have promoted the anti-Semitic fallacy that Israel is a
Jewish state, which represents Judaism and thus all Jews.
Unfortunately it is a fact, not a fallacy, that Israel
IS a Jewish state. That is what it
calls itself. The question is rather ‘what does it mean to say Israel is a
Jewish state’.
Litvin went on to compound his error by saying that
If
it is accepted, as it is by Zionists, that Israel indeed represents Judaism and
all Jews – an expression of “Jewish supremacy” – then those who are
pro-Palestinian must also reject Jews and Judaism.
This
is a serious error. Israel does not claim to represent Judaism. Certainly it
uses Judaism to legitimise itself, in the process transforming Judaism into an
idolatrous religion that worships land and power, but Israel has never claimed
to represent Judaism. Rather it argues that Zionism is rooted in Judaism and
that the formation of a Jewish state is the culmination of 2,000 years of
Jewish history.
In the 1950s thousands of babies of Yemenite Jews were stolen from hospitals and given to White Jews
Israel
claims to represent the mythical ‘Jewish people’. Being Jewish in Israel is not
a matter of religion but nationality. There are many nationalities in Israel,
since there is no Israeli nationality, but there is only one nationality that matters,
Jewish nationality. In the Population Registry of Israel you can define
yourself as Jewish by nationality and leave religion blank.
Yemenite Jewish children were subject to Nazi-style medical experiments by Israeli doctors in the 1950s and suspected organ thefts
Being
Jewish in Israel entitles you to privileges that non-Jews do not possess. For
example if you are Jewish your land is not liable to be confiscated because you
or one of your family was resident in an ‘enemy’ i.e. Arab state. If you are
Jewish you are expected to serve in the army, and consequently receive welfare
and social security benefits, e.g. student grants, that non-Jews don’t receive.
Litvin
argued that
the framing of Zionism as “white”, not “Jewish” supremacy
enables and strengthens the formation of coalitions between all those opposed
to Zionist settler colonialism in particular and white supremacy in general and
hinders Zionist attempts at sabotage by lobbying cynical accusations of
“anti-Semitism”.
It may well be that framing Zionism as ‘white’ and not
‘Jewish’ would make alliances with for example Black Lives Matter easier
although I’m not convinced. However it would be deeply dishonest to construct
an alliance on such a basis.
That is why I wrote an article for Al Jazeera Why
Israel is a Jewish, not a white supremacist state in February 2019
in which I argued that ‘Recognising Israel as a Jewish supremacist state does not
mean rejecting Jews or Judaism.’ I argued that
‘What
Litvin is doing is substituting wishful thinking for reality and that is never
a good basis on which to construct an argument.’
Police violence against Ethiopian Jews
Yes
Zionism is also racist towards Black
people but that is secondary to its
racism towards non-Jews and Palestinians in particular. I wrote:
It
is of course true that within the Israeli Jewish population, there is
discrimination against the Sephardi/Misrahi Jews and even more against the
Falashas (Ethiopian) Jews. But while intra-Jewish racism exists, the major
division within the Israeli society is not between black and white, but between
Jewish and non-Jewish, and in particular between Israeli Jewish and
Palestinian. That is inescapable.
I followed this up in November 2021 with an article ‘Israel
is not just racist towards Palestinians but it is also racist towards Black
Jews’ in which I reaffirmed what I had previously written. The
subtitle was ‘If
Israel is primarily a Jewish Supremacist State it is ALSO a White Supremacist
State.’ I wrote that
Litvin made the cardinal
mistake of saying that if Palestinians reject a Jewish state they reject
Judaism. No they reject Jewish
Supremacy. Irish Republicans have never
rejected Protestantism as a religion. On the contrary some of the most famous
Republicans were Protestant, such as Wolfe Tone and
Sir
Roger Casement, executed by the British in 1916 for treason.
Northern Ireland was, in the words of its first Prime Minister James Craig a ‘Protestant State for a Protestant People’.
Did that mean that the opposition of Irish Republicans to the Protestant
Supremacist nature of that state was anti-Protestant? Of course not. What they
objected to was a state of affairs whereby being Protestant entitled you to
privileges that Catholics did not have.
Wolfe Tone, a Protestant leader of the United Irishmen
When we say that Israel is a Jewish Supremacist
state what this means that Israel systematically discriminates against those of
its inhabitants who are not Jewish. Zionism is a matter of race not religion as
Max Nordau explained
at the first Zionist Congress in 1897.
This is not an academic debate. Israel systematically
discriminates against those whose only crime is not being Jewish. The Israeli rabbinate fulfil the same role as
The
Office for Race Classification in South Africa. They are the arbiters of
who is and is not privileged.
That
is why Rabbi Peretz, the head of the Israeli Conversion Authority, ‘rejects
Palestinian applicants without review because of their ethnic origin’. This
is how the Jewish religion has been perverted in order facilitate the
requirements of a racist Jewish state.
Because
Jews are more privileged than non-Jews it is essential to close a loophole
whereby Palestinians might convert to become part of the privileged. There is
no religious or halachic reason to
refuse requests to convert by Palestinians. On the contrary in the Bible the Canaanites
were often converted at the point of a sword. The Jewish religion has
prostituted itself on the altar of Zionism.
B’Tselem, Israel’s main human rights group, which
began life in 1989 as a liberal Zionist group, issued a report
a year ago describing Israel as ‘A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan
River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid’
Why did B’Tselem describe Israel as a ‘Jewish
supremacist’ state? Because in the work it does supporting Palestinians it is
clear that being Jewish leads to different treatment by the Israeli
authorities. Even Israeli anti-Zionists are treated more gently than
Palestinians.
In the past decade Israel has tried to deport thousands of African refugees from Eritrea and Sudan - their crime? Being Black and not Jewish
Of course within the Israeli Jewish community
it is also true that White Jews discriminate against the Misrahi/Oriental and
Ethiopian Jews. There is no doubt about this. African Jews have been barred
from even entering Israel because they are not recognised as Jews.
In the case of the Abayudaya
group of African Jews, the Jewish Agency, the arm of the World Zionist
Organisation, had recognised them as Jews but the Israeli government
nonetheless barred them from entry.
Children from the Hebrew Israelite community
There
is also the case of the Black Hebrews who came from the USA in the 1960s. Many
of them were originally deported back to the USA. A group were allowed to live
near Dimona in Southern Israel but earlier last year the Israeli government
unveiled a plan
to deport them back to the United States.
Zionism
has always had considerable difficulty accepting that non-White people can be
Jewish. Arthur Ruppin, the most important figure in the pre-state Yishuv, considered
that Arab Jews were racially inferior to European Jews because they were Semitic!
Ruppin was an ardent devotee of Eugenics and the racial sciences and he visited
Professor Hans Gunther, who the Nazis had imposed as Professor of Racial
Sciences at Jenna University to have a friendly chat about their shared topic
of interest.
The Hebrew Israelite community welcome sign
But
here is the rub. Black Jews may complain bitterly about their treatment by
White Jews but that does not make them express solidarity with the
Palestinians. What they are fighting for is equality with White Jews in other
words an equal role in the oppression of the Palestinians. They serve in the
army, they are entitled to ‘Jewish national’ land (93% of all Israeli land) and
other privileges that White Jews enjoy. What they don’t want is to be reduced
to the status of Palestinians. They are the ‘poor white trash’ of Israel.
Ronnie
Barkan, who was one of the founders of Israel’s Boycott from Within, appeared on Resistance TV last year and
claimed, on the basis of my blog article that I had changed my position. He was
wrong and on Wednesday we will be debating the issue.
Tony
Greenstein
Please
access
it via Youtube here
