Solving the problem of Israel/Palestine isn’t rocket science. The solution is obvious. We just have to get serious about it. A brief history Israeli Jews recently celebrated the 62nd anniversary of their "Independence Day," while Israeli Palestinians, risking arrest for breaking the law, observed it as a day of mourning and remembrance of the Nakba, an Arabic word that means something very much like "Holocaust." This disparity of views reverberates far beyond the land between the river and the sea. It is the central political drama of our time and has had pride of place in the news for six long decades - three generations - sometimes on the front page, sometimes relegated to lesser status, but always there. Why has there been no resolution to this festering problem that seems to permeate our lives even now, while we have seen the great conflicts of World War II and the Cold War come and go? After all, there was a clear winner and a clear loser, so how is it that we can't just move on to other, more pressing problems, like the critical state of our common home, the biosphere? Why doesn't it just go away? That is the question, at least from the Israeli point of view and that of its supporters. For them it is a source of endless vexation that not only are they considered a political pariah by much of the world, but the very legitimacy of the Jewish State is questioned. They complain bitterly that Israel is asked to live up to higher standards than any other nation. So who's perfect, they ask. We are a Western democracy, they claim, not only sharing the values of the Western world - those values now accepted by most nations on the planet - but we are a bulwark against those whose values are different, whose interests are opposed to ours, standing at the frontier between the good guys and the bad guys. So the story goes. Let's take a quick look at this story, because it turns out that everything hinges on conflicting narratives, not only about the past, but the present as well. Once upon a time - long, long ago - there was a tribe in Judea who followed the faith established by a distant ancestor named Abraham, who had conversed with the one, true God. They suffered persecution by numerous enemies, were slaves in Egypt and were exiled, twice, from their promised land. Thenceforth they wandered around the world, constituting a far flung diaspora, hounded by the inhabitants and governments of whatever place they found themselves in, but stubbornly clinging to their God and their traditions. They never forgot where they had come from, the land that God had given them, until finally, after a terrible, unprecedented catastrophe inflicted upon them by the Nazi Reich just decades ago, they returned to the Promised Land and re-established Eretz Yisroel, destined to be a shining light unto the world. It's a gripping story, believed in whole or in part at least, by the majority of both contemporary Jews and Christians. There's one slight problem, though - hardly a word of it is true. It is nearly all mytho-history, rather than a record of events that actually occurred. Although history is hardly an exact science, let's look, very briefly, at what appears to have happened. Long after the time of Abraham, if such a person ever existed, the tribe of people we call the Hebrews, along with a great many other tribes in the general area, coalesced into a group now called the Jews whose identity derived from a shared belief in a set of stories and myths, the origins of which can be traced to all the lands around the Eastern Mediterranean stretching as far away as Persia, but mostly in and around what is today called Iraq. This collection of tales, or the ones which were written down and we now call "the Bible," (the Old Testament) constituted the basis for what had by this time become a successful, proselytizing religion. The historical details can be found in a number of places, but the gist of it is laid out in a recent book called "The Invention of the Jewish people," written by an Israeli historian by the name of Shlomo Sand. The Ashkenazim, a group of Jews residing in Europe and traditionally speaking the Yiddish language, constitute nowadays about 80% of the people who identify themselves as Jews, and 100% of the people who gave birth to the ideology called Zionism and who emigrated to Palestine starting in the latter half of the 19th century. They are mostly descended from the population of the Khazarian Empire, which lasted roughly from the 8th to the 12th centuries and were converted to Judaism by the Kagan, their Emperor, in the 8th century. Because a small number of Jews from Western Asia were among their number, and a much larger group were invited or attracted there after the mass conversion, it is safe to say that there is some semitic blood mixed into that genetic pool, but they were essentially a Turko-Finnic speaking people of Mongol origin, largely left over from the confederation formed under Attila the Hun during his conflict with the Roman Empire. I am not aware of any reputable historian who disputes this version of events. Let's now turn to the Palestinian narrative, the other side of the equation. They and their forebears had been living on the land in question for many generations, peacefully and on good terms with their neighbors. They were mostly Muslims, followers of the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, an Arabian who lived and preached in the 7th century CE. Their ancestors had, for the most part, converted from Christianity, an outgrowth of biblical Judaism based on the teachings of a Jewish rabbi called Yeshua of Nazareth. Some of these Christians did not convert to Islam, and others were leftovers from the time of the Crusades. An even smaller number of the original followers of Judaism never even converted to the new form of Judaism called Christianity, not believing that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. But for nearly a thousand years these people, all followers of one or another of these Abrahamic faiths, got along more or less amicably, tilling the soil or working as artisans, and some making a living off of tourists to "the Holy Land," in or on their way to Jerusalem, a place of pilgrimage sacred to all three traditions. Then, starting about 150 years ago, a trickle of Eastern European Jews, the Ashkenazim, started arriving. At first they were welcomed. The newcomers bought land, tilled the soil, and at first made every effort to be good neighbors. But soon, towards the end of the 19th century, greater numbers began to arrive, and they were not quite so polite and made less of an effort to accommodate the locals. Then, in the first half of the 20th century, the trickle turned into a flood, and alarm set in among the Arab population. Following WWI, the British Mandate government had replaced the old, easy going Ottoman rule, whose main function was to collect taxes, but otherwise pretty much left the people alone. The Jewish immigrants were Zionists, believing that the Jewish people had a "right of return" to what they thought of as their ancestral home. This fable is the foundation of the Jewish state. Prior to the 1940's Zionism was largely a Utopian, or at least an idealistic, venture. Although heavily imbued with the Jewish narrative and sense of tribal identity, up until this time most of these people were secular agrarian socialists who formed communities called kibbutzim (worker communes) or moshavim (worker cooperatives). A troublesome problem existed for the Zionist intellectuals from the very first - once it was decided that the Jewish State would be built in Palestine, what then could be done about the already existing population there, the Palestinians? One solution was simply to deny that there was an existing population, or to assert that the people there were recent economic immigrants who had therefore no preexisting claim to the land. Such clumsy rationalizations followed one another in quick succession to justify what was at bottom an utterly outlandish project. Quite a few of the settler-colonialists, ensconced in their insular communities, chose to believe this convenient nonsense, ignoring those Middle Eastern looking people they encountered when they chanced to look outside the boundaries of their settlements. Others, far more hard-boiled and "realistic," knew from the beginning that the people resident in Palestine when the Jews started arriving would have to be gotten rid of, one way or another. Starting in the 1930's a new form of Zionism began to assert itself, what came to be known as political Zionism. Its followers were a very different breed, following the lead of zealots like Vladimir Jabotinsky. They were political conspirators in the mold of the early National Socialists who gathered around Adolf Hitler or the early Communists who took their lead from Vladimir Lenin. They were the first proponents and practitioners of Middle Eastern terrorism and attacked both the British Mandate government and military as well as the indigenous Palestinians. They and/or their descendents rule Israel to this day. They were firm believers in the principle that the end justifies the means and its corollary, might makes right. This kind of thinking, and the well laid plans to accomplish their purposes, led, once the Zionists felt they could get away with declaring their "State," to the highly planned and well orchestrated orgy of ethnic cleansing which the Palestinians commemorate as the Nakba, the Catastrophe. Once again, few if any reputable historians would dispute the essentials of this summary That brings us up to 1948. A great deal has happened since then, but I must reduce it to a few sentences. The inexorable logic of political Zionism, driven by fear of the "demographic problem," requires the maintenance of a preponderantly Jewish population - the traditional ratio being no less than 80:20. As the current Palestinian population within the ever shifting boundaries of “Israel” is about 20% and growing faster than the Jewish population, the politically convenient notion of the Jewish State being a "democracy" is threatened by the greater fertility of its (second-class, feared, hated and barely tolerated) non-Jewish citizens. In addition, since 1967, Israel has occupied the the West Bank and Gaza, areas previously in a political limbo, but now representing an "existential" threat within the borders of what the political Zionists have always claimed as "Greater Israel." (See The Zionist Plan for the Middle East). Even not counting the Palestinian diaspora, those within Israel together with the populations of the Occupied Territories would soon constitute a majority. Although Israel forcefully evacuated its settlers from Gaza, hoping thereby to consign the inmates of what then became an open air concentration camp to oblivion or rule by the Egyptian dictatorship, the residents, mostly refugees since the Nakba, refused to accept their fate. In response, the government has chosen to lay a medieval siege to the area, employing the ancient strategy of literally starving the besieged into submission. This situation arose because the Israeli intelligence services, comparable in power and ruthlessness to the Soviet KGB, had instigated the creation of an Islamic fundamentalist party called Hamas to counter the previously dominant PLO of Yasir Arafat. When Hamas surprisingly won the elections sponsored by Israel and its patron, the U.S., and was able to consolidate its power in Gaza if not in the West Bank, Israel promptly declared war on Hamas, leading to the siege that is now in its third year. There is a third segment of the Palestinian population, the Diaspora, the most numerous of the three groups, living in refugee camps in Lebanon, in Syria, constituting nearly half the population of Jordan, and spread out across the globe, with many of them in the U.S. and the U.K. They have steadfastly refused to give up their right of return, a right that is no fable and is deeply enshrined in international law. This is the real "existential threat" to Israel, not the seemingly arbitrary series of enemy nations "out to get them," the latest target being Iran. The real existential threat to us, the rest of the world, is the Israeli proclivity to act on its paranoia regardless of consequences, to apply its overwhelming military superiority (derived from the largesse of the U.S. taxpayers) to its perceived enemies. Israel is a nuclear power (again, thanks to its fifth column within the U.S.) and there is no reason to believe that if they imagine themselves sufficiently threatened they won't use those nukes. The bottom line, the reason that the history herein described is so vital to understand, is the likelihood that Israel, if allowed to continue on its path unchecked, will inevitably provoke a nuclear war, a catastrophe that life on this planet might very well not survive. The Solution There are various proposals for resolving this state of affairs, but they really boil down to two: the one state solution vs. the two state solution. The latter has been endorsed by most of the world's elites, including significant minorities within the Israeli government and civil society; in the West, led by the U.S.; most of the Arab countries and the PLO since Yasir Arafat himself endorsed the idea. Well, that pretty much settles it, one might say, at least if you don't look too closely. The two state solution proposes that an independent Palestinian state be created in the West Bank and Gaza within the borders that existed prior to the 1967 war. Such a state would have territorial integrity, a protected land corridor between the two sections, the rights and privileges of any member of the United Nations, provide a home for all Palestinian refugees and have its capitol in East Jerusalem. Makes sense, doesn't it? Actually no - it's pure fantasy. For one thing, it would mean defeat not only for the Zionist project of building Eretz Yisroel (Greater Israel), to which the Israeli government is more and more committed, but it runs directly counter to the dynamic that drives the Jewish state, as in all forms of ethnocentric or nationalist fascism. As Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt succinctly put it on May 23rd, "Israel can't survive without expansion and war." It would also erase the bottom line of the Palestinian struggle, which is the Right of Return to the land from which they were and are being expelled. Neither side could accept such an arrangement. Any Israeli government that seriously endorsed the idea would immediately fall, as would the collaborationist Palestine Authority in Ramallah if the prospect became imminent. An even more convincing reason, though, is that it could not even remotely be called a "solution" - quite the contrary. Such a configuration could theoretically be imposed by the U.S., acting in concert with its allies and the U.N., but it would be like placing a massive nuclear bomb between the river and the sea, just waiting for the spark that would give it critical mass. There are clear and obvious reasons why the various elites are promoting the two state solution. For Israel, the "peace process" provides public relations cover for its ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. It should also be clear to people who understand the dynamics of the Jewish state that one thing can't be allowed to happen - a successful conclusion, peace. Peace is anathema. The primary reason for this is embedded in the nature of Zionism itself. One has to understand that fear, ancient and deep-seated paranoia, is at the heart of Zionism. "For three years I have been imploring you, Jews of Poland, the crown of world Jewry, appealing to you, warning you unceasingly that the catastrophe is nigh. My hair has turned white and I have grown old over these years, for my heart is bleeding that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spew forth its fires of destruction. I see a horrible vision. Time is growing short for you to be spared. I know you cannot see it, for you are troubled and confused by everyday concerns... Listen to my words at this... for time is running short." - Vladimir Jabotinsky to the Jews of Warsaw on Tisha b'Av 1938 Moreover, it is a textbook example of ethnocentric fascism, almost identical to Nazism, but having a different tribal identity. A salient characteristic of such ideologies, as Jumblatt pointed out, is that they have no brakes - if they stop picking fights with their neighbors, if they stop trying to expand further and further, they lose their cohesion, their raison d'etre, and die. This is particularly true in the case of Israel for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is that the Jewish population of Israel is a hodgepodge of different peoples, a true melting pot of cultures that have little in common with one another except for the notion that they are "Jewish." But, as Sand has convincingly demonstrated, there is no such thing as “the Jewish people.” It's just a story, the kind one would tell to children. Without the glue of an external enemy and serial wars, Israel would implode. Its people, by and large, distrust and often detest one another. As long as their fear and hatred can be directed at the "other," the external enemy, then the house of cards can maintain itself. Until recently, Israel resembled India, a caste system with the Brahmins (the Ashkenazim) on top and the "Jews" from the third world at the bottom, with the Sephardim somewhere in between, and the Ethiopians and other exotic “Jews” being the Untouchables. However, several new wrinkles have emerged in recent years, particularly with the massive intake of Russian opportunists (many of whom are about as "Jewish" as Mao Tse-Tung), and more ominously, the rise of a virulently fascist religious element. And lastly, the Gush Emunim, the settler movement, a group of way over the top fanatics who largely overlap with the religious zealots. They are becoming increasingly powerful and are challenging the old Ashkenazi elite in both the political establishment and the military. These factors create an opportunity for reaching out to the very small but potent segment of Israeli society that retains some vestiges of sanity with the idea of one democratic state. The motivation of the Vichy government in Ramallah is clear enough. This is the Fatah elite that inherited the Palestine Authority from Yasir Arafat. It is widely recognized as utterly corrupt and subservient both to the Israelis and the Americans. A Palestinian state would solidify its grip on power and the spoils that go with it. One State, Three Variations on a Theme The current situation, actually, is already a single state, consisting of Israel and the OPT. Israel has de facto control of the entire country, although Gaza is in a state of resistance, its people desperately trying to survive. Israel controls the all the borders, the transportation infrastructure, the electricity supply, the water supply and has an overwhelming monopoly on military force, in fact everything but the air that people breathe. But those pesky Palestinians refuse to give up and die, which must be extremely irritating to the leadership in Tel Aviv. The strategy is, and always has been, to rid the land of non-Jews, using whatever means are available, but limited by the constraint that Israel vitally needs the support of the West, at the very least American support. The possibility of losing this support - without which Israel would be in the same position as the apartheid state of So. Africa when they could no longer ignore the writing on the wall - is the only thing that has so far prevented the total expulsion or extermination of the Palestinians within the country. This view, the goal of which is the establishment of Eretz Yisroel (Greater Israel), is the Zionist version of a single state. There used to be a largish contingent of Zionists who imagined that the borders of this state would be the Tigris/Euphrates to the east and the Nile to the west, but there is now a consensus that would be satisfied with the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. There are two other possible versions of a single state, at least in theory. The first is a mirror image of the Zionist one, as articulated by some Palestinians and their more strident supporters. This vision entails, at least metaphorically, driving the Jews into the sea. For an eloquent and passionate expression of this vision, read 'A strategy of liberation requires emancipation', by Nahida Izzat, someone I greatly admire and respect. It is a simple but unconditional demand for justice. In her view the only solution that would satisfy this condition would be to return the land to its rightful owners - end of story. She leaves up in the air the question of what would happen to the current Jewish population - that is not her concern. This is a very powerful view and one which is difficult to fault. However, it ain't gonna happen. As Thomas Wolfe put it, "you can't go home again." The fact is that most of the now resident Jewish Israelis were born there. However, as an initial negotiating demand, the version of a single state articulated by Nahida has more validity than the Zionist view, at the very least. All of which brings us to the third alternative, the only one that is not only actually possible in the long term, but is the only proposal that actually solves the problem - the replacement of the existing political configuration by a single democratic, pluralistic state. What is seldom mentioned in discussing this possibility is that it would be, to use a kitsch expression, a win-win for everybody, even the extremists on both sides. Let's see how it would affect the various protagonists, which actually includes all of us, since whether we like it or not we are all connected. I don't think it's necessary to go into any detail about the basic idea - it is simple, obvious and is already accepted by most of the world as the gold standard for modern nation-states. The government of Israel, The Palestinian Authority (PA), the Arab dictatorships and the US Empire, with its vassal states in tow, are primarily concerned with short term political and economic advantage rather than an actual solution to the problem. Not only that, but the Western democracies are hamstrung by the nearly absolute power wielded in those countries by the Israel Lobby, a situation that, in the U.S., reaches back at least as far as the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Those who have an actual stake in solving the conflict, and thereby achieving the universal goals of human rights, peace and justice, are the ordinary Israelis, Jews everywhere, the Palestinians and the population of the West, not to mention the Umma, the Islamic world – actually all of us. Indeed, it is the entire world that is at risk. Considering the high probability of Israel setting off a nuclear war if it feels irremediably backed into a corner, it is in everyone's most fundamental interest to bring about a just and peaceful resolution, which can only be achieved through the establishment of one democratic state. How Israelis would benefit One of the most often heard objections to the One State Solution (OSS) is that the Israelis would never accept it. This argument is false on several counts. For one thing, never say never. The Nationalists of apartheid South Africa loudly proclaimed "over my dead body," as did the Protestant Unionists of Ulster. There are many examples. In the heat of battle, the enemy is always seen as barbarians, the embodiment of evil, people with whom one could never be reconciled. But what actually happens after a war has been concluded? The hated "Huns," the dreaded "Boches," become one's friends and allies. The "Yellow Peril," the "Japs" and so forth, become one's principal trading partners and fellow upholders of the peace. No matter how deeply embedded the Israeli dread of annihilation at the hands of their victims may seem, such attitudes, like all political attitudes, are only skin deep and as temporary as the fevers of love and hate. As Gideon Levy put it last year in one his pieces for Haaretz, "the only recognition that is needed now is Israel's recognition of the Palestinians as human beings. If this is obtained, all the rest will be relatively easy." We should also recall that Zionism, prior to the ascendance of Jabotinskian fanaticism and terrorism about 80 years ago, envisioned a cooperative, binational state. It was not that long ago. The ridiculous notion that "they've always hated and fought one another," another objection that one often hears, is just one of many facile inventions of Zionist propaganda. Barring relatively brief eruptions of tribal and religious strife, like the Crusades, the siblings of the Abrahamic tradition, outside of Europe at least, have gotten along rather swimmingly for the last 1,500 years. Zionism itself, when looked at in terms of its constituent parts, contains a set of goals that are achievable only in the context of one democratic, pluralistic state. Driven by dread - the dread of pogroms, the dread of persecution, the dread of death, dread of expulsion - a few feverish minds came up with what seemed, on the surface, to be a "solution" to what used to be commonly called "the Jewish problem." The Zionists wanted to have a nation-state of their own - a place where Jews could be safe from their implacable enemies, a place where they could be just ordinary people, going about their business - an impregnable ghetto, a place where Jews would no longer be exposed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Having settled on Palestine as the location of the putative Jewish state (a number of other places were considered), they convinced themselves that they could unobtrusively insinuate themselves among the natives, who wouldn't really mind. After all, the Zionists were enlightened Europeans and the natives were benighted, albeit inoffensive, orientals. No doubt they would feel honored and grateful. Land would be purchased, deals would be made, knowledge and wisdom would be transferred. Bear in mind that all this was promulgated at the height of European colonialism and the idea of the White Man’s Burden. Well, what can one say? Good luck, sir, as my teacher put it. We Jews have a reputation for being "smart" people, but a dumber idea has never been formulated. It arose out of a sense of utter desperation. So we set about constructing the Golem, but in our usual Rube Goldberg fashion. What is it that most Israelis actually want? Not surprisingly, we find that they want what people everywhere want, security and stability, peace, to be respected if not loved, to be free of constant fear and anxiety, to have the sense that their children will have the opportunity to live normal, productive and happy lives. None of these things are possible as long as the Israelis stick with political Zionism, and the Israelis, deep down, know this. They may be temporarily deluded, even collectively insane, driven by the howling winds of paranoia, arrogance and bloody minded defiance that always accompany full-blown fascism, but they aren't actually stupid, and the madness cannot last. So let's consider what would likely happen if wiser heads prevailed and the Israelis were to agree to share the land with the Palestinians in a genuine, rather than faux, democracy. Jerusalem would become the capitol. Jews, like anyone else, could live wherever they liked in the whole country. Given that they would initially be in the numerical majority, they could insist on whatever they thought necessary to protect their interests, a negotiating position that the Palestinians would have to give due consideration to. They would most likely have to accept the necessity of a truth and reconciliation commission, but that's a far cry better than the possible consequences of a solution imposed by a world no longer willing to tolerate a totally out of control rogue state - or the final war, the one that the Jews lose, quite possibly on terms of unconditional surrender, quite possibly after blowing up half the world. Fortunately for the Israelis, the Palestinians have proven themselves to be an extremely decent, tolerant and amazingly patient people. In general, they show remarkably little animosity towards Jewish people, and the remaining hotheads, on both sides, could be dealt with. Realistically, the Jews, after eventually becoming a minority of the population, but a very substantial minority, would largely retain economic control, as well as dominance in many other ways. South Africa stands as just such an example of "the more things change, the more they remain the same." And a Jewish culture, with its multifarious institutions, customs and traditions would coexist with its Palestinian counterpart, enriching both but threatening neither. Together, the synergy of the two would almost certainly result in a dynamic society that would instantly become the flagship of the Middle East, in which Jews could play a respected and admired part instead of being universally reviled and hated. Sound too good to be true? Not really - it's a reasonable projection of what would likely happen if just a little sanity were to prevail. How Palestinians would benefit In a survey taken a couple of years ago 72% said they would accept a two state solution. Responding to a different question, 72% said they would accept a one state solution. In a word, the Palestinians would like the nightmare to stop - they just want a solution and they're not picky about what form it takes. However, as we have pointed out, a two state solution is anything but a solution - it would be a recipe for an even greater disaster. Not that the Israelis, while under the sway of political Zionist leadership, would ever actually consider a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. So it's not something that we even have to seriously consider, unless the US led West, in its predictably imperious, blundering, short-sighted manner, were to try to impose such a thing. As for specifics, Jerusalem would be the capitol. The right of return of the Palestinian diaspora, enshrined in international law, would be acknowledged and the negotiating parties would have to work out the details. The West and the Arab countries would have to pony up a lot of money to deal with the costs of repatriation, compensation on both sides and reparations, but in the long run it would be far cheaper than any conceivable alternative. Again, the details would have to be worked out between the two parties directly concerned, in consultation with all other interested parties. Presented with such a possibility I think we can say with some certainty that the vast majority of Palestinians would be in favor of such an arrangement. After all, like the Israelis, they aren't stupid - they would have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So the other major objection one hears far too often - that the Palestinians have to decide among themselves what they want and then we will support that - can be dismissed as the nonsense it is. The Palestinians, with the boot firmly planted in their necks, are in no position to decide much of anything. And just how would they get together to come up with some expression of their collective desires? In Gaza they are cut off, unable to come and go; in the West Bank they are under an oppressive regime consisting of self-interested Quislings under the command of an American General, and otherwise they are scattered around the world, many in refugee camps, in no position to even begin to formulate their collective will, if there is such a thing. How the rest of the world would benefit This should be too obvious to even mention, but a couple of things need to be said. With the Jewish state dissolved and the problem solved, Zionism, a combination of ethnocentric, religious and nationalist fascism centered on the creation and continued existence of Israel, would no longer have a raison d'etre and would consequently die a quiet, unlamented demise, to the great relief of billions of people. In one stroke, its iron grip on the political life of the West would relax and perhaps the ideals and hopes that gave rise to the great democracies could somehow be salvaged. The U.S., foremost among these, might once again be listened to with respect instead of with a mixture of fear and contempt. Perhaps we could begin to deal with the real problems that face humanity, without the hypocrisy, treason, crimes, distortions, double standards, lies, confusion and scheming that Zionism has until now plagued us with. If one agrees that One Democratic State is the only conceivable solution, then one must act. It's called a categorical imperative. As mentioned earlier, we cannot look to the powers that be to accomplish this. They have other agendas, utterly inimical to working for the actual benefit of their populations, let alone humanity as a whole. That leaves us, ordinary people, to bring this about. We will have to work within our communities, our towns, cities and states, our own countries. Most people, in the West particularly, have been subjected to ubiquitous and incessant propaganda that has left them confused and almost totally ignorant. If you talk to people and just point out a few simple facts you'd be surprised how people will respond. It starts with "Oh, I didn't know that. Keep talking." One by one we can wake people up. The title of this essay points to the understandable reluctance of people to get involved in a seemingly intractable situation. The personal risk, people think, is greater than the reward, which isn't personal. It is this evasion of one's fundamental spiritual responsibility as a human being that leads people to stand aside, or as in the famous case of New Yorkers just walking around a violent mugging taking place in broad daylight while averting their eyes. As it is said, silence is complicity. As Rabbi Hillel put it, "That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it." If you're interested, please get in touch with me - some of us have developed a workable strategy for moving forward, but we need more people to help get the ball rolling. We envision a three-pronged campaign, in Israel, within the Palestinian communities and most vitally, among the population in the West. It was moral outrage that undid South African apartheid. This project will be more difficult, because the power elites in the West weren’t part of the problem then as they are now. The craven, hypocritical politicians have been bought and are terrified of the Israel Lobby. The Zionists own the mainstream media and are in firm control of the Universities. This will be more of a challenge, but we the people can do it, and it has to be done. It's high time that One State advocacy went from being a few voices crying in the wilderness to a worldwide movement that will solve the central international political crisis of our time and transform our world. |
One Democratic State >