Reader Norman sent me the first video below saying, “in one of your posts the other day you gave a link to an article about how anti-Zionism = antisemitism.” Yes, I’ve frequently said that and in fact did so in the last post. And I think the equation is clearly true. For those on the left justifying anti-Zionism, the claim that it is NOT antisemitism rests on an incorrect construal of “anti-Zionism” as “criticism of the politics of Israel/Netanyahu”. Alternatively, “anti-Zionism could mean “favoring a one-state solution, a state that includes both Palestinians and Jews—and we all know what that means for the Jews.
As the moderator defines it in the video, “anti-Zionism” is “opposition to the existence of a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic land of Israel or Palestine” and that view implicitly favors the erasure or destruction of Israel, which to any reasonable person is antisemitic (where would the Jews go?). Further seeing the “anti-Zionism” trope as being politically okay ignores the fact that nearly all Muslim states in the Middle East are explicitly religiously Muslim as part of their government (viz., the formal name of Iran is “The Islamic Republic of Iran”). In contrast, while Israel was approved as a homeland for Jews after WWII, there is no requirement for residents to adhere to the tenents of Judaism, for 20% of the population are Arab Muslims and many of the resident “Jews” are, like me, atheists who are culturally Jewish. To show the difference, try being gay in Gaza or Iran as opposed to Israel.
So, below is what Norman wanted me to see: a short speech by British author and commentator Melanie Phillips. It’s part of a four-person intelligence² debate that took place six years ago. The proposition debated is is “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” Phillips’s bit, agreeing with the proposition, starts 47 seconds into the video, and I’ve begun the video at that point. Her bit ends at 10:28, so the part to listen to is about ten minutes long. The rest is some person, not part of the formal debate, banging on.
As Norman says, “this is one of the most forceful and succinct statements I have heard or read.” It is indeed. And despite its title, Mehdi Hasan does not explode here. That is in the second video below, which gives the entire two-hour debate.
Here’s the whold video, including besides Mehdi Hassan (his speech starts at 35:45) and Melanie Phillips, Einat Wulf (who agrees with Phillips; her speech starts at 24:00) and Ilan Pappé, an Israeli who favors a “one-state solution” (his speech starts at 12:25). The audience, clearly on the side of Hassan and Pappé throughout, defeated the motion. They are wrong.
Thank you for posting this, Jerry. Over the last few years I have been amassing links to commentaries of various sorts in defense of Zionism, Jews, and Israel. The purpose is to be able to provide them to friends or acquaintances as needed. Offering links to sources other than me has protected some of my friendships. It allows me to support my views through publicly available sources, rather than try to argue the case myself.
When I sent Jerry the YouTube link above, I was unaware that Melanie Phillips’s statement was part of a much longer debate. I have since watched the debate in its entirety. I think that it was well run and reasonably civil. There were no “explosions.”
The motion that anti-Zionism = antisemitism was defeated, as Jerry notes. The equal sign, a mathematical operator, made the outcome almost a certainty. After all, it is possible, in theory, to be one but not the other. (Prior to the Holocaust, for instance, Reform Jews largely opposed establishing a Jewish state in the Levant, thinking it better to assimilate into modern liberal societies in the U.S. and elsewhere.) But in practice, as an empirical and statistical matter, in today’s discourse, I regard the equal sign as fundamentally correct.
N.G.: I’m fully on board with what Phillips says here. I wrote an essay that touches on some of the same arguments, as well as others. Maybe you can give it a quick look: https://seedyroad.com/israelism/antizionism.htm
Indeed, Israel is uniquely singled out for special condemnation, as you argue. Israel is the Jew among nations.
I want to ask a serious question. Because I am an atheist (like many who read this page) and believe that all people should be more concerned with their shared humanity and less with their particular origin, I am against all ethno-religious states. Does that make me antisemitic? I don’t think it does. My preference is that in all countries, the people living their should have exactly the same rights regardless of religious, ethnic, origin, or other arbitrary features and that no country should have a national religion/ethnicity. Clearly, I believe Jewish people should be allowed to live in peace and security and practice their cultural/religious/ethnic beliefs wherever they live, the same as anyone else. But like all other groups, I don’t think anybody gets to have a state exclusively created for them. I happen to have moved from the US to another country (Costa Rica) in part because Costa Rica has a more inclusive environment and culture where your religious/ethnic background in largely irrelevant. So is everyone who is against the IDEAL of religious/ethno states, of which Israel is one of many, automatically guilty of antisemitism?
Regardless of how we might ideally wish humans to think and behave, the data seem to show that people are happiest and most content in single-ethnicity (or dominant-ethnicity) nations, and that where nations are multi-ethic, multi-cultural and multi-religion, that is often the biggest source of tension in that nation. Indeed, in such nations, people tend to self-segregate into different areas according to ethnicity and culture, and people tend to be less willing to vote for welfare provision and tend to have less civic mindedness.
By the way, I know very little about Costa Rica, but after a quick Google it seems to be rather homogeneous, with 83.6% identifying with the dominant ethnicity (with low levels of anything other than admixed European/Indigenous) plus, in terms of religion, there’s Christianity and little else.
If Jewish people feel happiest and most secure in a state primarily for Jewish people then that is fine with me (it’s actually a rather small fraction of the Earth’s surface that they’re asking for, and most of it semi-desert).
Sorry, I guess that doesn’t answer your question.
Sure, Costa Rica, because of its history of Spanish settlement, is largely European in language, culture, and religion. But living here, I feel the larger cultural trait is acceptance of people. Nobody has even ever asked me about my religion (except my Costa Rican girlfriend, who indeed had some honest questions about not being a believer) or my particular ethnic background. If you want to immigrate here, it is against to law to ask about ethnic background or religion. What is most notable is the remarkable lack of concern about these issues in everyday life. We of course have our share of problems (drug crime being the main one), but there is a remarkable lack of hate between people. I actually had to explain to several of my Costa Rican friends what a hate group was. It was literally a foreign concept. When I explained what the KKK was to a friend of mine, she was in disbelief that people would spend their time engaging in such activity.
I suspect that the harmony you describe would be perturbed if large numbers of Muslims were allowed to live in Costa Rica. Once a critical threshold is passed, the result is terrorist attacks, vandalism or worse at synagogues and churches, rape gangs targeting infidel women and girls, and so forth. I live in Australia and this pattern is widely recognized now. Only a small minority of Muslims engage in such behavior, of course, but if you had a bowl of candy where only 10% of the candies were poisoned, would you take candy from the bowl? The problem is a level of hatred and intolerance that is not present in other religions to anywhere near that degree.
PS I’ve been to Costa Rica twice and the last time noticed a level of crime and corruption that was not evident in my previous visit decades before, so although it is a nice place to visit I would not want to live there today. Beautiful country though.
Yes, petty crime (and violent drug crime) has increased in recent years. So like most places in the world, you have to know where to go and where not to go and of course keep vigilant. Remember though, I came from the US where fear of being shot randomly in a movie theater, school, or supermarket is an actual possibility. That just does not happen here. After living here, I have actually found corruption to be quite low, speaking in a comparative way. I have never had what would be considered a corrupt interaction with a government official, which in my travels, is an outlier. Again, as a US citizen where the current president is openly corrupt with no apparent consequences, it seems like an improvement in CR. But in the end, the deciding factors were the intense beauty of the landscape, its biodiversity, and the dedication of the people to peace. And that cultural concept of peace is real; you can see it in your neighbors everyday and is hard to understand unless you live here for some time.
And in regards to your hypothetical of large numbers of Muslims immigrating to Costa Rica. You do have a point. I am afraid of all religions, but some more than others. Definitely, Islam is high on the list of ones I want to avoid. I also wouldn´t want a lot of evangelical Christians (e.g., Southern Baptists) coming here for the same reason.
Matt, perhaps Costa Rica is a great place in such regards precisely because it is homogeneous with regards to ethnicity, religion and culture?
Can you point to countries that are very in-homogeneous that do as well?
I think I need to see some citations for that because I don’t believe it is true if confounding factors like populist politicians whipping up resentment are excluded. I live in a fairly diverse city in the UK and I would say that the majority of people who live here believe it is a more exciting, more vibrant place because of it. I don’t have data for that beyond my own impressions, but then, you have presented no actual data either.
The resentment in the UK is the result of Muslim rape gangs and religiously motivated violence, not populist politicians. The majority of Brits definitely do NOT find that that makes the UK more exciting or vibrant.
In a poll last October 67% said Britain is “heading in the wrong direction”, with only 16% saying it’s “heading in the right direction”. Brexit was a reaction to mass migration (hence wanting control over borders); Reform is a reaction to mass migration. But then large swathes dislike Brexit (and want it reversed) and deplore Reform. The result is a riven country. The “populist politicians whipping up resentment” are a symptom, not a cause. You want the people to be ok with mass migration? Well some are but many are not. In a recent poll, 67% say immigration is “too high” (43% “much too high”), with only 4% saying “too low”. Don’t blame the people for turning to “populist politicians” if you impose on them immigration that they don’t like and have not agreed to.
As for the data I was thinking of, traditionally the countries scoring highest on “life happiness” have tended to be relatively small, single-ethnicity states such as Iceland, Denmark, Norway.
I think the important context here is the uniquely long historical roots of antisemitism, stretching back at least to the Roman empire (and not simply when the Romans adopted Christianity — Judaism was considered uniquely disruptive to the standard Roman pattern of syncretizing the pantheons of conquered peoples with their own, since the Jews refused to recognize any other god than their own — a disruptive pattern that Christians then adopted, and were targeted for, until the conversion of Constantine). That has meant that, ever since the final breakup of a Jewish kingdom in the 2nd century (under Hadrian), the Jewish diaspora always existed only on the sufferance of more populous and more powerful nations, rulers, and religions. The re-creation of Israel in 1948 was an attempt to create one place where Jewish existence was not conditional on the consent of a host population.
If you’re positing a hypothetical future in which all states are securely secular both constitutionally and in practice, then sure, there would be no need for any ethnic or religious identity to have their own state. The historical experience of the Jews is that even when some part of their population seems to have arrived at that level of secure acceptance in some particular country, it can come undone again — and quickly. We’re still a long, long way from the kind of world your scenario envisages, and if we ever get there, then, if you think about it, even if there were no need for a Jewish state, no one would be objecting to one either.
All states are for a particular group – that is the whole point of states. Just the same, Israel did not have a state ‘created for them’, the land upon which Jews have always resided historically became a state the same way that all other states are formed. If you are against ethno-religious states, then in order to not be antisemitic you must be against all such states and not just Israel. It is antisemitic to single out Israel and to be anti-zionist and argue that Israel should not exist but be fine with all the other religious/ethno states in the world.
Many states are historical “accidents” with little relation to the dominant group of the area. For example, what is the difference between Costa Rica (where I live) and Panama? In language, culture, and ethnic makeup, they are practically identical. Or most of Western Europe. Aren’t the current state boundaries there just the historical result of various “kingdoms” fighting over land over the centuries?
There are many kinds of states. The framing I think I got from Yoram Hazony is that the opposite ends are “nation state” and “empire”.
The nation state serves a pre-existing group — the poles knew they were a nation in the centuries without a state, as did the jews. This mutual recognition of people feeling that they belong to something is what you can build democracy on.
But an empire groups many unrelated people together, for the convenience of a king. Certainly the Spanish empire was like this. As you say the states it fractured into don’t seem all that much like nation-states. That’s true of many of the post-Ottoman empire states, too.
I have a real problem with the term “zionism” (and hence anti-zionism) because it carries a lot of historical baggage.
I support the continued existence of the current nation state of Israel because the alternative is a bloodbath for the Jews who live there and Israel is also the only nation state in the area with a liberal outlook i.e. they don’t execute gay people and women have some rights.
Maybe that makes me a zionist, but the term carries the connotation that I believe that Israel is the “promised land” and Jews have the right to it because of what the Bible says. This is a historically dubious claim, to say the least, and, as an atheist I reject the idea that God could promise any land to anybody.
Do you know what? I think a one state solution with a secular government that treats all religious groups equally and fairly would be a good answer. Unfortunately, it is pie in the sky because we all know that one state would be quickly taken over by Hamas (or some other radical Muslim terrorist organisation) and secular principles would be thrown away pretty quickly.
I also don’t think it’s constructive to demonise people who support that idea as anti-semitic. I don’t think they are: I think thy are just incredibly naive.
antisemitic means that you are bigoted against Jews. You surely know that Zionist now has nothing to do with promises by God or the history of Judaism. It is the equivalent of Jew. So I disagree: it is constructive because it leads you to try to draw a distinction between the two terms. And even you recognize that an anti-Zionist who favors a one state solution is in effect in favor of killing or terrorizing Jews.
I am talking about how the term is used now. And yes, all Jews ARE entitled to live there; that is part of its law.We have the right to it because that is the law when it was founded. I am an atheist, too, but I do think Jews need a homeland because they are driven from place to place, killed or persecuted. The historical baggage may be in your mind, but it is not in the minds of the young people who call Jews Zios or claim that they are anti-Zionist but not antisemitic
JAC, you say that you are “talking about how the term is used now”, but that is part of the problem that I believe Jeremy was trying to point out. Many people now consider Zionism not the right for a Jewish homeland [which is correct], but rather the expansion of that homeland into areas that have long been inhabited by Arabs/Palestinians. Israeli settlers continue to take over land as evidenced by the maps that show land distribution over time – e.g. https://blog.richmond.edu/livesofmaps/2023/12/18/map-of-the-week-unraveling-the-borders-of-israel-and-palestine-through-time/
That map is infamous for its duplicitous ahistorical propaganda.
Every single bit of that map became Israel (white) under International law on May 14th, 1948 according to borders laid out in 1922 by the League of Nations and approved by unanimous vote of every participating country.
There was no such place called “Palestine” – there was Mandate Palestine, ceded to the League of Nations by the Ottoman Empire, 3/4 of which is not shown on that map but lies to the East and was given exclusively to the (Palestinian) Arabs of the area, with no rights for Jews at all. The Arabs ethnically cleansed them out in 1920’s, just as they did in Judea and Samaria in 1948, when the nascent Israel was known as Mandatory Palestine (not Palestine) from 1922 until May 14, 1948.
The propaganda of your map is to imply that all green areas rightfully belonged to the Palestinian Arabs, which is false, or that there was a legitimate national entity there called “Palestine” which represented their land exclusively. The term “the Palestinian people” wasn’t even invented until the mid 1960’s, as part of the same propaganda effort that gave birth to this map.
You need to learn the history of the area better, if you think that map is historical. See:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96198796@N05/46296316415/in/album-72157707143215584
Condescension is so becoming. Do you know anyone who was forcefully displaced from the homes and businesses of multiple generations? I do. And it’s not like “rightfully belongs” means anything to those who have been forcefully relocated and had their homes bulldozed. And like Trump, you have no respect for International Law that has long claimed that Israeli settlements are illegal. I really don’t give a hoot one way or another, but hardly anyone here even tries to understand the plight of many Palestinians – and yes, they do consider themselves Palestinians even though you deny such a thing exists.
I think that is a bit disingenuous. Many people don’t equate Zionism with being Jewish. Zionism has been defined for decades as “a nationalist movement that advocates for a homeland for the Jewish people in the Biblical Land of Israel.” One can be against the idea of countries being established with a preference for a particular religion and yet not be bigoted against a person based on their religion. I think the reason a lot of people have a problem with the idea that all Jews are entitled to live in Israel is that people who are not Jewish but also have strong ties to that land do not have that right. Most of us don’t have an automatic right to immigrate to another country based on ancestry (or conversion to a religion).
But the thing is, you could have that automatic right if a country wanted to bestow it on you, just as Israel did. The Netherlands could pass a bill through its Parliament giving a right of return to all Dutch Reform Church adherents who could satisfy the Government of the Netherlands that they had Dutch ancestry going back on their maternal side for x number of generations. If the Netherlands decided to do this, that would be their business and no one else’s. Foreigners could get snotty that Holland shouldn’t be granting right of return based on adherence to a religion but tough, that’s Holland’s business.
Jews have a right of return to Israel because Israel as a sovereign country says so. No other world entity enforces that on Israel’s behalf. So I don’t get the grumbling about how only Jews get a right of return based on their ancestry or religion. That’s Israel’s choice, just as it could be Holland’s choice to give right of return to Dutch Reformers but not Lutherans. For obvious reasons the Israeli Government doesn’t want to extend that right to all other people who claim that their ancestors used to live in the region. It is disingenuous to express puzzlement and hurt feelings that only Jews however defined do. Israel will never be a secular state without a Jewish majority and that inherent feature of the Zionist project is OK by me.
Zionist but not Jewish, and I will accept Zionist as a label even insofar as it it is said to imply the vision of Jewish hegemony and displacement of others in the lands of its 1948 borders….if Israel determines it to be in its interest to thus settle those lands. (And I understand that not all Jewish Israelis believe this to be so, but that’s Israel’s Government’s call to make.)
In this regard, anti-Zionism reduces to antisemitism because Zionism, developed according to the Government of Israel’s pragmatic analysis of the risks and benefits, is what keeps the antisemites from winning.
It is a bizarre argument that because a sovereign country does it, I´m not allowed to criticize it. Many countries have discriminated or expelled Jews and many continue to discriminate against them today. That should be criticized. The fact that a legal government does it, does not make it right. After all, the current US government is legitimately elected, but I would hope the world criticizes its policies.
Further you literally say you accept ethnic cleansing with these words, ¨I will accept Zionist as a label even insofar as it it is said to imply the vision of Jewish hegemony and displacement of others in the lands of its 1948 borders….if Israel determines it to be in its interest to thus settle those lands… but that’s Israel’s Government’s call to make.¨ Purposefully displacing a group of people based on ethnicity or religion is a war crime. I am not saying Israel is doing that, but you literally state it is OK to do so in the name of Zionism if Israel decides it is in their interest!
So if the US bestowed automatic right of citizenship to WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) immigrants and nobody else, that would be totally fine? Nobody would worry about Christian Nationalism rearing its head?
Furthermore, if you were against the US favoring WASP individuals by law, you’d be labeled a nasty word akin to racism?
Do the Jews really want that? Do they want Germany legally favoring ethnically “German” Christians (only German Protestants or Catholics) that are “properly German”?
As much as I get the annoyance about Antisemitism hiding behind Antizionism, the equation does way more damage than the separation.
I think that Ireland has a similar policy: if one can prove any sort of Irish ancestry, then one can become an Irish citizen. That means that the Irish can’t really complain when someone whose ancestors emigrated centuries ago, has never been to the country, and knows nothing about it, claims “I’m Irish”.
Ethnic cleansing is a term coined by the Bosnian Serbs during the war in the former Yugoslavia as a euphemism for genocide. Ethnic cleansing itself, the displacement of a people from land they are currently living on is not a war crime, nor is it included in the UN Convention on Genocide, as long as the displacement is not done in such a way as to make it likely they will be killed in the large numbers that would amount to genocide, and as long as the children of the target population are not transferred forcibly into the aggressor population.
Everyone condemns ethnic cleansing, but almost everyone on the planet, including me, lives on land that former inhabitants were displaced from, either bit by bit or en masse, by skullduggery, by force, or “an offer they couldn’t refuse”, aka a Treaty. So I have no problem with ethnic cleansing as long as we are decent about it and give the target population the opportunity to make nice and assimilate. Canada “cleared the plains”, to adapt the title of a book by James Daschuk, to make way for the Pacific Railway and the sodbusters who put the grasslands under wheat. If two men covet the same tract of land and they can’t share it, they have to be enemies. Nation-building is ugly. We should really stop doing it, I suppose….
You can criticize whatever you like. It’s a free country. I’m just trying to point out the argument your criticism rests on doesn’t hold water.
I believe that ethnic cleansing is a war crime under Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, which has to do with the forced transfer of peoples.
Sorry, can’t watch. Few people I despise more than that antisemitic dog faced fraud M.H.
I know Melanie’s arguments and I agree with them.
D.A.
NYC
Sorry, can’t watch. Few people I despise more than that antisemitic dog faced fraud M.H.
I know Melanie’s arguments and I agree with them.
D.A.
NYC
Worth posting twice!
Wikipedia takeover by gang of antisemitic pro-Hamas Islamists exposed:
https://www.neutralpov.com/p/wikipedia-bans-gang-of-40-editor
So, they banned 1/40th of the problem?
I initially came to post something similar to #2 from Matt. However, upon repeated listening, the definition of Zionism Ms. Phillips used is “The self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland of Israel”. Jewish people – like all people – should have the right of self-determination everywhere. Therefore it follows, that Zionism cannot be ethically opposed easily. This smells like a motte and bailey tactic.
That definition, however, is quite a step removed from the right of a Jewish State of Israel to exist in its current (or expanded) borders – though that’s how it is usually (and I think also by the Ms. Phillips) used. In addition, her definition also implicitly requires the acceptance that “people” have “ancient homelands” and we start treading quickly into territory occupied by Xi and Putin (9-dash-line and Ukrainians are actually Russian respectively).
As I have said before, if I oppose religious states (i.e. a state that is not secular and legally favors one religion over others) or if I oppose ethno states (i.e. a state that legally favors one culture/ethnicity over another), I would be Antizionist by definition (for the definition of Zionism that wants a specifically Jewish state of Israel where it is). Therefore saying that Antizionism = Antisemitism makes me (for the second time in as many weeks) an Antisemite. As a German with culturally ingrained disdain for antisemitism, I prefer antisemitism not to go the way of racism. I say that, since I have become desensitized to be called a racist by certain people.
-258 words
Israel has no official religion or language, is not a theocracy, and gives equal political and civil rights to all its citizens. It actually favors Arab Israelis by not requiring them to military service.
The only way that it “legally favors” Jews is that it allows any Jew to move to Israel and become a citizen.
To characterize Israel as a “religious state” or an “ethno state” so you can call yourself an antisemite is really strange.
I was more referring to the special treatment of the Orthodox Jews for decades. The definition of Zionism very specifically stresses Israel as a Jewish state. What is a Jewish state, if it has neither Judaism not Jewish ethnicity as a central pillar?
I’m not saying it’s a theocracy, but it’s also not secular and agnostic to the religion of its citizens. It is clearly averse to the majority of its citizens being non-Jews – as discussions around a one-state solution show.
I’m also not calling myself an antisemite – but rather argue against the assertion that antizionism equals antisemitism since that would make me one. Since I am in favor of secular states that are indifferent to the religion of their citizens, it is only reasonable that I am against states having religious identity. A Jewish state that gives preferential treatment to the most devout / radical citizens of Jewish faith is – for me, but I’d argue for any reasonable person as well – clearly a state with a religious identity. Hence I’m implicitly against Zionism – though I have no issues with the Jews having their state and I of course support their attempt to live in peace and prosperity.
Edit:
On this website, the incursion of religion into the political sphere is a recurring topic. Zionism (from what I have read about it and how people I listen to usually use the term) pushes for an Israel where Judaism is a core pillar. Yet, for some reason, it’s fine in this particular case.
“The definition of Zionism very specifically stresses Israel as a Jewish state. What is a Jewish state, if it has neither Judaism not Jewish ethnicity as a central pillar?”
I do not think your definition of Zionism is accurate. Zionism was the effort to give self-determination to the Jewish people in their historical homeland.
in 2018, the Knesset passed a “Basic Law” (their form of Constitutional law) entitled “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People”, which “defines Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people” in which they exercise their natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self‑determination, and it states that the right to national self‑determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.
That is not exactly a “Jewish state”, since there is no official National religion, the Arabic language is given special status, and the religious rights of all peoples are preserved. The civil and religious rights of all citizens are preserved regardless of their ethnicity or religion with the exception that Arab citizens are also given a special right – their conscription to the military is optional. Which was also true for the Haredi, until recently. So, special compensation was not given just to Jews, and Jews may well lose that right.
I was wrong about a national language – Hebrew is now the official language of Israel as of 2018. And yet Arabic has “existing language rights preserved”, what ever that means.
You say Israel is “not secular”. Yet, it does not have an official or state religion, is not a theocracy, has no penalties of taxes for religions. I do not see how that is not a secular state.
As usual, Israel is very unusual, and defies easy classification. To imply that it is an ethnostate like other ethnostates with official religions (usually Muslim) with reduced rights for certain citizens or religions is simply not kosher. The core principle of Israel is not Judaism, it is the settlement of Jewish people in their homeland.
An authoritative translation of the new Basic law is Here:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/final-text-of-jewish-nation-state-bill-set-to-become-law/
To your reply to me, Roger,
Forced transfer, yes, such as herding into boats with armed guards, or creating conditions that non-combatants will leave to escape famine, pogroms, or drowning. Dispossession of land so the conquering power can settle it (and the displaced will pull up stakes for greener pastures wherever they can find them) is not specifically prohibited. However, ‘the International Committee of the Red Cross has expressed the opinion, “that international humanitarian law prohibits the establishment of settlements, as these are a form of population transfer into occupied territory”‘ (Wikipedia). This opinion would seem to evaporate if the territory under discussion is in fact sovereign and not “occupied”. The ICRC is not a court or a legislative body, so its opinion is just that.
Israel might well determine that the cost of settling Judea and Samaria against international opprobrium, even though they were within Israel’s 1948 borders, isn’t worth it. So be it.
There is another, grimmer angle. Palestinian spokesmen say they endorse making all of Palestine Judenrein. This implies that they themselves would not observe any part of Article 49 in respect of Jews. If a belligerent indicates that he is not binding himself to the Geneva Conventions, his enemies don’t have to observe it themselves in their interaction with him. (They should wherever they can, so they don’t become what they oppose.) This could give Israel a free hand in forcible transfer of an enemy whose civilians were pledging to obey the Prophet’s orders to do the same to it, or worse, if they got the chance.
The Geneva Conventions hope to deter war by making it difficult to win one without fighting dirty. But if your existence depends on winning a war that your enemy started, you have to be willing to fight dirty if that’s what it takes, no matter what the international community of antisemites and its Conventions think of you.
To answer your questions specifically to me above, FXK,
Yes. If that’s what the American people acting through their elected legislature wanted to do, they can enact any immigration law they like, exclude any group or individual they wish. If you don’t like the U.S. Government’s immigration policies you can protest them outside the U.S. embassy in Berlin. The most that will happen is you will be put on a list called “Foreigners not to be Granted Entry into the U.S.”
The United States might embrace that, for all I know. Again, it’s up to Americans.
As to what the Jews want, you’ll have to ask them. Self-determination, you know.
The US can decide to do with their internal policies what they want – though I’m free to disagree with them.
However, is the decline of secularism really something, that the Jews – who are a religious minority everywhere but in Israel – really want to condone? Historically, it got quite nasty for the Jews in nations where religion was strong politically. I don’t want to see that and I see the separation of state and religion as part of the toolbox that protects religious minorities.
The war is now over, and things have calmed down a bit.
Let me just say that it would be perfectly possible for a state in the levant to have both Jewish and Muslim residents (the latter in this case very probably also being of Jewish ancestry). I know that people probably wouldn’t like me to comment on it, but it is the most reasonable solution.
People who lived in the territory all their lives also have a connection to that territory and they have no less right to live there. Do you want to send the Palestinians into the diaspora instead?
Israel already has 20% Muslim residents. What would not be possible is for, say, Gaza and Israel to form one state. And you apparently don’t know the history of Israel, which offered Arab residents the right to stay if they didn’t fight the Jews. Most Arabs fled because the countries attacking Israel told them to. Read up on some history.