What’s in a Name? The Jews-only State in Palestine.
Updated March 5th 2006
This article is a personal account of my reasons for using the phrase ‘Jews-only state in Palestine’ in preference to commonly accepted phrases such as ‘the Israeli state’ or ‘the Israeli government’. The catalyst for the change in terminology was a political protest. In September 2001 Jack Straw, the left-leaning British foreign minister, went on a tour of Middle Eastern countries in order to ascertain whether there was any common ground for reviving peace negotiations in Palestine. He promptly ran straight into a zionist brick wall. While he was on tour a letter he’d written prior to the tour was published and members of Ariel Sharon’s cabinet reacted to it with rage. "Mr straw, who started a four day tour of the middle east yesterday, prompted controversy by writing a letter in which he twice referred to Palestine. The Israelis do not recognize the term for that part of the middle east. An Israeli cabinet minister called Mr Straw’s comments an "obscenity" which, he said, turned Israel from the victim of terrorism into the accused." (Mirror 25.9.2001 p.5). In what would have been an unprecedented political rebuff, Ariel Sharon refused to meet him. The meeting went ahead only after the personal intervention of Tony Blair who agreed that henceforth his foreign secretary would comply with Sharon’s wishes. "The row began when Mr Straw said anger over the plight of the Palestinians was helping to breed terror. He also referred to Palestine, a term Israel does not recognize. Downing street said "no offence was intended" by Mr Straw’s remarks. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said the government will go back to referring to the "Palestinian controlled authorities" instead of Palestine. Mr Straw said, "I stand very firmly against the terrorism which the Israeli people have suffered."" (Mirror 26.9.2001 p.5). Just in case this might be thought to have been solely a matter between Britain and the Jews-only state it ought to be pointed out that according to one commentator, "(Jack Straw) dares to say the "P" word - Palestine - which Washington fights shy of." (Paul Routledge Mirror 26.9.2001 p.5).
Despite my long acquaintanceship with middle east politics, I was shocked to learn of a ban on the word ‘Palestine’. How was it going to be possible to bring peace to Palestine when Jewish racists were able to force western governments to stop using the name of the country to which those governments were trying to bring peace? Thereafter, as a personal political protest, I stopped using the phrases ‘Israeli state’ or ‘Israeli government’. I tried various replacements such as ‘the Zionist state in Palestine’ before settling on the admittedly rather ugly, and convoluted, phrase ‘the Jews-only state in Palestine’ or ‘Jews-only state’ for short. I thought it objectionable to allow racists to define which concepts I should use. The use of racist concepts such as ‘the Israeli state’ makes racism seem normal and thus politically acceptable. Incidentally, Jack Straw returned to England a politically chastened man and thereafter never failed to reiterate the zionist line emanating from the Jews-only state.
At the time I decided to stop using the word ‘Israel’ I supported the United Nations’ two state solution to the conflict in Palestine. I then came across an article by Joseph Massad proposing a single state solution. Without realizing it, I’d become so conditioned into supporting the conventional two-state solution it took me a long time to think through the merits of his arguments and change my mind. The more I agreed with Massad, the more redundant terms like ‘Israel’ and ‘Israeli state’ seemed to become. This added to the political necessity for finding an alternative formulation.
One of the alternative phrases which attracted my attention was "the Jewish state". Its implication of a monocultural state seemed to correctly convey the Jewish racism rampant in Palestine. And yet gradually I realized the phrase was not merely far from satisfactory but highly dangerous. It was a phrase used by Jewish racists to indicate their desire for the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The big political advantage of their use of the phrase was that to non-racists it created a favourable impression of the Jews-only state as being as harmless as the British state or the French state. It implied ‘the Jewish state’ was as multi-cultural as Britain and France. But ‘the Jewish state’ is not multi-cultural - members of different cultures do not have exactly the same rights. On the contrary, it is a racist state. Jewish racists were thus cleverly using the phrase to parade their racist goals whilst camoflauging the racist nature of the Jewish state behind benign connotations of multi-culturalism. Whilst it was transparent that a Jews-only state was a Jewish state, it was not at all transparent that a Jewish state was a Jews-only state. There is surely something wrong with racists and anti-racists sharing a common terminology.
I began using the phrase ‘Jews-only state in Palestine’ because it explicitly denotes an apartheid state. The Jews-only state denies Palestinians in the Jews-only state the same rights as Jews. The use of the phrase Israeli Palestinians was being used to deceive the world into believing that the Palestinians inside the Jews-only state had the same rights as Jews. Even today there are anti-zionists in the peace movement who promote the idea that Palestinians and Jews have the same rights within the Jews-only state. Whether these peace activists are ignorant of the truth or zionists just pretending to be Jews in order to promote zionist propaganda is difficult to say. But, either way, they shouldn’t be allowed in the peace movement. Of course, Palestinians in the occupied territories have no rights, and thus no protection, from the Jews-only state. For instance, the Jews-only state in Palestine has recently decreed the newly elected Hamas government to be part of an axis of evil and has thus embarked on a policy of crippling the Palestinians’ economy in order to starve them into submission and perhaps even forceing them to leave their own country.
Another benefit of the phrase Jews-only state was its historical accuracy. The Jews-only state is becoming increasingly a state only for Jews. Ever since the establishment of the Jews-only state Palestine has been acquiring an increasingly Jewish identity whilst correspondingly losing its Palestinian identity. For example, Palestinian villages have been demolished and all traces of Palestinians’ connection to the land deliberately eradicated. Even to this day Palestinian property homes continue to be expropriated and demolished. The Jews then build new homes to give the land a Jewish identity. Jennifer Loewenstein indicates the variety of ways in which the Jews-only state is removing all traces of Palestinian existence from Palestine. "With every new brick laid for the settlements, every new road paved to Ariel, Maale Adumim, Illit, Gush Etzion and beyond, with every permit denied for work, education, medical care and travel, every truck left waiting with rotting produce at Sufa and Karni, every tax and customs dollar stolen from a people interned on their own land, Israel parades its contempt for human decency and gets standing ovations in the US Congress and elsewhere." (Jennifer Loewenstein ‘Watching the Dissolution of Palestine’ http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein02242006.html February 24, 2006). Palestinians, whether inside or outside the Jews-only state, now own far less land in Palestine than they did in the past. Even if Palestinians still own land within occupied areas, the squatter state has placed so many restrictions on their freedom of movement that Palestinians’ attachment to their property is being increasingly severed.
Historically, the Jews-only state is also increasing the political rights of Jews whilst decreasing the political rights of Palestinians. Eventually the Palestinians trapped inside the Jews-only state will be made as stateless as the Palestinians outside the Jews-only state, "Here we are really talking about almost genocide, in the future. Although I don’t think this will really happen and I hope that the world will not stand aside. But for the Palestinians in Israel, where this danger is not that imminent, the future means even less rights, social rights, civil rights, human rights, than they have now. They still have limited of these, but it will become worst. The Jewish state will become more ethnic, more racist, more exclusive, and anyone who is not a Jew, or is not regarded as Jew, will suffer from it more in the future than he or she suffers today." (Prof. Ilan Pappe quoted in Steve Zeltzer ‘Ilan Pappe on the Israel-Palestine conflict’ Labor Video Project cable TV program http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=16276 October 29, 2005).
The phrase Jews-only state is also more politically accurate than its alternatives in the sense that it implies there are many Jewish racists in Palestine, and around the world, who want to deport, or exterminate, the Palestinians still left in Palestine. Genevieve Cora Fraser is but the latest commentator to conclude that the Jews are intent on genocide against the Palestinians. "If Israel gets its way, how long will it be before Palestine is in a similar situation – especially if, once again, Israel unleashes a reign of terror through unrelenting military assault? For nearly six decades Palestinians have been systematically ethnically cleaned - driven off their land, and Israel has all too often prevented food deliveries as well as access to medicines and water (as documented by hundreds of UN Resolutions against Israel). However, the complete economic deprivation that Israel insists on, in this writer’s opinion, is far beyond a slap in the face at democracy by refusing to acknowledge a Hamas-led government, but an attempt to commit genocide against the Palestinian people." (Genevieve Cora Fraser ‘Israeli Defense Minister Declares Palestine "Axis of Evil" http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb06/Fraser23.htm February 23rd 2006). Yes indeed, for some Jews the best way to eradicate the stigma of living in an apartheid state would be to remove all traces of Palestinians from Palestine!
What adds to the legitimacy of the phrase ‘Jews-only state in Palestine’ is a tendency amongst Jews in the west to set up ‘Jews-only’ organizations. In Britain, there is ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians’; ‘Jews Against Zionism’; ‘Jews for a Just Peace’; ‘the Jewish Socialists Group’. In Scotland, ‘Scottish Jews for a Just Peace’. In America, ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’. A new organization has just been formed called ‘Jews against anti-Christian Defamation’. It’s objective is to do for Christians what the Anti-Defamation League has done for Jews! Is it possible we’re now going to get Jews spying, and compiling files, on Americans for the sake of protecting Christianity? These are just groups I’ve come across by accident so it has to be wondered how many more could be found with a bit of research. Personally, I’d never come across so many examples of political separatism outside of feminists’ women-only groups.
The above mentioned groups are not blatantly jewish supremacist organizations like the World Zionist Organization or AIPAC dedicated to furthering the political dominion of Jews around the world. On the contrary, some are supposedly pro-Palestinian; others avowedly anti-zionist. But there is a self-evident common denominator between the Jews-only state and Jews-only organizations. Beyond the common elements of separatism and exclusivism, however, it has to be wondered how much the specialness or even supremacism of the former is dripping into the assumptions of the Jews in the latter organizations.
Paul Oestreicher seems to have personal knowledge of some of those involved in a Jews-only organization which dispels any misgivings he might have had towards such organizations, "In Britain, Jews for Justice for Palestinians organises to give Jewishness a human face. Tell them they are anti-semites and they will laugh bitterly, for the charge hurts deeply and is a lie." (Paul Oestreicher ‘Israel's policies are feeding the cancer of anti-semitism’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329416218-103552,00.html February 20, 2006). Despite Oestreicher’s moral authority his personal ratification of Jews-only organizations is not going to make the doubts disappear. Jews-only organizations raise a host of questions about their real agenda. Why do Jews feel a need to organize by themselves? What are they hiding? What are they frightened about? Are they trying to promote a sense of Jewish victimhood? Why can’t they organize an anti-apartheid movement in which everyone could help to fight Jewish racism? Are they secretly trying to nullify Jewish opposition to the Jews-only state? Are they radical gatekeepers for criticisms of the Jews-only state? What are the benefits of excluding non-Jews? The questions go on and on. At the very least, non-Jews are going to waste time pondering on what these organizations are really up to. There is also the problem that such organizations will distract attention from the causes for which they are allegedly fighting. At worst, they are going to breed suspicion and mistrust. It is virtually impossible for such Jews-only exclusivism not to raise doubts about latent supremacism especially given the supremacism of Jewish racists in the Jews-only state. It is absurd for Jews-only organizations to copy the practices of the Jews-only state and then expect non-Jews to believe they are opposed to the Jews-only state. Israel Shamir’s quip about such organizations exposes their preposterous political stance, "The concept of Jews for Justice, Jews for Peace and other separatist all-Jewish groups in pursuit of common goals appears to me about as justifiable as that of Whites against Apartheid. Equality in South Africa was achieved by overcoming such dubious groupings, by the color-blind force of the ANC. It appears that the cause of justice in Palestine should not be different. Why, then, such groups exist?" (Israel Shamir ‘The New Bund at Old Tricks’ http://www.israelshamir.net/Left/Left1.htm July 11th 2005).
Jeff Blankfort also questions such organizations but from a different perspective, "In this country it has been used to silence so many people. And this is one of the reasons I am against specifically Jewish organizations wanting to lead the fight for Palestine. What happens is that there are many anti-Zionist Jews, or who claim to be anti-Zionist, who say "we, as anti-Zionists Jews, should provide the leadership so that other people will see that not all the Jews are for Israel". And I am totally against that because all Americans pay their taxes and thus support Israel. And this is an American issue. And by putting it out that Jews are the leaders, that Jews, anti Zionists Jews are doing this, what it says to non-Jews is: they can do this because they are Jewish. It has been tried, so far it has been a failure." (Jeffrey Blankfort quoted in Réseau Voltaire ‘The Chomsky/Blankfort Polemic’ http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/editorials/signs_TheChomskyBlankfortPolemic.php February 20, 2006).
The phrase ‘Jews-only state’ also acquires legitimacy because it encompasses the phenomenon of the holocaust industry’s myopic transformation of totalitarian slaughters during the 1930s and 1940s into a Jews-only slaughter. As someone who still regards the works of Hannah Arendt as being of profound political and historical significance, the massacre of Jews has to be understood within the broader context of the rise and fall of totalitarianism. During the lifetime of totalitarianism tens of millions of people were killed. However, today ask any British person (and probably any westerner) what they understand by ‘the Holocaust’ and they will almost invariably regurgitate "the slaughter of six million Jews". Although the nazis sent Jews, Communists, POWs, the aged, the sick, homosexuals, Seven Day Adventists, Slavs, Serbs, Czechs, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, Gypsies, etc. into the concentration and extermination camps, the holocaust industry has transformed this avalanche of death into a Jews-only slaughter. Uri Avnery has described the way that many Jews have come to believe that Jews were the only people killed by the nazis or, even worse, that amongst those slaughtered the only people that mattered were Jews. "The centrality of the Holocaust in Jewish consciousness caused the Jews to insist on its absolute exclusiveness. We are shocked and furious when somebody tries to remind us that the Nazis exterminated other communities too, such as the Roma, the homosexuals and the mentally ill. We get very angry when somebody comes and compares "our" Holocaust with other genocides: Armenians, Cambodians, Tutsis in Ruanda and others. Really! How can one compare?" (Uri Avnery ‘Memory of the Holocaust - from Jewish property into human possession’ http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives.html#articles March 19th 2005). The highly profitable Shoah business has transformed totalitarianism into a racist Jews-only holocaust.
A huge number of British people were killed during the second world war. It was one of the biggest losses the country has ever suffered. Since that disaster the British media has continually produced documentaries about, or dramas set against the backdrop of, the second world war. The British try to remember their losses, they honour their war dead each year, and celebrate their military victories which brought peace to Europe. And yet despite these losses, and there are still many people alive today who lost relatives or friends because of the war, despite the continual remembrance of those dark days, if you ask British people what is meant by ‘The Holocaust’ they will overlook their own history, their own suffering, and their own losses, and say, "The slaughter of six million Jews." Perhaps this concern for other people rather than themselves is just a product of the compassion of the British people. But it has to be suspected that this is not true. The British show next to no interest in the horrendous losses suffered by the Russians during the rise and fall of totalitarianism. It has been estimated that around twenty million Russians died during this time. In other words, three times more Russians were killed than Jews and yet nobody in Britain, or the west, ever mentions a Russian holocaust, or thinks about 20 million dead Russians, and there is no Russian Holocaust Day in Britain. This situation is even more anomalous since it could be argued that if the Russians had not sacrificed their lives in such vast numbers to defend themselves against, and help to defeat, the nazis then it is quite possible Britain would have lost the war. The British people therefore owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Russian people. And yet amazingly even though the Russians did far, far more than the Jews to help Britain in the war British people are not even aware of the need to feel any gratitude to the Russians but instead devote their sympathies to the Jews caught up in the so-called Holocaust.
As a student I was an enthusiastic supporter of Hannah Arendt’s works ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ and ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’. I believe these works are still valid and I have not yet come across an author who has a better interpretation of the events leading to the rise and fall of totalitarianism or a better political analysis of this novel form of government. I remain confident about the facts she presented and on her political theory of totalitarianism. In the past I looked upon revisionists with contempt. However, after reading Norman Finkelstein’s book on the holocaust industry I became much more suspicious about the conventional view of the past and when I re-read Arendt’s great works I’ll keep in mind some revisionist questions to check the validity of her facts and analysis. I remain confident about the historical veracity of her works. I am not what I would call an empirical revisionist or an empirical holocaust denier. In other words, I do not challenge the facts about the rise and fall of totalitarianism. However, I have become a conceptual revisionist or a conceptual holocaust denier. What I deny, or more accurately condemn, is ‘the Holocaust’ as a Jews-only slaughter. Such a concept is inherently racist. I would indeed wear a badge "Conceptual Holocaust Denier" with pride.
Totalitarianism is fading into the past but it has undergone a vital distillation so that politically it serves as a fundamental lesson of history, a warning of political dangers that ought to be avoided. However the slaughter of the Jews is not fading into the past. On the contrary, it has been hyped up out of all proportion, like a Hollywood blockbuster, into ‘The Holocaust’. Political emotions over the issue are constantly being fanned until it has become a fanatical secular crusade sucking everyone in the western world into a vortex of hysteria or guilt. Throughout his life Ariel Sharon denounced everyone who disagreed with him as a new Hitler – he even denounced George WMD Bush as a Chamberlain. Every single anti-Jewish comment no matter how mild or innocent is instantly reported to Jewish authorities and converted into cast iron evidence that the concentration camps are on their way back. These days whenever someone mentions ‘The Holocaust’ as the slaughter of six million Jews I usually retort ‘And what about the Jewish dehumanization, demonization, of six million Palestinians?’ It is the height of human folly to allow Holocaust propaganda to reach such levels of pathological irrationality that it can be used to bring about the genocide of six million Palestinians who played absolutely no part in the slaughter of Jews during the rise and fall of totalitarianism. Sympathy for the suffering of the Jews in the long distant past cannot under any circumstances be allowed to condone what the Jews-only state is currently doing to Palestinians. There is a clear difference between keeping the past alive as a guide to a civilized future and using it as a cudgel to re-enact the past. Jewish racists in the Jews only state are inflicting on the Palestinians what the nazis inflicted on European Jews. They are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from nazis. They cannot be allowed to play out their nazi nightmares on an innocent people such as the Palestinians.
The phrase ‘Jews-only state’ is also superior to its alternatives in that it possesses obvious overtones from other apartheid systems where public signs such as ‘Blacks-only’ or ‘Whites-only’ were commonly in evidence. Considering the degree to which many Jews around the world have tried to pretend that the Jews-only state in Palestine is nothing like the former apartheid state in South Africa, the phrase ‘Jews-only state’ makes such a comparison unavoidable. It might also draw attention to the fact that a great deal of support for the racist Jews-only state currently emanates from former apartheid states in America’s deep south.
Of course, Jews are free to define their state in whatever way they think fit. But I have no desire to use their concepts and provide them with any terminological justification for their illegal, murderous, racist, and genocidal, state. The Jews-only state, and its Jewish allies in the west, proclaims itself to be a modern, secular, liberal, democratic, western state but it is easy to dismiss such claims. It is time to get more fundamental and challenge the name that racist Jews give to their state. I believe the phrase ‘the Jews-only state’ is much more historically, politically, and morally, precise than the alternatives.
For a more in depth look at the Jews-only phenomenon please see
‘The Jews-Only State in Palestine: The Utter Filth of Jews-only Racism’
http://www.geocities.com/carbonomics/MCtfirm/10tf26/10tf26mg.html
The same work also appears on my blog site at
http://mundiclub.blogspot.com/2005/03/jews-only-state-in-palestine-part-one.html
Commentators Highlighting Jews-Only Phenomena.
Edward S. Herman."Second, the Israeli state has been allowed to ignore numerous Security Council resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding its occupation of the West Bank, as well as the International Court of Justice ruling on its apartheid wall, and simply dispossess the Palestinians of a large fraction of their land and water, demolish thousands of their homes, cut down many thousands of their olive trees, destroy their infrastructure, and create a modern network of roads through the occupied West Bank for Jews only while imposing serious obstacles to Palestinian movement within the West Bank." (Edward S. Herman ‘Western Approval for Long-Term Israeli Ethnic Cleansing’ Z Magazine March 2006).
Jennifer Loewenstein.
"Judea and Samaria which are, or were, the northern and southern West Bank, have been subdivided and parceled out over decades to hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers for their houses and orchards and gardens. They have been crisscrossed and circled with Jewish-only roads that bind the land, the houses and orchards and gardens, to Israel. They have been manned with guards and gunmen and tanks and blue and white Israeli flags that defend, protect and assure the settlers, their houses and orchards and gardens, that they are in fact Israelis belonging to a single Jewish state." (Jennifer Loewenstein ‘Watching the Dissolution of Palestine’ http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein02242006.html February 24, 2006).
Ilan Pappe.
"Israel controls the life of two groups of Palestinians: there are the Palestinians citizens inside Israel and there are the Palestinians under Occupation. These are very two different groups. I think the group under Occupation is under grave threat, there is still a very serious possibility that this people will be ethnically cleansed, once again, and that mass killing will be performed against it." (Prof. Ilan Pappe quoted in Steve Zeltzer ‘Ilan Pappe on the Israel-Palestine conflict’ Labor Video Project cable TV program http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=16276 October 29, 2005).
John Spritzler.
"This is why Israel makes Palestinians prisoners inside of refugee camps and inside areas surrounded by military checkpoints, why it subjects them to harsh curfews, excludes them from Jews-only roads …." (John Spritzler ‘Should People Opposed to Bigotry and Anti-Semitism Support Israel?’ http://newdemocracyworld.org/War/Should-People.htm February 6, 2005).
posted by The Mundi Club @ 11:28 AM
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