Democratic Palestine : 45 (ص 17)
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- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 45 (ص 17)
- المحتوى
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Mr. Perez De Cuellar, General Secretary United Nations
| New York, N.Y.
Dear Mr. De Cuellar,
_ Asa board member of a NGO on the Question of Palestine,
accredited a th United Nations Iwas quite shocked when —
, racism.
1 am See a few born in Falesine) in 194
fnly cohold « on {forming to your mandate, resolutions of
| the General Assembly.
Sincerely yours,
Elias Davidsson, composer
L Reykjavik, §.7 1991 |
a state with a guaranteed demographic Jewish majority, must
be rejected from a moral point of view, because it is based on
racism, and is not valid from a practical point of view, because
it is destined to fail.
The United Nations defines racism (racial discrimination)
in Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination: «In this Convention,
the term, racial discrimination, shall mean any distinction,
exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour,
descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or
effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or
exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and
fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social,
cultural or any other field of public life» (Article 1, General
Assembly Resolution 2106 A (XX), 21 December 1965).
In the State of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state in its
political Zionist meaning the cornerstones of Knesset
legislation are racist. For instance: The Absentees Property
Law on the one part and the Law of Return on the second part
(1950) are designed to guarantee a demographic majority of
citizens of Jewish origin, and deny citizenship to the
inhabitants of the country whose origin is Arab (Muslim and
Christian). The Jewish National Fund Law (1953), Israel Lands
Laws (1960) and the Covenant between the government of
Israel and the Jewish National Fund (1961) reserve 92% of the
total land area of the State of Israel in its 1967 boundaries for
Democratic Palestine, August 1991
settlement, development and lease to such inhabitants and
citizens as are of Jewish origin only.
It is proper to call a spade a spade: this is racialist, apartheid
legislation.
We ought not blind our eyes with vain casuistry: is the
meaning of «Jewish origin» Jewish religious origin, or national
origin or ethnic origin and what is exactly the subtle difference
between discrimination on the basis of religion, nationality or
ethnicity? Racial discrimination is not discrimination on the
basis of skin colour. Racial discrimination is discrimination
also on the basis of skin colour and also on the basis of origin
(offspring of a Jewish mother) and also on the basis of ethnic
origin (Ashkenazi versus Sefardi). This obtains in the language
of human beings who are committed to a universal value
system. Human beings who wish to evade or exclude themselves
from this commitment can do so only by way of serious
violation of the principles of intellectual moral integrity,
pretending that the profound discrimination between a person
recognised in law by the state as Jewish versus a person not
recognised by the state as Jewish is not racial discrimination
because it is «colour blind».
There obtains a correct consensus in the peace camp in
Israel against the occupation, against the continued Zionist
settlement in the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war,
for Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territories, for an
international peace conference under UN auspices with the
participation of ll parties concerned with the
Israeli— Palestinian conflict, including the PLO on equal
footing. Opposition to the occupation and support for the
Palestinian intifada are cornerstones for any relevant critical
position regarding the Israeli— Palestinian conflict. But
contrary to the view of many in the peace camp in Israel, the
root of the solution to the conflict and the root of the solution
to the profound structural discrimination in the State of Israel
between those recognised by the State as Jewish versus those
who are not recognised as Jewish is not found in the principle of
political and territorial separation between the State of Israel
and the State of Palestine. The root of the solution can be
found in the first instance in a clear and unequivocal distinction
between three categories:
— One legal: citizenship
— One political: nationality
— One confessional: religion
The political pretension of political Zionism was to
establish a state with a guaranteed demographic Jewish
majority; a state where the majority of its citizens have Jewish
(Israeli) citizenship, Jewish nationality and Jewish religion.
Such political pretensions as conceived by political Zionism can
be maintained — and then not for a very long period — only on
the basis of racist apartheid legislation and a regime of
occupation. Any democratic alternative must distinguish
emphatically and clearly between citizenship, nationality and
religion.
The State of Israel in whatever boundaries never was and
never will be a single nationality state. The future of the State of
Israel is contestable, but if it has a political democratic future at
all in the next decade, let alone in the next century, then it is a
future as a bi—national state without the guarantee of a
demographic majority for such of its inhabitants as are defined
today by the state as Jewish. The most feverish dreams of
transfer in the minds of Kahanists (followers of the
assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party) and Zeevists
(followers of Rehavam Zeevi’s Moledet party) or others will
not alter the destiny of the State of Israel as a bi— national
state. Any attempt to realise such criminal nightmares of
transfer will fail.
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