MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 6 June 2009
Dealing with
Netanyahu and religious fundamentalists
Fiddler
on the Roof, which played at the Walton Arts Center recently, tells of a
culture caught up in the contradictions between fundamentalist religion and
modern trends. It's largely the
tragedy of a good man blinded by religious beliefs. It could be considered a parable of modern Israel.
Following
the Hamas/Israeli war in Gaza, it seemed that the Palestine problem couldn't
get much worse. Now, with Benjamin
Netanyahu's election as Israel's Prime Minister, it's gotten worse.
Netanyahu
derides peace talks with Palestinians as a waste of time. He refuses to consider a separate
Palestinian state although the United States supports a Palestinian state. He declared last month that
"Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and
divided." This despite the
entire world's refusal to recognize Israel's illegal annexation of East
Jerusalem. He refuses to consider
the 2002 Arab peace initiative offering Israel recognition by the Arab world in
exchange for Israel's withdrawal to its 1967 borders. Worst of all, he declares that Israel will continue expanding
its settlements.
And
this guy is considered our ally?
It's
not hard to understand Israel's frustration with the Palestinians. For decades, the Arab states refused to
recognize Israel's right to exist and openly threatened them with extinction. Today, Palestine is split into two
geographical entities, the West Bank led by the Palestine Liberation
Organization's Mahmoud Abbas, and the Gaza Strip led by the PLO's rival
organization Hamas. In 2006, Hamas
trounced the PLO in Palestinian parliamentary elections, and since then it's
been unclear who really governs Palestine. Most western nations consider Hamas, which declares that
Islam will "obliterate" Israel, to be a terrorist organization. The United States and other western
nations wish to negotiate with Abbas and leave Hamas out of the proceedings.
Abbas
accepts Israel's right to exist, and a two-state solution with East Jerusalem
as Palestine's capital. He
declares Israeli attempts to control East Jerusalem a "major obstacle to
peace." Netanyahu's
belligerent stand flies in the face of the western desire to work with Abbas,
nullifies any Palestinian interest in negotiating, unwittingly supports Hamas,
and can only lead to tragedy for Israel.
As
is often the case, fundamentalist religion--belief in the literal truth of
one's religious texts--has everything to do with this. Hamas is flagrantly Islamist. Its 1988 charter quotes Mohammed from
the Muslim Hadith as follows:
"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslems fight the
Jews, killing the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say 'O
Muslems, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him'." Brilliant. The charter quotes from the infamous anti-Semitic forgery,
"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." All this is silly, and deadly.
On
the other side, the Israeli settlement movement is also driven by religious
fundamentalism. Right-wing
religious leaders greeted Israel's victory in the 1967 six-day war as a
miracle, the "beginning of Redemption," and realization of the
Biblical vision of greater Israel, including "Judea" and
"Samaria" which now comprise most of the West Bank. In 1968 the first settlers, led by the
fanatical Rabbi Moshe Levinger who was later arrested and charged at least ten
times in settlement incidents, founded a settlement in Israeli-occupied
territory near Hebron. A political
movement called Gush Emunim or "Block of the Faithful" formed in 1974
to establish illegal West Bank settlements. This movement was a leading
component of the National Religious Party, the party of the modern Orthodox
(fundamentalist) Jewish community.
Even
more radical was Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the Jewish Defense League in the
United States. During the 1970s,
JDL was consistently referred to by the FBI as a terrorist group. In Israel, Kahane established the
fascistic Kach party that used violent provocations to polarize
Palestinian-Jewish relations in order to expel Palestinians from the West Bank.
These
and other settlement leaders have been highly successful. In 2001, the current U.S. Mideast envoy
George Mitchell led a fact-finding mission that called for Israel to freeze all
settlement construction. At that
time, 195,000 Israeli settlers lived in the West Bank. Today the number is 290,000.
There
is hope, if Israel will grasp it.
In 2002 the Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, offered Israel peace,
recognition, and the establishment of permanent boundaries based on its 1967
borders. Israel owes it to the
world to take this offer seriously.
The PLO accepts a two-state solution. Such a solution should be possible if Israel has sense
enough to share Jerusalem and to immediately stop settlement expansion. The settlements have always been the
biggest sticking point in the process.
Israel must eventually move out of all of them except perhaps for a few
that border legitimate Israeli territory, trading Israeli land elsewhere on the
border for those few. All the
walls, Israeli-controlled roads, and checkpoints within the West Bank must be
removed.
In
short: Israelis must give up their
dream of a greater Israel.
It
will take time and persistence to achieve this, because we're not just dealing
with Netanyahu. It's really
Israeli public opinion that must be changed.
I fervently want Israel to succeed. For Israel's own good, and more importantly for the world's good, the United States must demand in no uncertain terms that Israel give up it expansionist desires. U.S. assistance to Israel, both financial and diplomatic, should be conditioned on an Israeli decision to give up expansionism.