Opinion

It’s all about eliminationism

There is two-stage subversion project at work against Israel and its Zionist-base ideology. The first stage seeks to cozy up, in a sense, and to equalize, falsely, two movements: Zionism and Palestinianism.

Palestinian protesters during clashes with Israeli forces along the border with Gaza on May 11, 2018. Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
Palestinian protesters during clashes with Israeli forces along the border with Gaza on May 11, 2018. Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
Yisrael Medad, Credit: Courtesy.
Yisrael Medad
Yisrael Medad is an American-born Israeli journalist, author and former director of educational programming at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. A graduate of Yeshiva University, he made aliyah in 1970 and has since held key roles in Israeli politics, media and education. A member of Israel’s Media Watch executive board, he has contributed to major publications, including The Los Angeles Times, The Jerusalem Post and International Herald Tribune. He and his wife, who have five children, live in Shilo.

There is two-stage subversion project at work against Israel and its Zionist-base ideology. The first stage seeks to cozy up, in a sense, and to equalize, falsely, two movements: Zionism and Palestinianism. If we are “equal,” then we are the “same.”

Here is a first-stage formulation:

… you [Israel] will never be free until the Palestinians are …

That has an emotional as well as philosophical/moral message. “We” are just like “you.” And for “you” to be really “you,” “we must be “we.”

If that reads a bit confused, that is the point. Who among our younger generation of students and young adults will not be taken by that phraseology?

The second stage, pushed after they have confounded and weakened the support for Israel and Zionism, is the type of “freedom/liberation” they intend to achieve?

Having unmoored their target audience from Jewish history, our religion and ethnic community national identity and the chronicles of the Jewish connection with Eretz-Yisrael (the Land of Israel) they move in for the kill, literally. They are talking about eliminationism. This is the prologue from the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel’s recent “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

We are the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, the indigenous peoples, the residents of the States [sic! we don’t have two states yet] of Israel, and an integral part of the Palestinian People and the Arab and Muslim and human Nation.

It continues:

Israel is the outcome of a settlement process initiated by the Zionist-Jewish elite in Europe and the west and realized by Colonial countries contributing to it and by promoting Jewish immigration to Palestine, in light of the results of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Are they truly “indigenous”? Where else are there “Palestinian people”? Or are those the “refugees” from 1948? How many “nations” are there? Arab, Muslim and human?

Isn’t all that, though, an echo of the Palestine National Covenant?

Article 1:
Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.

Article 2:
Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.

To highlight how they first establish “equality” between Zionist and Palestinian, ask yourselves if you could imagine the Knesset adding to that Jewish Nationality Bill this, from that Palestinian Covenant (original wording crossed out):

Article 7:
Jews Non-Jews of Palestinian Land of Israel origin are considered Palestinians Israelis if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine Israel.

What is prohibited to we Jews/Zionists—and labeled imperialist, colonialist, etc.—is quite permitted to the Arabs-called-Palestinians. That the Arabs in the seventh century were imperialists, colonialists, and yes, even occupiers, is ignored.

And therein lies the deadly trap.

First, they attack ideologically. Then they present a false history and reality. And after that, they make their seemingly logical demands, which are but a repeat of the Mufti and Arafat’s denial and destruction program.

Another declaration of national essence of the Arabs of Israel, the “Haifa Document,” refers to their “identity truncated into a misshapen ‘Israeli Arab’ one.” Composed by so-called elite intellectuals, they cannot break free from a century-old misreading of Jewish national identity as well as a corruption of the historical record:

Towards the end of the 19th century, the Zionist movement initiated its colonial-settler project in Palestine. Subsequently, in concert with world imperialism and with the collusion of the Arab reactionary powers, it succeeded in carrying out its project, which aimed at occupying our homeland and transforming it into a state for the Jews.

They, too, engage in revolutionary progressive language, writing of an

“historic reconciliation” that

requires … Israel to recognize the historical injustice that it
committed against the Palestinian people through its

establishment, to accept responsibility for the Nakba …
recognizing the Right of Return … and recognizing
the rights

of Palestinian citizens in Israel, which derive from being a homeland minority

And by “homeland,” they mean Israel is really “Palestine.” And it will eventually, they intend, to replace Israel.

Our Jewish university student, our young adult and all too often our Jewish-establishment lay leadership are lured by such language and cannot grasp what is developing. And they are quite upset at Israel’s chutzpah not to be, in any verbal formulation and in any practical sense, to yield before such eliminationist programming.

And if you fellow Jews feel uncomfortable or even “betrayed” by our behavior, we’ll forgive you in the end.

Yisrael Medad is an American-born Israeli journalist and author.

The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.
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