Wednesday, March 19, 2014

The right to a Jewish nation

Dror Eydar

What hasn't the Left done to sustain the fantasy they've been promoting? The other side of that fantasy is flinging it in our faces: We aren't interested in an end to the conflict; we do not recognize the right of the Jewish people to any sliver of the State of Israel, not even to the Florentin neighborhood in the heart of Tel Aviv. All of it comprises an Islamic waqf belonging to the Palestinians, who have existed since God created the world.
(This week, new revelations about the Big Bang theory were published. Immediately, it was asked, "Who caused the Big Bang?" What kind of question is that? The Palestinians.)
But on the Left, business as usual. Nahum Barnea was lamenting over the outcome of the last nine months of negotiations, writing, "Every gamble has two parties, a swindler and a fool. That also applies to the Israeli-Palestinain conflict; and in this case, our prime minister is not the fool." Barnea is an expert at injecting venom into his political enemies, but the depth of depravity in his writing represents his fundamental standing alongside the Palestinians. Poor little Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, he wrote, he could have lied as Arafat did, but he chose integrity, proclaiming, "First of all, no!" Then, alas, he "fell into the trap."

So what are Saeb Erekat, Nabil Shaath or the rest of these "Israel lovers" to us, when so many Israeli journalists have accepted the Ramallah group's narrative anyway -- namely, that Israel is just toying with the Palestinians and isn't actually interested in peace. It is no accident that Barnea used the term "gamble." It's what members of his circle have been doing for years: betting on our future because they're in a hurry to get rid of the "territories," as they've nicknamed our beloved country.
Let's go over this again: The demand to recognize the Jewish state is not caprice. It marks the core, the root of the conflict over the 20th century: Do the Jews have a right as a nation to a part of this land? If there's no recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the conflict will persist even after the ratification of an overdue "peace deal." If Israel is not the country of the Jewish people, indeed Jews have no right to any of its territory. The Israelis are marauders, colonialists, even within Israel's narrow boundaries.
Because of this, the international boycott movement and the scores of left-wing organizations will continue the battle inside the little State of Israel -- and here too the despicable "apartheid" claim will be thrown around; after all, there is a 20-percent non-Jewish population in Israel, and the Law of Return applies only to Jews. Although Arabs have equal civil rights, they have no national rights, and that's where the demand for an autonomous status for Israeli Arabs comes in -- the Jews do not have national rights over "little Israel." A democratic, Jewish state will be defined as racist ethnocentrism (Haaretz already refers to Israel this way), and voices around the world calling to transform Israel into "a state of all its nationalities" and remove official Jewish characteristics from the public sphere will gain traction.
* * *
"What will you do with a 21-percent Palestinian population?" Shaath asked on the radio. This is a widespread lie. The figure relates to different minorities -- Muslims, Christians, Circassians, Druze and more, many of whom do not identify with the Palestinians. But let us, just for the sake of it, ponder "what we will do with them": They already get equal civil rights, much more than other Arabs in the Middle East. And the fact is that they do not want Palestinian citizenship.
But the national right in Israel belongs to one nation alone, and it is the only country that belongs to this people the world over: the Jews. Recognizing that is an extremely important condition for concluding this conflict and putting an end to further demands. It is a litmus test for testing the integrity of Palestinian intentions. Refusing to recognize this should signal the catalyst propelling this conflict's existence. It is not about territory, but our legitimate existence as the Jewish nation in our land. Don't you understand?

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