DILEMMAS EXTRAORDINAIRE

August 22, 2018 at 09:14 (Associate Post, Israel, Palestine)

What will Israel do with 7 million Palestinians, expected to double their current population in 3 – 4 decades?

 Israel’s existential dilemma
 
By Khalid Amayreh

What will Israel do with 7 million Palestinians, expected to double their current population in 3 – 4 decades?
 
Observers of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have come to realize that Palestinian demographic growth within mandatory Palestine (Israel proper, the West Bank and Gaza Strip) now constitutes the most formidable strategic challenge facing the Jewish state and the Zionist movement as a whole. One Israeli strategic expert called this challenge “the mother of all problems and nightmares facing Israel.”
 
Israel doesn’t ignore the problem, of course, despite its awesome military might and the almost unlimited and unrestricted American backing. Thus the Palestinian demographic “threat” is a constant subject of often acrimonious arguments involving politicians, strategic planners as well as intellectuals, statisticians and  demographers.
 
Never the less, Israeli officials and spokespeople, especially those associated with the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s  harsh  policies toward the Palestinians, are often seen trying to dismiss the issue as just another banal challenge facing the Jewish state.
 
Israeli routinely publishes the latest demographic forecasts on the eve of major Jewish holidays, such as the Jewish New year. However these studies seem far from reliable as statistical manipulation of these studies raises the eyebrows of evenhanded professionals. For example The Palestinian population of Israel is subcategorized into Muslim Arabs,  Christian Arabs Bedouin Arabs, Druze Arabs, and Circassians.  No similar categorization  is listed or mentioned, even fleetingly, when dealing with the Jewish population, although there are many distinctive Jewish groups such as Eastern  Orthodox  Jews,  Haridi ultra-Orthodox, Western Ashkenazi Orthodox, Reform Jews, Conservative Jews,  Chabad Jews, etc.
 
It is widely believed that the ultimate aim of this tendentious manipulation is to present Jews as a united demographic bloc while portraying the Palestinians as a divided  and  heterogeneous population with many sects and sub-sects.
 
More to the point, Israel from time to time publishes politically motivated  reports about the growth of settler population in the West Bank as opposed to a purportedly dwindling Palestinian birth rate. 
 
Notwithstanding, the naked demographic facts seem so imposing and virtually udisputable   that no person valuing rectitude would deny.
 
Predictably, these facts leave a very narrow margin for optimism for Israeli expansionists and advocates of Greater Israel or the so-called biblical irredentism.
 
Last year, a group of veteran military officers raised large signs in Tel Aviv reading: “Israel is about to have an Arab majority” and “ when will Jews become a minority in the only Jewish state in the world”? The protesters, who included prominent former military commanders, also accused the Israel’s right wing government of taking the country to a bi-national state.”
 
The protesters were by no means phobic and the slogans they raised were by no means hyperbolic. They were simply voicing the views of many silent Israelis. And the driving motivation behind their activity was by no means their concern  for the Palestinians and their human or civil  rights but rather their concern for the future of Israel and Zionism.
 
Israeli intellectual Uri Avnery, who died this week at the age og 94, believes the government is hiding vital demographic data, pertaining to Jewish and Palestinian demography, from the Israeli public
 
Avnery pointed out in one of his articles several months ago that the  Palestinian population between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan was either equal to or slightly higher than the Jewish population.
 
For its part, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, a usually reliable think-tank, reported a few months ago that the Palestinian population in the West Bank. Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Israel proper was  nearly equal to the Israeli Jewish population in the same territories.
 
Palestinians will double their population in 3-4 decades
 
Palestinian as well as Israeli demographers calculate that Palestinians in mandatory Palestine will double their current population  figures within 3-4 decades due to their significantly  higher birth rate. In other words, Palestinians, baring an unthinkable  Israeli feat like expulsion  or some sort of genocide,  would become a numerical majority and Israeli Jews would become a numerical minority.
 
In addition, it is projected that in 50 years from now, Israel will be surrounded by 800 million-1 billion Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa. In other words, Israel would be reduced to  a small island in the midst of a huge sea of Arabs and Muslims.
 
Morbid dreams
 
Israel constantly  whishes  a miracle of some sort would occur and the Palestinian demographic “menace” would disappear or significantly subside. But we are talking about wishful thinking and day- dreaming which is more an expression of deep frustration than a realistic hope. It is also an expression of the deepening historical predicament facing Zionism.
 
True, Israel has always been trying to confine the largest possible Palestinian population within the smallest possible area of land. This is the reason Israeli bulldozers hasten to  destroy newly-built Arab homes in Area-C of the West Bank where Israel, according to the hapless Oslo Accords,  has full civilian and security authority. In the final analysis, Israel wants as much as possible of Palestinian geography and as little as possible of Palestinian demography. This is what Zionism is all about.  Nonetheless, this brashly racist  and manifestly fascist policy will eventually boomerang on Zionism and Israel  as Palestinians are already beginning to increasingly giving up the two-state solution and opting for one democratic and unitary state comprising  Israel and the Occupied Territories.
 
Israel has, whether we like it or not, has  already decapitated, once and for all, any remaining prospects for a viable and territorially contiguous state for the Palestinians. And the Palestinians would rather die than accept  a “dwarfed  state”, e.g., one  without East  Jerusalem, without the repatriation of refugees, and without ending the occupation that began in 1967. Needless to say, any Palestinian leader contemplating accepting such a scandalously dismal deal will most probably not live long enough to regret his folly.
 
Now, with the 2-state solution virtually dead, only two probabilities remain: 1- the one-state solution, which would spell  the end of Zionism, that is why it will be absolutely  rejected by Israel.
 
The other probability is open-ended conflict. That is the most logical scenario for the future.
 
But, once again, what would Israel do with, or more correctly to, 7 million Palestinians, who are expected to double their number in 3-4 decades which is not a long period?
 
Would Israel  poison them? Would it sterilize them to prevent them from procreation? Would it use against them secret but deadly  chemical agents that would make the death of millions look  quite natural? Would it withhold food and water from them? Would it banish them?
 
Or would it concoct some stark cause alibi like carrying out massive bombings of Israeli population centers and then blame the bombings on  Hamas? Or would it simply terrorize them into leaving their homes like Bashar Assad did to millions of “non-conformist” Syrians in active cooperation and collusion  with Russia, Iran and Hizbullah?
 
It would be utterly naïve and too gullible to rule out any of these hair-raising scenarios  especially in light of the likelihood that the US would almost certainly  support Israel, irrespective of the nefariousness  of Israeli actions including possible genocide in which millions would perish. ( some millenarian Messianic Jews are so eager to see an  evangelical president at the White House,  who would grant  Israel a total carte blanch to effect a final solution for the Palestinian issue as evangelical Christian Zionists are thoroughly convinced that Israel should be allowed to implement the Lord’s will)!.
 
In light, it is essential the Palestinians remain quite vigilant and steadfast because steadfastness  (e.g. preserving and consolidating  the demographic card) is the only winning card we possess and if we win it we win everything and if we  lose it we lose everything.
 
Finally, we must carefully refrain from giving Israel a pretext to take  draconian or unthinkable measures against our very existence.  Wining the demographic card is not only a matter of procreation. It is also a matter of wisdom, winning more friends, non-violence, resilience, and patience.

Related thoughts …

Israel is neither truly Jewish nor truly democratic

 

B Khalid Amayreh

*

The usual mantra Israeli spokespersons and PR spinners routinely invoke to bamboozle people unfamiliar with Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians  is that Israel is both Jewish and democratic.

 

The truth of the matter, however, is that Israel is neither truly Jewish nor truly democratic.

 

To be truly Jewish, one should adhere to the tenets of the Torah, the central scripture of Judaism.

 

Israel doesn’t do that, apart from occasionally paying lip service to holidays and religious symbols as well as some historical events whose authenticity is highly questionable.

 

Otherwise, Israel is a hotbed of all sorts of vices and immoralities, including murder, theft, adultery, sodomy, and idolatry.

 

I am confident that if Moses the Prophet  were to appear today and see what has become of the very people who claim adherence to him, and the Torah and Ten Commandments he received , he wouldn’t hesitate to say: “sorry, but I’m not a Jew!”

 

In fact, a deep and honest appraisal of Israel should unravel the clarion reality that the so-called Jewish state is not only far from encapsulating the true prophetic traditions of Judaism, but is in fact an idolater antithesis of Judaism. One Orthodox rabbi described Israel as “the modern Golden Calf.” His description is not far-fetched.

 

For example, the Torah exhorts Israelites to treat “strangers amongst you” respectfully and honorably… because you were strangers yourselves in the land of the Pharaohs.”

 

Another example is the “Golden Rule” many Zionist Jews love to quote when speaking to non-Jewish audiences: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary”.

 

This golden rule, established by the Babylonian rabbi Hillel HaGadol, or Hillel HaZaken,  purportedly treats all humans as equal.

 

Unfortunately, we often see that the very same Zionists who invoke Hillel’s golden rule happened to be amongst the most vociferous defendants of Israel’s fascist and evil  behavior, especially its manifestly criminal treatment of the Palestinian people. Israel actually is a sea of oppression and inequity as far as the Palestinians are concerned. Israel tried every conceivable act of savagery and barbarianism against a people whose only “crime” is that they don’t belong to the “holy tribe.”

 

 

Commenting on the ongoing and seemingly unending Palestinian plight, the great Spanish writer Santiago Alba-Rico wrote:   “Perhaps Palestinians are not the most punished people on earth, but they are indeed the most openly punished people on earth; perhaps they are not the people who have suffered the most but they are the people whose sufferings are the most uninterruptedly visible. Paradoxically, this visibility (beyond the lies) makes the victims even more vulnerable; it confers a kind of biblical dimension to the aggression.”

 

In truth, the gargantuan oppression meted out to Palestinians by Israel should compel all honest people under the sun to consider Israel as no less than a gigantic crime against humanity, a crime no less horrendous and no less diabolical than history’s worst.

 

The Democracy claim?

 

I don’t deny that Israel does have many democratic features, including regular elections, a vigorous media and a lot of checks and balances.

 

However, we can’t ignore the fact that Israeli democracy is plagued with many crippling flaws which very much eviscerate that democracy of its democratic essence, rendering it a sham democracy.

 

Take for example the definition of Israel as a Jewish state first and a democratic state second. This unequivocally means that “Jewishness” always comes first and that democracy always comes a distant second.

 

So, one really wonders: How can Israel be Talmudic and democratic at the same time? This is more than a procedural paradox. This is a pure eternal oxymoron.

 

This structural built-in scandal has been enshrined into a law. Dubbed as the Nationality Law, whereby only “Jews” in Israel have the right to self-determination. The fascist camp in the Jewish state , including the Likud, Bayt Hayehudi and Avigdor  Lieberman’s party, have been trying desperately to defend the brashly fascist piece of legislation. Netanyahu, who has the gift of gab, but suffers from conspicuous intellectual shallowness, challenged critics to name a single Arab citizen whose rights have been undermined or compromised by the law. One Arab Knesset member retorted, asking Netanyahu to name a single individual Jew who was targeted by the laws of Nazi Germany.

 

The moral here is that once you target an entire group of people, you effectively target every member of the group.

 

Besides, the Arab citizens of Israel are not new comers to the land. In fact one can safely claim that 99% of Israeli Arabs predated 99% of Israeli Jews in Israel\Palestine.

 

More to the point, there are a thousand evidences corroborating the view that Israel is more a real shamocracy than a real  democracy.

 

We who live in this country know too well that Jews and non-Jews who commit the same crime don’t receive similar punishments. The non-Jew receive an extremely harsh punishment whereas the Jew receives an extremely lenient punishment.

 

The Israel press have reported cases of Jews convicted of murdering rather premeditatedly African refugees and only receiving a few months in jail. There are Thousands of examples illustrating the inherently racist and scandalously duplicitous justice system in Israel.

 

A truly democratic state gives equal weight to lives of people, irrespective of their creed and race. In Israel, however, your life carries a weight and has sanctity only if you are Jewish.

 

In 2014, the Israeli army mercilessly murdered hundreds of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who Israel admitted were totally “uninvolved” in hostilities.

 

However, the Israeli Military Advocate General found no criminal wrongdoing in the  army’s conduct. Israel concocts all sorts of mendacities,  prevarications  and verbal juggling to conceal the truth and make it look nebulous.

 

However, we all know deep in our hearts that the real reason for Israel’s refusal or reluctance  to carry out a meaningful investigation into the Nazi-like  massacres of Palestinians, carried out knowingly and deliberately, has to do with Israel’s racist perception of   non-Jewish lives.

 

Hence, it would be a sort of fornication with truth to claim that Israel is a democratic state.  In fact, it is an insult to language to call Israel a democratic state.