Alternative Insight

Emergence of the Real Israel


Palestinians always possessed the essential elements for being a nation - a people who spoke the same language, exhibited a common culture, shared a common history, and lived together in one area for centuries - a natural mixture of social, physical and historical characteristics that define a nation.

Throughout ancient history, the North South corridor linking Egypt and Syria functioned as a battleground for competing empires, which hindered the establishment of a stable and unified country within the narrow strip. Only the Phoenicians/Canaanites became a significant civilization during that period, (but a haphazard civilization, which is under reported by historians of the Levant) by building important city states, giving the western world its alphabet, extending its reach throughout the Mediterranean, influencing the emergence of Greece and creating the Carthaginian Empire , whose famous leader's name, Hannibal, is said to be derived from Hani Baal, which means "one who pleases the God Baal, a Canaanite deity. Control of the territory by the Ottoman Empire prevented the emergence of a separate nation and transfer of the land to the British mandate further complicated progress to a national identity. Usurpation of their lands and displacement from their homes shaped a common destiny and forged the Palestinians into becoming a nation, but not a nation with a sovereign state. As a state they have a limited government, basic laws, and a recognized capital at Ramallah but lack several essentials - defined borders, absolute control of all activities, ambassadorial interchanges and international recognition.

Due to the precarious nature of the Palestinian nation, the Palestinian Basic Law, passed by the Palestinian Legislative Council in 1997 and ratified by deceased President Yasser Arafat in 2002, can only function as a temporary constitution for the Palestinian Authority, at least until the Palestinians establish an independent state and prepare a permanent constitution.

Although it may not seem evident, Israelis have a national identity that is less than and more artificial than the Palestinians and not total trappings of a nation state. Israel has a well functioning government, absolute control of its activities, ambassadorial interchanges and international recognition, but does not have all of the essential characteristics of a sovereign state. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, one government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. After existing for almost 70 years, Israel has no defined territory and a semi-permanent population. As of June 2015, Israel is not recognized as a state by about 32 countries and its declared capital of Jerusalem is recognized by only two countries -- Guatemala and El Salvador. A June 8, 2015 United States Supreme Court decision, which invalidated a law that allowed American parents of children born in Jerusalem to obtain passports that stated "born in Israel," reinforced international opinion on the neutral status of Jerusalem.

Similar to the Palestinians, Israelis are governed by Basic Laws and other Laws that are voted by its legislative assembly, the Knesset, and "lay down the foundations of the system of government and the rights of the individual." Still not instituted is the promise from the Proclamation of Independence of the State of Israel -- the preparation of a constitution by the Constituent Assembly.

Israeli national identity is a recent and artificial phenomenon; Jews who arrived in Palestine from different countries and continents did not share a common language, history, or culture and therefore could not be classified as a nation. Just arriving at a shore and mingling with peoples of some vague kinship but speaking different languages and having different customs does not create a nationality. Note that after being displaced, some Palestinians moved to Saudi Arabia, an Arab country that spoke their language, contained their religion and had similar customs. With all these common factors, few of these Palestinians resembled a Saudi national.

The rigorous definition of national identity has never bothered the Israeli government that amended its Law of Return in 1970 "by granting automatic citizenship not only to Jews, but also to their non-Jewish children, grandchildren, and spouses, and to the non-Jewish spouses of their children and grandchildren." Present Israeli immigrants have had only a few decades to shed their previous languages, history and culture and pursue a new and common identity - not all have done that and the process is not complete until their families are 2nd generation, which means children of parents born in Israel.
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When UN proclamation 181 partitioned Palestine on 29 November 1947, the population statistics, described in the Table below and referenced at 1945, showed about 500,000 Jews and 1.1 million Arabs in the partitioned area. (International zone of Jerusalem is not included.)The Arab population was indigenous to the area with almost its entire population born to parents who had resided in the Levant.

 TerritoryArab and other population% Arab and otherJewish population % Jewish populationTotal population
 Arab State 725,000 99%10,000 1% 735,000
Jewish State 407,000 45% 498,000 55% 905,000
International105,000 51% 100,000 49% 205,000
 Total 1,237,000 67%  608,000 33% 1,845,000

Data from the Report of UNSCOP: 3 September 1947: CHAPTER 4: A COMMENTARY ON PARTITION

Claims have been made that many Palestinians were not native to the area and entered the surroundings only because of economic opportunities provided by the Zionists. This argument has a multitude of controversial statistics to support any conclusion. Arab populations moved freely but not too far during the Ottoman Empire. Palestinians were still Palestinians whether they came from Syria, Egypt or Lebanon to the British Mandate, and all these Arab nations recognized them as Palestinians. Besides, almost all Jews were newcomers to the area and the operations by Zionists who formed Histadrut, the Jewish labor Union, and others who promoted the concept of Labor Zionism, Jewish labor in Jewish enterprises, created industries and agricultural enterprises that pauperized Arabs and forced them to move to other countries. More Palestinians may have been forced to move out then came in. Maybe, not 100% of the 1.1 million Arabs who inhabited the Mandate at that time were born to parents who lived there, but the figure was close to that estimate.

Summing the figures of Jewish arrivals to the British Mandate between the years 1919 to 1945 gives a clue to how many Jews were born in the British Mandate. The
Jewish Virtual Library sums that statistic to 379,734, of which about 250,000 came during the immediate pre- World War II period. Other sources estimate about 30,000 returned to their native lands. Subtracting the remaining arrivals (380,000 - 30,000) from the population (500,000) gives a rough estimate (some arrivals may have died during this period) of those born in the British Mandate before 1945, which is about 150,000. Why is this figure important? Population statistics can be easily distorted by including immigrants who have nothing invested in the land and may leave at any moment.

Because almost all Palestinians were born in the area at the time of UN Resolution 181, the indigenous Palestinians in the Partition areas outnumbered the first generation Jews by more than 8:1. Go to the 2nd generation proportion, which more determines the permanence and legal right of a resident to inhabit an area, and the number escalates. Never considered is that many Jews who came to the British mandate, especially those fleeing Germany during the 1930's, may not have arrived as Zionists or as permanent residents but came only due to circumstances and as a temporary reprieve; during the 1950's many left for the United States and Europe.

Seen from this perspective, UN Resolution 181, which partitioned Palestine into two states, awarded a minor ethnic group of the total population, who had only decades of time and energy invested in the area, more than 60% of the total land and split the native population whose generations of families had worked and cultivated the land for centuries. The non-forceable UN Resolution occurred immediately after World War II, when the followers of a revived Wilsonian democracy, under the previous leadership of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pledged to dismantle colonialism and allow the native peoples to express self-determination. At that time, India and other Southeast Asian nations had already discarded colonial rule, while other nationals, such as Vietnamese, would soon follow the same route. Throughout Africa, independence movements had already formed. The UN, constituted to bring a new vision and peaceful order to the world, instead regressed the Middle East by centuries to an era when free lance and state sponsored adventurers conquered foreign lands and expropriated the resources for their own purposes. The Resolution brought misery to the Palestinian people and initiated decades of unending strife in the Levant.

By separating the Palestinian nation into two states, similar to the Kurdish nation, which occupies four states, the UN partitioned degraded Palestinian national aspirations and motivated a new aspiration, the ingathering of Jewish people; all of which was unacceptable to the Palestinian masses. Israeli Jews, who consistently claim they accepted the plan, fail to note they did not implement the plan - although 400,000 Palestinians resided in their state, 45% of the population, Zionists formed a nation represented only by Jews and proceeded to empty villages of Arab inhabitants, even those who swore allegiance to the new state or did not care who controlled their destiny, while expanding by two-fold the area allotted them. Nor do the Israelis recognize their hypocrisy when they exalt Resolution 181 and condemn multitudes of other UN Resolutions that cite their illegal actions.

It is assumed that by the year 2015, the Israeli Jews can claim ownership to the lands they want to be known as a Jewish state. Despite the displacement of 1.2 million Palestinians from their homeland, this is not the case. The Times of Israel has both Israeli and Palestinian demographers agreeing on population statistics -- 6.2 million Palestinians live west of the Jordan River -- 2.754 million in the West Bank, 1.73 million in the Gaza Strip and 1.72 million Arab citizens in Israel -- and 6.2 million Israeli Jews live in Israel and the West Bank.

Using statistics from the Jewish Virtual Library, the number of first and 2nd generation Jews living in Israel can be computed. "In 2014, 75% of the total Jewish population was born in Israel, and 38.6% of the Jewish population are Israeli-born to at least one parent who was also Israeli-born." Although not all Russian immigrants, despite the amendment to the Law of Return, can be definitely classified as Jews and many Jews, similar to Palestinians, live in the West Bank and theoretically are not Israelis Jews, we will use the figure of 6.2 million Jews in Israel, but not quite.

For some still undefined reason, almost one million Israeli Jews from a high tech and developed nation live abroad, 13-14% of the Israeli Jewish population. This percentage is magnitudes greater than the expatriates from any other developed western nation and comparable to nations, such as Mexico, who supply labor to the western world. Because Israel does not allow these emigrants to vote by absentee ballot or receive a National Pension they cannot be considered as Israelis living in Israel. The source for the statistics comes from Foreign Affairs.

The million missing Israelis
BY JOSEPH CHAMIE, BARRY MIRKIN, JULY 5, 2011

At the lower end is the official estimate of 750,000 Israeli emigrants - 10 percent of the population - issued by the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, which is about the same as that for Mexico, Morocco, and Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government places the current number of Israeli citizens living abroad in the range of 800,000 to 1 million, representing up to 13 percent of the population, which is relatively high among OECD countries. Consistent with this latter figure is the estimated 1 million Israelis in the Diaspora reported at the first-ever global conference of Israelis living abroad, held in this January.

Using a compromise figure of 900,000 Israeli Jews living abroad and subtracting that number from the official population of 6.2 million, yields 5.3 million Israeli Jews, of which 3.98 million have been born in Israel and 2.05 million are 2nd generation (assuming the percentages are the same for those living at home and abroad). The number of Palestinian Israelis (1.712 million) is almost equal to the number of clearly identifiable Jewish Israelis, and Israel wants to be identified as a Jewish nation.

If Israel is still not a nation state then what is its international classification?
Because Israel controls territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, it can be considered a de facto single state composed of mainly Jews and Palestinians, with other limited minorities, between the two waters. In this de facto single state, there are 3.98 million first generation Jews, 4.5 Million first generation Palestinians (1.73 million Gazan Palestinians have not been included), 2.05 million 2nd generation Jews, and 4.5 million 2nd generation Palestinians.

Clearly this is a state that is more Palestinian than Israeli Jewish and will continue to be that way for eternity. Clearly this is a state that the Zionists will not acknowledge. If not a de jure or de facto state, then how can Israel be defined?

Until Israel becomes a well defined nation-state, it remains a landed organization of separate ethnicities, with the most prominent being Jews and Palestinians, the latter always referred in Israel as Arabs. Syrians are Syrians. Iraqis are Iraqis but Palestinians are Arabs.

Rachel Azaria, MK for the Kulanu Party, a centrist Party in the Israeli Knesset that favors egalitarian economics, at a Brookings Institution event, June 18, 2015, The new politics of religion and gender in Israel, defines the Israel population as the four tribes of Israel - Orthodox Jews, Secular Jews, National-Religious Jews (traditional religious and non-religious), and Arab. Jews can be rigorously defined but Muslims, Christians and others are lumped together with the designation Arab. Actually Israel defines itself in a similar manner; there are Jews, Arabs, Druze, foreign and other nationalities, who may also be citizens, but there is no Israeli nationality in the national population registry.

The Jewish tribes struggle and confront each other with two challenges - what is Judaism and what defines a Jew. This is not a polemic but vital to each other's lives, determining who can perform marriages (Israel has no civil marriage), legal avenues for divorce, should orthodox serve in the military, what is the proper education for all Israelis, how can the tribes mix, how much welfare and religious support should the government supply the Orthodox. Israel's Jews want their country to be termed a Jewish state and cannot define the term. They can define who is not a Jew, which leads to the real meaning of the state they desire - a non-non-Jewish state, a state that does not contain non-Jews.

As the ultra-orthodox gain strength in numbers and political advantage, the secular Jews, heirs to the Zionist adventure, become increasingly alarmed. The latter has been willing to tolerate the former as long as the ultra-orthodox agenda (men do not work nor seek conventional education) does not interfere with the secular agenda and its vision for a democratic and technologically advanced Israel. The schism is growing and may either create two separate Israels, one which has the orthodox living in a Pale Settlement, or a non-functioning Israel.

The Jewish tribes compromise among themselves to impose rules and regulations with use of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), whose military rides the buses and rails, prepared to react to any internal rebellious actions and ready to move against external threats. Jews are awarded membership (citizenship) with privileges (club Zion) and the Arabs are awarded a membership (citizenship in Israel), which is comparable to being dhimmi -- indigenous non-Muslim populations who agreed to Muslim domination, paid a special tax, and had less political rights. The Israeli dhimmi do not pay an extra tax; they receive fewer services than Jewish citizens for equal taxes, which is equivalent to paying a special tax. Wander through the Arab dominated cities of Israel -- Nazareth, East Jerusalem and Akka -- and compare them to the other Israel cities in services - differences in infrastructure, utilities, parks, and education are obvious.

B'Tselem, an Israel human rights organization, provides statistics in a report, Neglect of Infrastructure and Services in Palestinian Neighborhoods, Jan 1, 2011, which describes how tax-paying residents of East Jerusalem, who have a makeshift bus service, can be considered dhimmi.

All Jerusalem has 499,400 Jewish residents, 281,100 Muslim residents, and 14,700 Christian residents. Although the East Jerusalem Palestinians constitute about 37% of the Jerusalem population,

the Jerusalem Municipality has continuously failed to invest significantly for infrastructure and services (such as roads, sidewalks, water and sewage systems) in Jerusalem's Palestinian neighborhoods. Since the annexation of Jerusalem, the Municipality has built almost no new school, public building, or medical clinic for Palestinians. The lion's share of investment has been dedicated to the city's Jewish areas

Entire Palestinian neighborhoods are not connected to a sewage system and do not have paved roads or sidewalks;
Almost 90 percent of the sewage pipes, roads, and sidewalks are found in West Jerusalem;
West Jerusalem has 1,000 public parks, East Jerusalem has 45;
West Jerusalem has 34 swimming pools, East Jerusalem has three;
West Jerusalem has 26 libraries, East Jerusalem has two;
West Jerusalem has 531 sports facilities, East Jerusalem has 33.

Another layer of ethnicity resides with the 4.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who have no Israeli citizenship, have lives that are tightly controlled and receive few services. Restriction of their movements and their physical and economic insecurity compare to those of other serious oppressions. Comparisons are subjective and arouse emotional responses but the oppression of the Palestinians in occupied territories resembles the fate of the Jews who lived in the Pale of Settlement during the time of the Russian Tsars. In both cases, an ethnic group with a different religion and culture than an invading and expansionist rule found themselves confined to a restricted area by their rulers. The Jewish Virtual library defines the Pale of Settlement (a reverse meaning to the present type of settlements):

PALE OF SETTLEMENT -- territory within the borders of czarist Russia wherein the residence of Jews was legally authorized. Limits for the area in which Jewish settlement was permissible in Russia came into being when Russia was confronted with the necessity of adjusting to a Jewish element within its borders, from which Jews had been excluded since the end of the 15th century.

One notable difference -- Russia was controlled by an absolute autocrat during an era of limited communication and not by a high tech democratic government.

The Israel that convinced the world of its desperate need for a land for its chosen people in order to save them from future holocausts and vitriolic anti-Semitism has been contradicted by an Israel that shaped itself decades before the World War II onslaught, promotes destruction of a people it represses and fosters anti-Semitism by its actions. The world has tired of the shameful use of the deaths of Jews in World War II to gather sympathy for Israel and give it a reason for being and to the constant charges of anti-Semitism in western nations that are used to present Israel as a haven for Jews and defend its oppressive actions.

Emergence of the real Israel is told by recent headlines.

Tikun Olam, Jewish organization, May 15, 2015 - "Israel named its new cabinet yesterday and the names are a Who's Who of the most rabid, racist, brutal and cruel politicians in the nation."

Times of Israel, May 3, 2015 - "Ethiopian-Israelis (Ed: Falasha Jews) and their supporters staged a large rally in Tel Aviv Sunday afternoon, protesting alleged institutional racism and racist police brutality and blocking a major highway in the center of the city."

The Telegraph, 31 Jan 2013 - "UN human rights investigators called on Israel on Thursday to halt settlement expansion and withdraw all half a million Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that its practices could be subject to prosecution as possible war crimes."

St. Louis Public Radio, June 2, 2015 --
Medal of Honor awarded to WWI vet is triumph over anti-Semitism, says daughter

Shemin's daughter, Elsie Shemin-Roth, 86, worked behind the scenes for years to have her father recognized. At the ceremony, she and her sister Ina, 83, accepted the Medal of Honor on behalf of her father.
"He was the son of Russian immigrants, and he was devoted to his Jewish faith," Elsie Shemin-Roth said. "His family lived through the pogroms. They saw towns destroyed and children killed. And then they came to America. And here they found a haven - a home - success, and my father and his sister both went to college. All that in one generation. That's what America meant to him. And that's why he'd do anything for this country."

NOTE: The headline claims anti-Semitism but Ms. Roth does not make that accusation. It is odd she should mention happenings in Russia that had nothing to do with the ceremony. More odd is why this occurred after 100 years and why another soldier, who happened to be an African-American, was awarded the medal at the same time. Could it be that special interests tried to mollify those who regard the attachment of American Jews to Israel as a betrayal of their loyalty to their home country and attempted to align the historically minimal discrimination against Jews in the United States with the massive and overwhelming discrimination against African-Americans, as if they are equal and go together?

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, shows that anti-Semitism played no role in preventing the Medal of Honor.

Since it was instituted there have been 3,473 recipients; at least 27 American Jews have received the Medal of Honor for their actions starting in the American Civil War through the Vietnam War. In WWI, One hundred twenty four people would eventually receive the Medal for their actions during the war, seven of them were Jewish.

Isn't it time to place anti-Semitism in its proper perspective? Arabs are also Semites and suffer magnitudes more discrimination and serious attacks than Jewish Semites. In order not to have any group monopolize the term anti-Semitism it is preferable to use the term with more correct meanings.

Anti-SemitismA refers to discrimination against Arab Semites from non-Arabs.
Anti-SemitismAA refers to discrimination against Arab Semites from other Arabs, of which there is plenty.
Anti-SemitismJ refers to discrimination against Jewish Semites from non-Jews.
Anti-SemitismJJ refers to discrimination against Jewish Semites from other Jews, of which there is plenty.

The Exodus boat has sunk; the Kibbutzim have established new models that include having its members secure their individual income; falsehoods of Old Testament history have been exposed; the insecure Israel pose has become a contradiction, and the real Israel - militarist, ultra-nationalist, racist, oppressive and confused -- has emerged.

alternativeinsight
june, 2015

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