The bi-national state
In Friday's Yediot Aharonot, Shlomo Avineri explains why a bi-national state is not a feasible solution. We often hear this idea from people from outside of the region who have no idea what they're talking about. Avineri discusses the tiny percentage of Israelis who believe in this solution. I believe this issue is important enough for me to make the effort of translating the article myself. So here it is

Fata Morgana
Shlomo Avineri

The difficulties of renewing the peace process, as well as the stubbornness of the Palestinian opposition to reconciliation with Israel as a Jewish state, have of late brought some Israelis to again bring up the idea of a bi-national state as an alternative solution to the concept of "Two States for Two Peoples", that has been for many years the guideline of the Israeli left.

This is proven quack medicine. But before we turn to analyzing the issue itself, we should first say a few words about the ideological background of those who bring up such notions.

These belong mainly to two kinds: The first kind is made up of the remnants of the old anti-Zionist left: Veterans of the Communist Party, members of "Matzpen" and Trotskyite or Maoist cells. As far as they are concerned, the idea of a bi-national state is nothing new, because they have always disagreed with the right of Jewish self-definition, seeing Zionism as an extension of Western Imperialism and opposing the very existence of the State of Israel. The pathetic aspect of their viewpoint is that after their vision of a Communist Brotherhood of Nations descended into the Stalinist horror and the Soviet Union itself collapsed, all that remains of their old ideology is the opposition to the existence of the State of Israel. It can be said of them, just as Carl Marx said of the Bourbons, the former kings of France: They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

As opposed to them, the other group that advocates the idea of a bi-national state comes from another background, from inside the Zionist left. What has happened to them is that they have simply been broken by the stubbornness and refusal of the Palestinians, as well as their willingness for sacrifice, and have reached the conclusion that, in the face of such determination, Zionism has no chance, and it would be better to give it up. It is painful to witness the process of some of this group being broken, for some of them surely are the salt of the earth. But such a process often takes place in nations facing dangers and difficult challenges.

But beyond that, the thing is that the proposed solution is not feasible.

Simply stated: There is no place in the world where a conflict between two national movements was solved by compressing the two national movements, each clutching at the other’s throat, into the one cauldron of a bi-national state. The main claim of those now bringing up the idea is that the vision of "Two States for Two Peoples" doesn’t work. It’s true – the difficulties are immense. But where has the idea of a bi-national state worked? The supporters of the idea have brought no example of the success of the solution they suggest, because there simply isn’t one. It is easy and elegant to suggest ideas that sound nice and even politically correct: But they can’t be taken seriously, when there is not one successful historical example.

Once the Communist oppression was gone, all the Eastern European attempts at creating bi-national or multi-national frameworks as solutions for national conflicts collapsed: Thus the Soviet Union collapsed, as did Yugoslavia (amid blood and fire), and Czechoslovakia. Even in Cyprus, our neighbor, the idea of a bi-national state was not a success. Canada and Belgium – two veteran bi-national states – are facing great difficulties, in which the last word has not yet been said, even though no one has been murdered or killed there for over 150 years.

The reason for the difficulties is simple – and this is what the supporters of the bi-national state are ignoring. If such a state should be established (assuming that it will be possible to agree on its name), the problems will just have begun:
* How will it be possible to run a state in which half of the population will see the fifteenth of May as a holiday, and the other half as a tragedy, a day of national mourning: What will be celebrated exactly?
* What will be taught in mixed state schools, for instance, about Herzl: Founder of a national movement or western colonialist? What will be taught about the Mufti (of Jerusalem in the period of the British Mandate – I.J.): National hero or collaborator with the Nazis? Or maybe one thing will be taught in the Jewish schools and another in the Arab schools?
* Will it be permitted to name streets after Hovevei Tzion (a group of ninteenth century Jewish settlers – I.J.), Herzl, Bialik (Israel’s national poet – I.J.), Ben Gurion or (heaven help us) Jabotinsky (founder of the right wing Revisionist Party, that provided the ideological basis for the Etzel and the Lehi Organizations – I.J.)? Will roads be named after Izzadin A-Kassam and Haj Amin al-Husseini? Will Zionism Bvd. in Haifa change its name to something "neutral" (Avineri obviously brings this example because this road used to be called UN Bvd. and its name was changed in 1975 when the UN passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism – I.J.)? Or will a parallel road be named "Hamas Bvd.", for the sake of balance?
* What will be taught about the Holocaust? A terrible crime or a Jewish "invention"?
* How will the history of the 1948 war be taught? What will be said in schools about the suicide bombers: Murderers or heroes of the War of Independence?
* If organizations, Jewish or Arab, threatening violent action, will be established, which police force exactly will deal with them?
*If the state has an army, what will it be called exactly? Or maybe there will be two armies, the IDF and the PLA?

The more we continue with these examples, it becomes more and more clear that the slogan "bi-national state" is an empty solution, and worse: A recipe for an internal civil war, maybe bloodier than any of the wars between Israel and Ishmael. Therefore it is no coincidence that the supporters of the bi-national state prefer to talk in slogans and avoid discussing the practical content of their suggestion.

There is room to criticize the policies of the current Israeli government. It is also understandable why there are those whose spirit has been broken. It is only human. But they shouldn't force-feed us with slogans that are both purposefully misleading and full of ignorance.

posted by Imshin 19:51

Cheezcake. Imshin likes.

This is absolutely amazing. A toilet that doesn't use water or chemicals. A dry toilet. I'd never heard of it before. And the Expat says it's available in Israel. Can you imagine how much water can be conserved if this becomes standard one day?


posted by Imshin 09:55

The Frog. In Arabic.
posted by Imshin 09:33

Happy
There's an ongoing discussion over at Michael J. Totten's about why Israelis are happier than Canadians, based on the results of different opinion polls. The deduction that Israelis are happier is not really scientifically viable in this instance, because the polls are not comparable, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Everyone in Israel is always amazed with the results of these "happiness" polls. Not just because of terrorism, and the worsening economic situation, but also because everyone's always complaining all the time about how awful everything is and how we've never had it so bad (even though this is not strictly true). And we're such a pressured society, always running around and talking on our cell phones. When do we have time to be happy?

Off the cuff, without really thinking, I wrote on the comments "We can sit on the rocks of the wave breaker on the far side of the pier in the ancient Jaffa Port, near Andromeda's Rock, and watch the sun setting into the sea. How can we not be happy?"

Roger took this to mean that I think Jaffa is particularly beautiful. I don't. I'm not sure why I wrote it. Bish says this is not the reason Israelis are happy, it's the reason Imshin is happy. Well, maybe not the reason - its more of a moment in time that has been forever burnt into my consciousness as what happiness feels like. Of course, I was sitting there on the rocks with my family.

So why are we happy? Don't try and romanticize us. We behave atrociously to each other, we are grasping and impatient and we are forever chasing after pleasures of the moment.

I asked Bish why he thought Israelis were happy and he said because of the Hevr'e. The Hevr'e is the gang, the network of friends. There's always someone to sit and complain with about how awful everything is. People don't need much, he said. A dry piece of bread in a prison cell is just fine if you're sharing it with a good friend.

posted by Imshin 09:17

When I was a child we used to have a steady stream of visitors from the 'Old Country' staying with us. I wasn't crazy about this, because sometimes I had to give up my bedroom. But it made life interesting. One time we were expecting two young ladies to come and stay, when word came that they had changed their minds at the last minute. Israel was too dangerous. They had decided to go to Cyprus instead. That summer war broke out in Cyprus, while they were there.

Last week four Israeli hikers were kidnapped in Colombia along with four more tourists. I hear Colombia is a beautiful country but didn't these people see that film with Meg Ryan and that Australian guy?



posted by Imshin 07:39

The Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize winner and strong advocate of non-violence, says it might be necessary to fight terrorism with violence, and that it is too early to say whether the war in Iraq was a mistake.

"I feel only history will tell," he said in an interview in the United States. "Terrorism is the worst kind of violence, so we have to check it, we have to take countermeasures."

Ah.

A wise man indeed. I heard him speak in Tel Aviv once. He said then, talking about working things out non-violently, “Compromise, compromise”. And that just stuck in my head. Compromise, compromise.

This via DogfightAtBankstown (Isn’t this breathtaking?).

posted by Imshin 06:52

The Shark links to a fresh Salam Pax interview. He sounds nice.

I don't like that they call him the Anne Frank of the Iraq War. So they were both talented writers who wrote diaries during wars. Anne Frank was a child. She lived in hiding for years and died in a concentration camp because she was a Jew. I find the comparison thoughtless and insensitive.
posted by Imshin 21:15

I was so busy being moody this last week that I forgot to tell you the real scoop. Bish went out on a yacht last Friday morning with two of his seafaring friends (well, his only seafaring friends as a matter of fact). I couldn't go. Much as I love the sea, I'm sick as a dog in a boat. Anyway, they were a few kilometers out when they had some friends come to visit them. Three dolphins appeared and began jumping up and down, swimming alongside the yacht and playing with them.

It was Bish's first time sailing. Bish's friends sail quite a lot, they've both finished skipper courses, but they said this had never happened to them before. I know exactly why it happened, it was because of my Bish, naturally. He's quite irresistible to small children, animals and, er, women (unfortunately).

posted by Imshin 20:40

Gil has posted photos he took with his cell phone. Okay, now I've seen what he looks like from all sides, I wonder if I'd recognize him in the street, in the event of our paths crossing. Probably not. I didn't recognize my neighbor when we ran into her in Mitzpe Ramon last time we were there.
posted by Imshin 18:40

You've just got to read this. Tee hee.
posted by Imshin 16:50

Would it be presumptuous of me to talk of "writer's block"? Maybe blogger's block? Blocker's blog? It's not as if there has been nothing to write about. This week we had a parents meeting at Eldest’s new school. One of the fathers complained bitterly that the school doesn’t seem to have internalized the deterioration of the economic situation in the country. It's meant to be a free schooling system but the additional payments get quite heavy in North Tel Aviv schools competing between themselves to attract students. Calling it a North Tel Aviv school is misleading as it is completely integrated with an equal share of children from the southern, less affluent, neighborhoods.

So what else has been happening? Multi-billionairess marries obvious gold-digger who turns out to be habitual sexual harasser (There was a rape charge too but that was cancelled because it allegedly happened ten years ago). What does she do? Chuck the bastard? Not on your life! She gets terribly offended that everyone is being so unkind to her (everyone but the gold-digger, that is, who is charged with molesting a woman in the said multi-billionairess's home, with her in the next room) and does a bunk with him (Helping him elude justice? They're denying this, promising he'll show up for interrogation. We'll have to see about that). Oh, and did I mention her canceling her funding of hospital development programs and other good deeds on her way out? Might I say she's not the most popular of multi-billionairesses in Israel, these days'. This shouldn't have much of an effect on the other multi-billionairesses in Israel, though. She was the only one.

She had already amused Israelis when she started a campaign promoting the idea of peace beginning in ourselves, blah blah blah, sweet idea in itself, but straight afterwards she decided to fire 900 workers from the bank she owns. Peacefully, of course. Israelis considered this along with aerial photos of her impressive mansion and failed to be convinced with the peace stuff. Could you blame us for sniggering when it turned out that the Eilat playboy she hastily married was in the habit of, erm, not taking no for an answer?

I know, I know, I'm an ungrateful brat of an Israeli. Her father did so much for us; she did so much for us. I should be groveling at her feet. We have a saying here "Ba'al hame'a hoo ba'al hade'a". More or less: The one who has the money gets to have the opinion. That was Shari's big mistake. She should have bought up the newspapers and then she would never have heard a bad word about herself or her deviant spouse, although Bish says she must be invested in the press. I wouldn't know about that. Maybe we do have a free press after all.

What else have we got? Oh, yes. Shimon Peres is throwing a big bash for his 80th birthday with everyone who's anyone invited (I saw him on TV with my own eyes threatening to live till he was 500, oy vey). So who's paying for the splendiferous festivities? Why, we are of course, especially Tel Aviv taxpayers, according to one of Tel Aviv's local rags (It seems we're paying for the hall, aren't we nice?). So fortunate we're not in the middle of a terrible recession with harsh salary cuts, mass lay offs, welfare benefits being cut or cancelled, unprecedented unemployment, etc. Maybe that's why we parents have to fork out to pay for the Remembrance Day ceremony in Eldest's school next spring (among other things). You have a lovely day, Shimon. Don't mind us.

That's it. Strictly gossip today. I can't take the serious stuff right now.

posted by Imshin 15:33

Okay okay, don't take me too seriously. That's what I dislike about those prophets of doom. They freak you out and in the end it turns out not to have been all that bad. Humanity always seems to drag itself back up from the depths of depravity. The planet somehow manages to escape destruction at the last minute. The flowers continue to bloom and they really couldn't give a damn about what the prophets of doom have to say. Here's to the flowers.
posted by Imshin 05:34

Emotions
I read Igal Sarna in Yediot Aharonot this morning (Hebrew link). A prophet of doom, eloquent, poetic and compelling, he touched all the places in me that I am trying very hard not to notice. He touched my fear. He said things I do not want to believe but that I do not dare ignore.

So I decided to translate it and post it here. I'm afraid my translation doesn't do it justice.

Save Us From Ourselves
Igal Sarna

Imagine that Ariel Sharon and Rabbi Ovadia Yossef were killed by Palestinians. Would this monstrous event cause an Israeli riot that would die down after a few weeks, and then we’d go back to our ordinary lives? Or would this double murder thrust the area into a hell that would last for years? It seems that the second option is the more realistic one. Such an event would not be forgotten and would not die down, but would rather submerge the area into a bloody whirlpool for many years to come.

But you know, translation is a wonderful practice. You should try it if you can. Even if you don't know another language well enough, try taking a text that moves you and rewriting it using alternative words. You can't help reaching a much deeper level of understanding for the piece you are tackling. And so with Sarna.

Now think of what the Head of the Shabak (General Security Service – I.J.) Avi Dichter said: It's better to kill Arafat than to deport him. His deportation will cause a serious problem, but killing him, probably along with Sheikh Yassin, will only cause a few weeks of rioting, which will die down. Only a foiler (foiling being the name used by Israeli security forces to describe targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists - I.J.) such as Dichter, his mind defective from too much foiling, could prophesize such a riot. Only a man who saw Arafat as a mirror reflecting the figure of his failure, the figure of all the missed chances, could suggest to kill him, to shatter the mirror reflecting that which he can no longer bear to see.

Funny, I didn't notice that particular load of nonsense when I first read it. Edward Lear move along, the competition is here.

I write these words, not out of love for the Rais (Arabic = President – I.J.) Arafat, an old man of many tales, but because of the growling of my heart with fear for the fate of our children and of this place. Save us from ourselves, I write. Save us.

Because after Arafat and Yassin have been killed, and the lava of the volcano has erupted, the personal security of Dichter and Mofaz (Defense Minister - I.J.), of Sharon and his sons will be stepped up immediately and all the rage and the hatred and the vengeance will be unleashed on us, the simple, defenseless citizens.

Omri Sharon (P.M. Arik Sharon's son and advisor and Member of Knesset – I.J.) is my neighbor in Tel Aviv. I like him personally because he is moderate and funny, but when he stands in the garden below my apartment, with his two little girls, he has with him a bodyguard, a sharp-eyed Shabak-nik, but my children and I, and your children, and our homes and lives are exposed and forsaken now that the fire is near to the keg of explosives. In Israel of 2003 only the suicidal decision-makers are protected. Only the killers are concealed from the eye. And we are standing in the strong blue light as live targets.

Israel is divided into

I read and translated and read and translated and suddenly found myself very aware of the emotional manipulation his beautifully written and emotional column was working on me and I stopped, mid-sentence.

The manipulation had worked because I am scared. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to admit it. I don't know what's right or wrong anymore. Maybe I never did.

I'm scared of my kids blowing up, so I don't think about it. I'm scared of my home turning into a living hell, so I look the other way.

Once, years ago, I had a vision, a terrible vision. I was looking out of the window in the back of the living room of my apartment at the time. This window gave one quite a vista of Tel Aviv. Looking out, the whole of Tel Aviv was engulfed in orange flames; the sky was blackened with smoke. It scared the hell out of me, I tell you.

The memory of this vision comes to me when things are particularly bad, and I'm feeling a bit desperate in the face of the hopelessness of it all and I'm trying my best to be strong and brave and not give in to my fear of things to come.

Maybe it's time to hang out the flag again.

He really freaked me out, that Sarna guy, huh?

posted by Imshin 23:21

Take a look a this. Cool. Thanks to Lynn for pointing it out.
posted by Imshin 19:32

Security forces have been foiling suicide attacks and other attacks on civilians, left, right and center. Somehow I am unmoved. It doesn't touch me. I am trying to muster up interest in the deporting Arafat question, so as to have something to blog about.

I'm rather fed up of all these clever people who get paid to write their opinions in newspapers but have never actually done anything to render their views worth anything. My dad always used to say that if learned professors of economy understood anything about economy they wouldn't be teaching about it, they'd be out there making money (Of course, one may argue that there has to be someone to see the bigger picture and that making money isn't everything, but then my dad's a capitalist). So if the columnists have all the answers, why aren't they bloody well running things instead of shooting their mouths off (or should that be "shooting off their mouths")?

I have no idea if throwing Arafat out would be good or bad. It doesn't seem like a good idea. Do we really want him gallivanting about, being received like a king by the Germans and the French, making speeches in his old hunting ground, the UN General Assembly? Of course, we could always deport him to Egypt. Mubarak just loves him and would know just what to do with him (whatever he says to the microphone).

If we're about killing terrorists, then Arafat's definitely number one (there's my good karma gone down the drain again). But is that a good idea? I don't know. I feel old fuzzy brain coming on. I really shouldn't attempt working things out in my head like this. It isn't good for me.

posted by Imshin 19:15

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