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Mercy Global Concern - 2003
Israel - Palestine Conflict
As the situation in the Middle East continues to slip into chaos
a former speaker of the Knesset or Israeli Parliament, Avreham
Burg, has spoken out on the situation. Burg is a highly respected
Israeli Labour politician, of impeccable Orthodox credentials.
His recent statement on Israeli's treatment of the Palestinians
is something of a watershed. He brings a rare passion to the
situation, which he says is marked by such moral blindness as
to call in question the eternal Jewish claim to be 'a
light to the nations'. Once that has gone out,
what is the point of being Jewish? He asks.
What makes his arguments so compelling is its cold demographic
logic. In as little as 10 years, Jews will be
outnumbered by Muslims in the combined territories of Israel,
West Bank and Gaza. When that happens, the Sword of Damocles
will finally have fallen on the founding Zionist vision of Israel
as a Jewish democracy. Either Arabs are to be forever denied
citizenship and the vote, in which case Israel could no longer
be called democratic, or the majority must prevail, in which
case it could no longer be called Jewish. Either way marks the
end of the Zionist dream, by definition. One begins to see why
the "two-state" solution has suddenly begun to appeal
to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It is the only way that Israel
can survive the demographic time bomb.
What Burg says is explosive - "The Jewish people
did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry,
computer security programmes or anti-missile", he declares. "We
were supposed to be the light unto the nations. In this we have
failed. it turns out that the 2000-year struggle for Jewish survival
comes down to a state of settlements, run by amoral clique of
corrupt law-breakers who are deaf to both their citizens and
their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive.... the
countdown to the end of Jewish society has begun."
It is the callousness of Jewish indifference towards the suffering
of ordinary Arabs, women and children particularly, that represents
for him the final moral disgrace of Israel. "Israel, having
ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should
not be surprised when they are washed in hatred and blow themselves
up in the centre of Israel escapism. They consign themselves
to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives
are torture. They spill their blood in our restaurants in order
to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents
at home who are hungry and humiliated. We could kill a thousand
ringleaders a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders
come up from below...."
The stark choice is between two states - or a racist state,
in effect a fascist state. Nor is this exclusively Israeli business,
or exclusively Jewish business. "Israel's friends
abroad - Jewish and non Jewish, presidents and prime ministers,
rabbis, and lay people - should choose as well. They must
reach out and help Israel to navigate the road map towards our
national destiny as a light unto the nations and a society of
peace, justice and equality."
There is one fundamental message to be drawn from Burg's
passionate and prophetic language. It is that nothing must be
allowed to distract from the road map to the two state solution.
There can be no level of atrocities, by frequency or intensity
of outrage, no quantity of deaths caused by suicide bombers,
to justify choosing a different way. The cat and mouse game between
the Israeli army and the Palestinian terrorists is irrelevant,
however it is conducted and by whoever seems to be winning. The
great wall that is being constructed to separate Palestinian
areas from Jewish areas even within the West Bank is irrelevant.
Arresting, deporting, even assassinating the Palestinian President,
Yasser Arafat, is irrelevant. Killing the leaders of Hamas one
by one or 20 at a time is irrelevant. Only one thing is relevant
to Israel's' brighter future, and that is the road
map to the 'two-nation state' solution. All the rest
is perdition.
It is actually exhilarating and even liberating to find such
a powerful Zionist argument against Israel's present conduct.
Non-Jewish critics of Israel feel the weight of their conscience
on non-Jewish treatment of Jews over 2000 years, and are too
ashamed to say what they really feel. But what they feel is very
much what Avraham Burg is now writing: that this cannot go on,
this is intolerable, the world must not look away, must stop
making excuses for its silence. We cannot hide behind the holocaust
forever. If there is to be a Jewish national homeland, to quote
the Balfour declaration, and not a pariah racist, apartheid Israel
state that will sooner or later implode or be imploded under
the burden of its own perversity, we have to make known where
we stand. And that means, with Avraham Burg, all the way.
(Paper handed out at the Palestinian- Israeli Working Group;
by Clifford Longley)
Deirdre Mullan RSM
Member of the working group.
Representing the Sisters of Mercy at the UN
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