discriminate against other groups such as gays, non-religious Jews, and Palestinian refugees. [xix]
There are many voices in Israel who are critical of Zionism and of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. [xx] Here is one article written by a prominent Israeli academic on the rise of fascism in Israel.
Like every
ideology, the Nazi race theory developed over the years. At first it only
deprived Jews of their civil and human rights. It's possible that without World
War II the "Jewish problem" would have ended only with the "voluntary"
expulsion of Jews from Reich lands. After all, most of Austria and Germany's
Jews made it out in time. It's possible that this is the future facing
Palestinians.
Indeed, Smotrich and Zohar [two members of the Israeli Knesset [xxi] ]
don't wish to physically harm Palestinians, on condition that they don't rise
against their Jewish masters. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights,
such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression, or equal
rights in case the territories are officially annexed to Israel. For these two
representatives of the Knesset majority, the Palestinians are doomed to remain
under occupation forever. It's likely that the Likud's Central Committee also
thinks this way. The reasoning is simple: The Arabs aren't Jews, so they cannot
demand ownership over any part of the land that was promised to the Jewish
people.
According to the concepts of Smotrich, Zohar and Shaked, a Jew from Brooklyn
who has never set foot in this country is the legitimate owner of this land,
while a Palestinian whose family has lived here for generations is a stranger,
living here only by the grace of the Jews. "A Palestinian," Zohar tells Hecht,
"has no right to national self-determination since he doesn't own the land in
this country. Out of decency I want him here as a resident, since he was born
here and lives here -- I won't tell him to leave. I'm sorry to say this but they
have one major disadvantage -- they weren't born as Jews."
From this one may assume that even if they all converted, grew side-curls and
studied Torah, it would not help. This is the situation with regard to Sudanese
and Eritrean asylum seekers and their children, who are Israeli for all intents
and purposes. This is how it was with the Nazis. Later comes apartheid, which
could apply under certain circumstances to Arabs who are citizens of Israel.
Most Israelis don't seem worried. [xxii]
Henry Siegman published a long article in the National Interest on the subject of Zionism and on US President Trump's decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem. [xxiii] It is important because he is a prominent Jewish leader and a Holocaust survivor now in his late 80s. He was a Zionist leader and former head of the World Jewish Congress and is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Siegman endorsed the struggle for equal rights for the Palestinians and the end of Zionism. He says it is the right choice, for their struggle for a state of their own is one Palestinians cannot win, while a struggle to maintain an apartheid regime is one Israel cannot win. He sheds no tears for Zionism and issues a warning to American Jews to abandon Zionism. Siegman wrote:
If after what undoubtedly would be a long and bitter anti-apartheid struggle Palestinians prevail, they will be in the clear majority. Having established the principle that the majority can impose on the minority the religious and cultural identity of the State, Israel will not be in a strong position to deny Palestinians that same right. That will lead in time to a significant exodus of Israel's Jews.
If Palestinians do not prevail, then the undeniable apartheid character of the state and the cost of the ongoing struggle will lead to the same result--an exodus of Israel's Jews over time, creating an even greater demographic imbalance between the country's Jewish and Arab populations. Palestinians will not leave because they will have nowhere to go.
The outcome is therefore likely to be the end of Israel as a Jewish state. If so, it will be an outcome brought about not by BDS movements but by Israelis themselves, not only because of their rejection of the two-state solution, but because of their insistence on defining Israel's national identity and territorial claims in religious terms. A state that fast-tracks citizenship through government-sponsored religious conversion to Judaism, as Israel's government now does, cannot for long hide that it privileges its Jewish citizens--just as the United States could not have claimed to be a democracy if conversion to Christianity were a path to U.S. citizenship. [xxiv]
On the issue of differential treatment for non-Jews in the "Jewish State" the Israeli Minister of Justice Aydet Shaked made the following statement in a speech to the Congress on Judaism and Democracy, The following is quoted from an article published in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Shaked said, "I think that 'Judaizing the Galilee' is not an offensive term. We used to talk like that. In recent years we've stopped talking like that. I think it's legitimate without violating the full rights of the Arab residents of Israel."
The justice minister made the remarks in a wide-ranging speech on the controversy over the Jewish nation-state bill.
She further said, "There is place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights." She added, however, that maintaining a Jewish majority in Israel and acting democratically "must be parallel and one must not outweigh the other."
Regarding the nation-state bill, Shaked said, "I was disturbed at both the position of the state and the reasoning of the justices. The state did not defend the law for national demographic reasons, it claimed only security reasons." Shaked told the conference that "the state should say that there is place to maintain the Jewish majority even if it violates rights."
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