Read Online On Palestine by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Frank Barat - Free Book Online Page B

perspective of international law or international morality. Neither is the historical moment in which they decide to do it questionable, however this particular group had defined itself in the past (in our case, as a religious group).
    The problem lies elsewhere. What is the price paid by this transformation and who pays the price? If this new definition comes at the expense of another people, this becomes a problem. If a group is a victim of a crime and is looking for a safe haven, it cannot obtain this by expelling someone else, another group, from this space that you want as your safe haven. This is the difference between what you want as a group and what means you use to achieve it. The problem is not the right of the Jews to have a state of their own or not. That’s an internal Jewish problem. Orthodox Jews might have a problem with this. Palestinians have no qualms about the Jews forming a state in Uganda, as some people proposed in 1902 to 1903. Not one Palestinian in the world would be interested in this scenario. That’s the main issue. How do you implement your right to self-determination?
    NC: The idea of a Jewish state is an anomaly. It’s not something that’s happened somewhere in the world. The question is based on the wrong presupposition. Take France: It took a long time for France to become a state. A lot of violence and repression took place. In fact all state formation is a process of extreme violence. That’s why Europe was the most violent place in the world for centuries. Once a state is established, any citizen is a citizen of the state. No matter who you are, if you are a French citizen, you’re French. If you live in Israel, and you are an Israeli citizen, you are not a Jew. So the Jewish state concept is a complete anomaly. It has no analogs in the modern world. Therefore it’s obvious why we should not accept it. Why should we accept this unique anomaly?
    Every state, if you look at its history, is created by extreme violence. There is no other way to impose a uniform structure on people of varying interests, backgrounds, languages, and so on. So it’s done by violence. But once it’s there, at least in the modern state system, anybody who is part of a state is theoretically an equal member of the state. Of course it might not work in practice, but that’s the concept. In Israel it is totally different. There is a distinction between citizenship and nationality. There is no Israeli nationality. You cannot be an Israeli national. This came up in the courts back in the sixties and came back up again recently. A group of Israelis wanted to have their papers identify them as Israelis, not as Jews. It went all the way to the high court, which rejected it. It reflects this anomalous concept of a Jewish state, which has no counterpart in the contemporary international political system.
    IP: Paradoxically it is used by Israel in an attempt to stifle any criticism of the state and its ideology. If you chastise Israel, you assault the Jewish state and by association you attack Judaism. That’s a very interesting line of argumentation and defense.
    This prohibition would not work in any case. If you look at the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, it is as if in the heyday of the struggle against apartheid, you were only allowed to criticize certain policies of South African society but not the very nature of the regime. That’s a great success for Israel that it obtained immunity from such a protest movement so far. They defined the parameters of the game: you are allowed to demonstrate against Israeli policies, but if you demonstrate against Israel, you demonstrate against the Jewish state and therefore you demonstrate against Judaism. That is why it is very important to bring this to the fore of the discussion.
    NC: It’s interesting that it is now the Israeli leadership itself that is bringing it to the fore.
    IP: Exactly.
    NC: When Netanyahu says,