This is a cross-post from Huffington Post Monitor
This is the longer “fisking” of Ahmed Moor‘s “Israel Cannot Be Both Jewish and Democratic.“ There’s a lot to cover so let’s just jump right in shall we? Oh, for the purposes of this article I’m just going to cover the sections of interests, not including generic insults aimed at Israel or regurgitation of anti-Zionist talking points. Anyway, here we go:
“Today, the Zionism which has destroyed so many occupied lives is turning inwards. Israel is being corroded by the ideology underpinning its existence. The Zionist state’s latest victims are Palestinian-Israelis and migrant workers.”
Ahmed Moor is another anti-Zionist who I would like to ask to define “Zionism.” I’m not sure that he can, short of “pure evil.” Again it’s worth nothing his insistence that Israel is a “Zionist state,” which is a little weird seeing as how he referred to Israel in his title as being “Jewish.” Which is it, Mr. Moor, the “Zionist state” or the “Jewish state?” More than anything else his writing sounds like a collection of talking points that are simply thrown together.
Let’s also talk for a minute about the term “Palestinian-Israelis.” What does that even mean? Both “Israeli” and “Palestinian” are terms that indicate nationality. The reason why Israeli Jews have such a problem with Israeli Arabs calling themselves “Palestinians” is because that means they do not consider themselves to be part of the Israeli state. They might hold Israeli citizenship but they don’t consider themselves to be part of Israeli society. Again I find it very funny that Mr. Moor cries and moans about discrimination in Israel but doesn’t even flinch at the very real problem of citizens of Israel working to undermine its society. Maybe Arabs can only be traitors to Arab governments and not Jewish ones? It makes me wonder how Mr. Moor would feel about the hanging and shooting of Palestinian “collaborators” with Israel.
“The Guardian‘s “Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev,” depicts a hulking mass of baklava-clad riot guards descending on Al-Araqib in the pre-dawn morning. The village’s Bedouin residents were forcibly extracted from their homes while a bulldozer bulldozed their lives. Incredibly, the village was destroyed to make room for a national forest. It seems that against all morality, the desert will continue to bloom.”
Okay we’ve already covered this story here, but it’s worth repeating that Mr. Moor (like anti-Zionists before and after him) will simply ignore any facts that don’t fit the story he wants to tell. The problem is that the Bedouins moved onto land that wasn’t theirs and tried to take it. Isn’t that “stealing land,” Mr. Moor? Isn’t that the excuse the legions of anti-Zionists have used to justify the killings of innocent Israelis? When Israel removed the settlers from Gaza were you there complaining that it was “against all morality?” I think not.
At this point Mr. Moor goes for an emotional punch, complaining about the activities of some Jewish Israelis who reacted joyfully to the Bedouins being removed. Of course, his source for that information is Max Blumenthal, so really the whole thing is suspect, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt this time. Moor may twist the facts but he doesn’t usually make things up completely.
“Elsewhere in Israel, non-Jewish youths learned that they were unfit to remain in country of their birth. Four-hundred migrant children — most of them born in Israel — will be deported soon. Ironically, their expulsion has been spearheaded by parliamentarians from the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, many of whom are Russian immigrants to Israel.”
So right off the bat Mr. Moor gets his facts wrong. Children who are born in Israel are not in danger of being deported, period. That’s what happens when you rely on Mya “Sue-Happy” Guarnieri for your information. Again, note the use of the race card. There are many requirements that the children need to fail to meet to be deported, including not learning the native language or being enrolled in school. Mr. Moor is implying that Israel is deporting four hundred children because they are not Jewish and for no other reason.
Secondly, here’s something important to remember: Immigration is a tough issue. It’s an emotionally loaded issue in America, for Pete’s sake, and America is not a country defined by being a ‘melting pot.’ This is a problem in all the European countries, and it would be a problem for the Arab countries too, if they didn’t close their borders to immigrants altogether. The point is that Israel is far from the only country having to deal with maintaining their national character and their democratic values, but that isn’t stopping people who hate it from pretending that it is. Keep this in mind as we go through the rest of Mr. Moor’s article.
“Many of Israel’s staunchest supporters are baffled by what’s happening in the small Mediterranean state. Regrettably, they fail to understand that Israel is following the natural evolution of a country founded on a race-exclusive basis.”
Notice the strawman in the last sentence: Israel was never intended to be racially exclusive. If you look at the writings of early Zionist leaders they always expected that there would be non-Jews living in Israel, but they still needed Israel to remain a Jewish homeland.
I do think that it is informative that Mr. Moor considers Jews to be a race, though. If they are a race and not merely a religion, then wouldn’t that seem to indicate that their nationalist identity is bulletproof? It certainly makes the Jews more of a people than the Palestinians, whose only defining link to each other is that they all happen to live in the same place (or used to). I wonder if Mr. Moor thought that one through when he wrote that sentence.
This is getting long, so I think I’m going to continue this in the next post.
