The Silly Jewish State Called Israel - NOT !

By Sherwin Pomerantz

Over the last months Israel, through its Prime Minister, has been demanding that before we are prepared to sit down and negotiate yet again with the Palestinian Arab leadership we want them to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state. From our end we understand that this means one with democratic principles and full respect for all of its inhabitants regardless of their religion, as has been our custom. This certainly seems like a reasonable request and one that is significantly less problematic that their demand that before sitting down with us we agree to cease all construction in the areas captured during the six day war and agree to those armistice lines as the beginning of our negotiations.

The Palestinian Arab leadership has not agreed to this demand on our part and, of late, the reasons being given and being supported by other political leaders in the west are nothing short of illogical.

For example, Sari Nusseibah, a well-known Professor of Philosophy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, in an op-ed piece on Aljazeera.net entitled “Why Israel Can’t be a Jewish State” writes:

"Nevertheless, it remains true that, in the Old Testament, God commands the Jewish state in the land of Israel to come into being through warfare and violent dispossession of the original inhabitants. Moreover, this command has its roots in the very Covenant of God with Abraham (or rather "Abram" at that time) in the Bible and it thus forms one of the core tenets of Judaism as such, at least as we understand it. No one then can blame Palestinians and descendants of the ancient Canaanites, Jebusites and others who inhabited the land before the Ancient Israelites (as seen in the Bible itself) for a little trepidation as regards what recognizing Israel as a "Jewish State" means for them, particularly to certain Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. No one then can blame Palestinians for asking if recognizing Israel as a "Jewish State" means recognizing the legitimacy of offensive warfare or violence against them by Israel to take what remains of Palestine from them."

Quite amazing is it not? First of all, that Nusseibah makes the claim that today’s Palestinians are the descendant of the ancient Canaanites, Jebusites and others who lived in Israel before the Children of Israel got here, trying to give credence to the fact that the Palestinian history in this land is older than ours. The positive side of this, of course, is the de facto recognition of our long history here which most Palestinian Arab leaders often try very hard to negate.

The final conclusion that if today’s Palestinian Arab leadership were to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, this would lead us to attack the non-Jewish population in the land and kill them is pure nonsense. Better Nusseibah and others should castigate Assad in Syria for killing, as of this weekend, over 2900 of his own people who are simply demanding their God-given rights to free speech and democratic representation. But that’s the fodder for another blog.

As if this is not enough to turn one’s stomach, the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, in an interview in the French magazine Le Canard Echaȋne, says “It is silly to talk about a Jewish state. It would be like saying that this table is Catholic.” He then added, “There are two million Arabs in Israel.” Yet this is the same Sarkozy who sees no problem with other nations with whom he has relations, such as Iran, whose official name is the “Islamic Republic of Iran” even though there are, today, about 25,000 Jews living in Iran (down from the 100,000-150,000 who lived there prior to 1948), 300,000-350,000 Bahai’s, and 300,000 Christians. Yet the official name of the country is the “Islamic Republic of Iran.” By the way Pakistan and Afghanistan also call themselves, officially, Islamic republics as well.

All of this reminds me of the remark Daniel Bernard made in 2001, who at the time was the French Ambassador to the United Kingdom. At a dinner party that year he said “All the current trouble in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel. Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?”

I do not think that the concept of a Jewish state is a silly one. The idea of a Jewish Commonwealth dates back to biblical times and was certainly the understanding of the founders of Israel as recorded thusly in our Declaration of Independence:

Accordingly we, members of the People’s Council, representative of the Jewish community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British mandate over Eretz-Israel and, by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel to be known as the State of Israel.

The world must understand that those of us who have chosen to live here have done so because we believe that Israel is a Jewish country even if many of us also understand that to do so successfully we need to find a way to accommodate the needs of others who may not feel the same way. We need to be committed to do all in our power to make that a reality, but others who have trouble with the concept need to see it as their problem not ours.