Asked about the violence in an interview with the Guardian, he said: “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester.”
There are only three potential futures for Israel/Palestine:
Apartheid (the status quo.)
Genocide/ethnic cleansing
A unified secular state representing all ethnic and religious groups (the post-Apartheid South Africa model.)
I would prefer option 3. I know some campist clowns will say things like, “Israel should be destroyed!” But that’s fantasy. Israel has a population of 10 million people. 80% of them were born there. You’re talking millions of people with nowhere to go. Oh, and no one can force the Israelis out, as they have hydrogen bombs.
I hope for a better future, and that’s the only one that isn’t a nightmare. There is a national identity waiting to be forged there, if things could go that way. The Israelis are very much the spiritual descendants of ancient Israel, while the Palestinians are the genetic descendants of ancient Israel. There’s a path there to a shared national identity.
The rest of the world should not be demanding a two state solution. The Israelis themselves have made that approach impossible. Instead, we should be demanding full freedom and equality for Israel’s slave population (which is what the Palestinians functionally are at this point.) Palestinians are used by Israelis for their labor, but they have no control over the laws that govern them. They’re born into this status and have no way to escape it. They have severely restricted freedom of movement and are carefully controlled and surveilled. What are they at this point other than a slave caste of the Israelis?
We should not allow a nation to keep millions of innocent people in bondage. That needs to be the central moral call. Independence for the Palestinians isn’t possible (unless they want to try and carve a homeland out of Antarctica.) The Israelis themselves aren’t going anywhere. So there are your choices. Slavery. Genocide. Equality. I choose equality. We should be demanding that every resident of the West Bank and Gaza be granted full and equal Israeli citizenship. Israel deliberately made it so these people couldn’t form their own state, so they can just be Israelis. Countries should demand this and start cutting trade and diplomatic ties until ends this nightmare.
Really, at this point, the only positive outcome for the Palestinians is full and equal Israeli citizenship.
So you don’t want whatever a two state solution is, ok, what do you want?
There are only three potential futures for Israel/Palestine:
I would prefer option 3. I know some campist clowns will say things like, “Israel should be destroyed!” But that’s fantasy. Israel has a population of 10 million people. 80% of them were born there. You’re talking millions of people with nowhere to go. Oh, and no one can force the Israelis out, as they have hydrogen bombs.
I hope for a better future, and that’s the only one that isn’t a nightmare. There is a national identity waiting to be forged there, if things could go that way. The Israelis are very much the spiritual descendants of ancient Israel, while the Palestinians are the genetic descendants of ancient Israel. There’s a path there to a shared national identity.
The rest of the world should not be demanding a two state solution. The Israelis themselves have made that approach impossible. Instead, we should be demanding full freedom and equality for Israel’s slave population (which is what the Palestinians functionally are at this point.) Palestinians are used by Israelis for their labor, but they have no control over the laws that govern them. They’re born into this status and have no way to escape it. They have severely restricted freedom of movement and are carefully controlled and surveilled. What are they at this point other than a slave caste of the Israelis?
We should not allow a nation to keep millions of innocent people in bondage. That needs to be the central moral call. Independence for the Palestinians isn’t possible (unless they want to try and carve a homeland out of Antarctica.) The Israelis themselves aren’t going anywhere. So there are your choices. Slavery. Genocide. Equality. I choose equality. We should be demanding that every resident of the West Bank and Gaza be granted full and equal Israeli citizenship. Israel deliberately made it so these people couldn’t form their own state, so they can just be Israelis. Countries should demand this and start cutting trade and diplomatic ties until ends this nightmare.
Really, at this point, the only positive outcome for the Palestinians is full and equal Israeli citizenship.