On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Max Sawicky wrote:
> ...what I objected to originally [was] the thesis that the Jewish
> state was founded on a racial identity.
You do have to accomplish prodigies of interpretation regarding the word "racial" to evade a point that obvious. (And M. Forstater's quotations are pretty devastating.)
But let's imagine a parallel. Suppose a party comes to power in the US (president, both houses of congress, compliant supreme court) representing a faction of the Christian Right; it proceeds to pass a series of laws (perhaps they'd call it "The Covenant of the People of America") that include the following provisions:
[1] Jews are not allowed to own land in the 93% of the country reserved for gentiles (each defined solely on the basis of who their parents were);
[2] Jews are not allowed to marry gentiles; nor may they convert to Christianity and thereby escape the legal disabilities of Jews;
[3] Jews are not allowed to serve in the military, although all gentiles (with some exceptions) are required to, and have access to advantages available only to veterans; and
[4] Jews must carry identification indicating that they are Jews.
We'd agree that the laws were anti-Semitic; I'd certainly call them racist. But you wouldn't say that that legal structure was "founded on a racial identity"? That sounds like playing with words to me. (And those are of course provisions that apply to Palestinians within the Green Line.) --CGE