zionism (again)

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Fri Jul 27 19:25:50 PDT 2001


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



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