Israel

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Mon Mar 25 20:32:25 PST 2002



>From traditional libertarian socialist principles it's difficult to argue
that any state has a right to exist. Even Marx in his maturity wrote, "Freedom consists in the conversion of the State from an organ superimposed on society into one completely subordinated to it, and today too, the forms of the State are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the 'freedom' of the State."

In the shorter run, I suppose another traditional formula is appropriate: "a bi-national socialist state."

In the even shorter run, if Israel is to remain a Jewish state, we should at least think about what kind of Jewish state we want to support. One, e.g., in which all except those of one racial stock are barred from well over 90% of the land?

"One of the healthy developments now taking place in Europe is the erosion of the nation-state system with increasing regionalization. In areas from Catalonia to Scotland, there is a revival of traditional languages, cultures, customs and a degree of political autonomy leading towards what may become -- and I think should become -- an arrangement of regional areas that are essentially autonomous within a federal framework. In fact something like the old Ottoman empire. There was a lot wrong with the Ottoman empire, but some things about it were basically correct: mainly, the fact that it left a high degree of regional autonomy and independence within a framework, which unfortunately was autocratic and corrupt and brutal, but we can eliminate that part, and the positive aspects of the Ottoman empire probably ought to be reconstructed in some fashion." [CHOMSKY'S DÝYARBAKIR SPEECH]

Regards, CGE

On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Michael Pollak wrote:


> On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
> > (b) Israel is a racist state, economically sustained by the US.
>
> That sounds rather like a state with no right to exist. Out of
> curiousity, CGE, if the US did decide to it was in its interest to
> exert its maximum leverage, what outcome would you like to see result?
>
> Michael
>
>



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