[lbo-talk] Law Student With a History of Taking Left Turns

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org
Fri Jul 18 14:47:49 PDT 2003


----- Original Message ----- From: "Shane Taylor" <s-t-t at juno.com>
>Ethnic cleansing is hyperbolic charge, sure, but she's calling for a free
>Palestine including what is now Israel. That suggest a one-state
>solution, and not a binational one. My reading was close to Max's: get
>the fuck out. Even if not her intent, it's such astoundingly stupid PR
>that she deserved the press she got.

Wait a second. One-state solution does not equal ethnic clensing. In fact, advocating ethnic enclave states has usually meant respective ethnic clensing (Turkey-Greece after WWI, Indian-Pakistan, etc), while one-state solutions usually are attempts at integration (Bosnia and even earlier Yugoslavia.) A two-state solution in Israel is based on expectations of most Jewish settlers getting out of the West Bank, so it's hardly about integration.

I'm for a two-state solution just because, as I've said, Jews have the right to some real estate where they get to be nationalist bastards like anyone else, and the realities of history make anything else unlikely. But folks arguing for a negotiated one-state solution no more are necessarily arguing for ethnic clensing than those who have kept arguing for a multi-ethnic Bosnia.

Folks like Brad may rightly doubt that a mutli-ethnic Israel-Palestine (or whatever it would be called) would protect all rights and would lead to abandonment of the state by the Jews, but it's hardly beyond the pale speech. I would not support such a position and opposed integrating it into the antiwar movement, as the WWP did, but the fact that there was even a debate about the group's right to meet at Rutgers is an obscene violation of the First Amendment.

-- Nathan Newman



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