There Already Is One State

The overwhelming desire within Israel, and more importantly within the United States, to divide Palestine into two states reflects a 130-year old dream to create a Jewish state in the Holy Land. Aside from the attractiveness or repulsiveness of such a dream, such a division flies in the face of reality or what might be called “facts on the ground.”

Within the current borders controlled by Israel (including pre-1967 Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights) there is in fact a single state. It has one electrical grid, one water system, one currency, one major highway system, one postal service, and one external border. Goods and people entering this de facto state come through harbors, airports, and a restricted number of crossings. Bills of lading and passports are checked and stamped by officials of this single state.

To avoid arguing about what is Israel and what is Palestine, call this de facto state Israel/Palestine. It has one powerful military that protects its external border and controls its airspace with the most sophisticated aircraft, tanks, drones, submarines, and surveillance hardware that money can buy. There are some militias like the Druze Border Guards, the Hamas fighters in Gaza, the Fatah policemen in Ramallah, and Jewish settlers in Kiryat Arba and throughout the West Bank, but there is really only one army, navy, and air force. It is big; it is powerful; and it is backed by nuclear weapons and the world’s only super power, the United States of America.

Although over half the population of this de facto Israel/Palestine state is not Jewish, Jewish power has enacted laws since the creation of Israel in 1948 to favor Jews and create a so-called Jewish state. This is the essence of political Zionism. It is a philosophy and a movement based on racism, chosenness, and Jewish supremacism.

The fact is that after 130 years, several hundred billion dollars in foreign aid, thousands of deaths, and persistent ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, the de facto state of Israel/Palestine is not a Jewish state any more than South Africa was a white state prior to its end of apartheid. Israel/Palestine is a state controlled by Jews; it is a state where Jews have superior rights (not the least being the right of return); but with over half the population being non-Jewish, it is ludicrous to call it a Jewish state.

Zionists from both the right and the left recognize this, but refuse to acknowledge it because of their obsession with, and allegiance to, the dream of a pure, or almost pure, Jewish state. So the extreme right, like Foreign Minister Lieberman, wants to transfer the Arabs and other non-Jews (including children of migrant workers) out of Israel/Palestine. Others like Dershowitz, Pipes, and Hagee simply want to wall off the non-Jewish areas and call these reservations or Bantustans a potential Palestinian state. Even the most humanitarian Zionists, like Uri Avnery, who would tear down the mammoth apartheid wall (or security barrier), or even Noam Chomsky cannot bring themselves to endorse the right of equal citizenship for all those living in Israel/Palestine.

One state already exists in Israel/Palestine. Those who deny it do so blinded by their love for a Jewish state, a racist endeavor that should long ago have been discarded along with Aryan supremacy, Catholic supremacy, Tutsi supremacy, and whatever other supremacy forms the basis for discrimination and disregard for basic human rights.

Daniel McGowan is a Professor Emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Because of admonishment by the administration, it is hereby stated that the above remarks are solely those of the author. Hobart and William Smith Colleges neither condone nor condemn these opinions. Furthermore, the author has been instructed to use his personal email address of mcgowandaniel@yahoo.com and not his college email at mcgowan@hws.edu for those wishing to contact him with comments or criticisms. Read other articles by Daniel, or visit Daniel's website.

5 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Amerikagulag said on August 13th, 2010 at 10:05am #

    Even a cursory glance at the map of the former country known as Palestine will tell anyone with half a brain what’s been going on there for 60 years.
    http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2006/05/10/the-shrinking-map-of-palestine/

    Theft of land and the murder and displacement and genocide of the native population is reminiscent of the Stalin years. What should we expect of the former Bolsheviks?

  2. hayate said on August 13th, 2010 at 10:35am #

    Amerikagulag said on August 13th, 2010 at 10:05am

    Israelis and their guv are much more like fascist american capitalists and ther genocide of the American Indians or like German nazis and their ww2 genocides or like white South Africans and their apartheid. There is about as much bolshie among the israelis as there is/was among those three as there is in israel. But then you probably think blair in blackface(obama) is a commie, too. 😀

  3. teafoe2 said on August 13th, 2010 at 12:25pm #

    Thank you Dr McGowan; your article is a jewel. You say so much, lay so much bs to rest, in so few words.

    Thank you also for your comments re Avnery and Chomsky, whose flawed conceptions are accepted as gospel by so many.

    And thank you hayate!

    the last thing we need is crackpots injecting their coldwarrior propaganda mythology into the case against Fascist Izrael.

  4. Rehmat said on August 13th, 2010 at 1:15pm #

    “You (Jews in the Diaspora) are changing jackets – you’re changing countries like jackets…. If China ever became the world’s foremost super power, American Jews would migrate there to assimilate rather than in the US,” A.B. Yehoushua, the ultra-Zionist Israeli author told AJC conference in 2006. Many of Zionist leaders Chaim, Ben Gurion, Eshkol, Meir, Peres, Begin, etc. grew up in Diaspora, mainly in Eastern Europe.

    Many Jewish writers, such as, Roger Tucker, Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir, Simon Jones, etc. have come to the conclusion that the only way to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East would to dismantle the Zionist entity and establish a democratic state for both the native Muslims and Christians and the foreign Jew settlers.

    Incidently, Gilad Atzmon, in a recent article wrote that now he prefers Helen Thomas’s solution to Israeli problem:”Tell them (Jews) to get the hell out of Palestine ……. go back to their homes in Poland, Germany and other countries”. Though the Zionist media has succeeded in getting Helen out of the White House, she is still making the Zionist-mafia nervous. Her statue is going to adorn the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.

    http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/the-new-palestine/

  5. mary said on August 14th, 2010 at 1:56am #

    Re the gift to Hasbara by using the words ‘Hamas’ and ‘fighters’ in conjunction. Hamas was freely elected. Only Israel, the US and the BBC are permitted to call them terrorists!