PA daily op-ed: Historically, the Jewish nation never existed
Op-ed by Hafez Barghouti:
Headline: “Israel and racist extremism”
“Twenty-two years from now, Israel will be older and will have a smaller percentage of Jews, even though their number will rise to 8.3 million, out of a total of 11.4 million… Israel is still contending with what can be called an identity crisis and a demographic crisis. It still cannot read the situation [that will exist] in historic Palestine if it continues to reject the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, since most of the population will be Arab.
Therefore, when confronted with peace, it flees toward establishing a legalized racist state. Those who favored the proposal to grant the State of Israel a Jewish identity in its Declaration of Independence justify this by [claiming] that [the proposal] doesn’t imply a state that is Jewish in the religious sense, but only in a national [sense], despite the fact that, from a historic point of view, the [Jewish] nation never existed. Ancient tribes, including the Arameans, the Persians, the Arabs, the Europeans, and the Khazars adopted it [Judaism], and even today people convert [to it]; [but] it is impossible to call a religion a ‘nation.’
This racist definition encounters religious extremism in other religions, and transforms the conflict into a futile religious conflict that will never end except with the destruction of one of the sides. It is odd that destructive ideas like these are considered by Israeli legislators at a time when bloody religious conflicts rage in the world.”
Headline: “Israel and racist extremism”
“Twenty-two years from now, Israel will be older and will have a smaller percentage of Jews, even though their number will rise to 8.3 million, out of a total of 11.4 million… Israel is still contending with what can be called an identity crisis and a demographic crisis. It still cannot read the situation [that will exist] in historic Palestine if it continues to reject the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, since most of the population will be Arab.
Therefore, when confronted with peace, it flees toward establishing a legalized racist state. Those who favored the proposal to grant the State of Israel a Jewish identity in its Declaration of Independence justify this by [claiming] that [the proposal] doesn’t imply a state that is Jewish in the religious sense, but only in a national [sense], despite the fact that, from a historic point of view, the [Jewish] nation never existed. Ancient tribes, including the Arameans, the Persians, the Arabs, the Europeans, and the Khazars adopted it [Judaism], and even today people convert [to it]; [but] it is impossible to call a religion a ‘nation.’
This racist definition encounters religious extremism in other religions, and transforms the conflict into a futile religious conflict that will never end except with the destruction of one of the sides. It is odd that destructive ideas like these are considered by Israeli legislators at a time when bloody religious conflicts rage in the world.”