| by Jonathan Kuttab Last Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States. The entire country went on holiday and many watched or participated in events that recalled the struggles and victories of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the nonviolent movement for African American civil rights. As I watched the programs and listened again to his speeches, one thing that struck me is this: MLK considered the problems of race and oppression largely in spiritual terms, and the solutions he proposed were equally spiritual. He stated that the issues were not simply political, social or economic, and therefore many of the different solutions proposed were inadequate. He saw that there was something seriously wrong, spiritually, with the entire system, a spiritual sickness which needed to be fought. The entirety of American society, he felt, was truly sick and no progress was possible until it was healed of the sickness of racism, of the ideology that white people were somehow superior to Black people and whose superiority needed to be maintained through segregation, suppression and the denial of political power or voting rights. Reflecting on this, I can also see that much of the problem in Palestine also needs to be understood in spiritual terms, and that political solutions necessarily fail if they do not address such maladies. While discussion often centers on issues of land, borders and demography, the issues run far deeper. Israeli Jews are badly traumatized by millennia of discrimination and oppression primarily in Christian Europe culminating in the horror of the Holocaust. Zionism offers a “solution” to the problem of anti-Jewish bigotry based on brute force, overwhelming power, and the creation of a Jewish state wherein Jews are dominant and superior to all others. It is a state which needs to be built at the expense of the local population and which can only be maintained through overwhelming force, nothing else. All efforts to achieve and sustain that goal therefore become legitimate, and in fact morally mandatory. The very existence of Palestinians is seen as a threat to that goal, and sympathy or support for their rights is seen as a continuation of the historic oppression of Jews. Their very presence, much less their claims and demands, are seen as existential threats to Zionism and the Jewish state. The concept of a Palestinian right of return is anathema, and even the concept of an Israeli state for all its citizens (rather than only a state for Jews) is unacceptable. As long as such a worldview prevails, no amount of military strength or power is ever seen as sufficient to guarantee security. No effort towards peace and reconciliation is seen as genuine or legitimate, unless it supports the notion of Jewish domination and supremacy (at the very least in the pre-’67 territories). Survival requires total victory over Palestinians and the elimination of their national presence in the Land. Many Israelis have reconciled themselves to eternal enmity and eternal fighting. They see Palestinians as an extension of the Goyim who have persecuted them throughout the ages, who must therefore be expelled or dominated and will remain eternally suspect. Within this paradigm, peace with the Palestinians is not really possible, and any Palestinian resistance, however justified and legitimate, only reinforces those fears, deepens the trauma, and strengthens the resolve to dominate by sheer military force as the only response. International law and other notions of legality or morality are subordinated to that overarching principle. Security can never be achieved until the Palestinians are totally crushed, dominated, or, preferably, pushed out of the land altogether. Even then, eternal vigilance is required lest they try to return, or their supporters, or the rest of the world, again threaten the Jewish state. Within this framework, Palestinian armed struggle, however justified and legitimate it might be under international law, becomes quite problematic. It only reenforces the Zionist argument and deepens the traumas that need to be healed. For this pragmatic reason, if nothing else, it was wise of the PLO to announce its abandonment of the armed struggle and seek other methods to advance the national interest. Hamas’ offer of a long term truce, and its willingness, in principle, to suspend the armed struggle should have been welcomed as an important first step in the right direction. Unfortunately, Israel saw those steps as signs of weakness and defeat and sought to build on them a more forceful situation of domination and supremacy. Until Israeli Jews (and their supporters abroad) are healed from their traumas and begin to seek other solutions for their relationship with the Palestinians, they will be doomed to “live by the sword and die by the sword.” This healing process must begin by acknowledging the malady and rejecting the “solution” proposed by Zionists as fundamentally flawed. For many years, raising such questions about Zionism itself and its tenants was taboo. Those who dared present that critique were accused of “delegitimizing” the state of Israel and of supporting views that led to the Holocaust in the first place. Now this discussion is essential for the sake of Israelis as well as Palestinians. From the perspective of the Palestinians, until the Zionist ideology of Jewish supremacy and military domination is confronted, defeated, or abandoned, there can be no peace. Interim measures of attempting to seek peace without addressing the basic problem of militant Zionism are doomed to failure. Yet seeking military solutions cannot work, either. Violence by the oppressed, however legitimate and justified, only breeds more violence and reenforces the very maladies from which the Israelis suffer. The task for Palestinians is to seek solutions that confront the evil of Zionism with the spiritual forces of equality, human dignity, human rights and a nonviolent campaign for freedom and self determination that is based on the power of right and not the destruction of violence. That was the true message of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and that is the challenge before us today as we confront the genocidal doctrines of Jewish supremacy, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. |
South Africa seeks justice for Gaza
I’m republishing this post from my friend, Dr Chandra Muzaffar – president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). Chandra has been a long-term advocate for Palestine and is one of the best-informed people on the subject that I have ever met. Father Dave
