An undemocratic stance on Palestine
EAMONN MCCANN is right that "[t]he birth of Israel on May 14 in 1948 was a catastrophe for the Palestinians" (“The catastrophe that lives on”). He is also right in describing the "two-state" solution as undemocratic.
However, he is mistaken in calling Israeli writer Uri Avnery a supporter of "a single secular state in historical Palestine in which all the present inhabitants of the territory and the Palestinian diaspora can live as equals," and "an indefatigable activist for justice for the Palestinians, a symbol of hope for the future, if there is one."
A more accurate description of Avnery is provided by writer and activist J.A. Miller:
Avnery has courageously battled some of the more brutal aspects of occupation Zionism. Furthermore he occasionally makes good points about Israeli and Arab politics and pokes frequent fun at Israeli psyche and society. But he has always used his very public efforts for a "kinder, gentler" Zionism to soften his commitment to the core Zionist objective: The maintenance of the Jewish ethno-theocracy in Palestine by opposition to BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel], the Right of Return and any chatter whatsoever about a single state.
Unfortunately, Avnery is not alone on the left. Israeli activist Jeff Halper points out that, "many Israelis, Diaspora Jews, and others--including such searching and otherwise radical figures as Noam Chomsky and Uri Avnery, together with the Peace Now, Brit Tzedek, Rabbis Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow and members of Rabbis for Human Rights--cling tenaciously to the two-state solution."
As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has written, this left-wing cover for two-state apartheid is--to put it kindly--outmoded: "We need to wake up. The day Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush [or now Barack Obama] declared their loyal support for the two-state solution, this formula became a cynical means by which Israel can maintain its discriminatory regime inside the 1967 borders, its occupation in the West Bank and the ghettoization of the Gaza Strip."
Fortunately, there is a small but growing number of other Jewish activists who support the BDS movement and one democratic state. But Uri Avnery is not among them.
Michael Letwin, co-convener, New York City Labor Against the War; Labor for Palestine, New York
