Obama Web Site Hosts the Final Solution to the Jewish [State] Problem

Calls for opposition to Israeli "Apartheid" and a boycott of Israel

One Democratic State in Israel/Palestine: a New Peace Initiative by Tony Wicher, has been online since April 2007. Mr. Wicher is a regular and prolific contributor to my.barackobama.com, and it is therefore impossible for Barack Hussein Obama to argue that some fly-by-night Republican or Clinton operative posted this to damage his campaign.

This is entirely consistent with the fact that Obama is reluctant to distance himself from individuals like Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright, and organizations like the New Black Panther Party and Hamas, until a breaking scandal shoves his face in the unsavory material and thereby forces him to perform at least a ritual cleansing. We will now post Mr. Wicher's Final Solution to the Jewish [State] Problem"

We will comment on this Final Solution to the Jewish [State] Problem only as follows. Arab citizens of Israel already have the right to vote, and they can be elected to the Knesset. The "One Democratic State" Final Solution is merely a smokescreen for agendas like the so-called Right of Return, whose purpose is to overwhelm Israelis demographically and destroy Israel as not only a Jewish but also a Westernized democracy. As stated by Edward Longshanks in Braveheart, "If we can't get them [Scots] out, we will breed them out." The obvious goal of the ODS Final Solution is to make sure there are more Islamic supremacists than Jews and Christians, thus allowing Islamic supremacists to democratically elect a terrorist government like Hamas while instituting Shariah law. We encourage our readers to decide, after reading this piece straight from Barack Hussein Obama's official campaign site, whether they agree with us.

One Democratic State in Israel/Palestine: a New Peace InitiativeBy Tony Wicher - Apr 26th, 2007 at 6:17 pm EDTAlso listed in: 8 groups
The One Democratic State Solution Key to a New U.S. Peace Initiative in the Middle East

At this time in our history it is critically important for the United States to implement a radically new foreign policy. The Bush foreign policy is pure military imperialism. The United States is assumed to be the world hegemon, and that it can compel compliance by the rest of the world by military force or pressure. Consent by the American people to this totally anti-democratic agenda is engineered by a propaganda machine that constantly trumpets that this is all being done FOR "freedom and democracy" when in fact the whole Bush agenda is AGAINST freedom and democracy, both domestically and internationally. I hope and presume that the Obama campaign agrees with me on this.

The Iraq war has shown the American people where such a foreign policy leads. They are ready for a new direction. I have a proposal for a new Middle East peace initiative, one that will REALLY promote peace and democracy in the only way they can really be promoted, and that is through peaceful and democratic means. The key to this new policy is the central conflict in the Middle East, which is the Israel/Palestine problem. A resolution of this conflict would result in a great relaxation of tension that would completely change the international political landscape. If the United States is seen by the world as having brought this about, it will more than restore the moral standing and prestige of the United States in the eyes of the world.

The solution I propose requires great political courage. Only an extraordinarily brave politician would consider it, and I hope and pray that Barack Obama is such a person. This solution involves the formation of a single democratic multicultural state in the whole of Israel/Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. This is based on fundamental democratic principles. The main reason a “two-state solution” has not succeeded, and never will, is because it violates these basic principles. Also, the illegal settlement policy spearheaded by Ariel Sharon over the last thirty years has been aimed at creating “facts on the ground” that make a two-state solution impossible, and this goal has pretty much been achieved by now. There is really not much left now but “greater Israel” from the river to the sea, which has been the goal of hard-liners such as Sharon from the beginning. There remains the fact that there are millions of Palestinians living in the land where they and their ancestors were born without citizenship rights, and this constitutes an injustice that cries out to the world and cannot be covered up or denied. It is a moral stain that makes both Israel and its major ally, the United States, hated all over the world, and especially, of course, by hundreds of millions of Arabs who sympathize with their oppressed brethren in Palestine. The dispossession of Palestinians of their land by Jewish nationalists is a moral crime that must be righted for there to be peace in the Middle East, for there is no peace without justice. But the old Palestine is gone and the clock cannot be turned back. We must move forward to multicultural democracy, to a country and a world in which all human beings are equal.

The essential fact which is preventing resolution of the conflict is this: If Israel is defined as a “Jewish state”, Israel cannot be a democracy. Israel claims to be a democracy, but it is not, because in a democracy there cannot be discrimination on the basis of race, religion or national origin. The original framers of Zionist ideology at the end of the 19th century did not understand or value democracy, and the whole Zionist project has been undemocratic from the very beginning. As a “Jewish state”, Israel discriminates against non-Jews, that is, against the original Palestinian inhabitants of the country. Israel is conceived as “the national expression of the will of the Jewish people”. As long as this is true, non-Jews can have no political power. Arab “citizens” of Israel are such in name only, for they have no real political power. There is the unavoidable consequence. Therefore, there can be no justice for Palestinians until Israel is transformed from a “Jewish state” into a multicultural democracy where citizenship is independent of religion, race or national origin. In other words, the Israel-Palestine conflict should be treated, not as a war between two countries that can be settled by drawing an agreed-upon border (the two-state solution) but rather as a civil rights struggle within one country, Israel. We should take South Africa as our model of a successful resolution of such a conflict, and Nelson Mandela as our model of a leader who could make such a resolution possible.

Senator Obama has a strong civil rights record, and that is why I am hoping that he of all the candidates running might have the fortitude and the dedication to principle to adopt this policy. It is also my hope that Senator Obama has the right political touch to deal with the powerful emotions this policy would elicit. The biggest problem, of course, is that anyone who suggests that there is something wrong with the idea of a Jewish state will immediately be labeled “anti-Semitic” by Israel and by its supporters in this country, such as AIPAC, the ADL, etc. It is high time for this tactic to be met head-on and refuted. All it requires is courage. Does Barack Obama have what it takes? It remains to be seen.

No objective person can deny that anti-Jewish hatred exists and is widespread, or that Israelis and their supporters do not therefore have valid security concerns. These concerns must be fully addressed for a solution to the conflict to be possible. But to smear all critics of Israeli behavior, which includes flagrant violations of human rights and international law, as “anti-Semitic” is both insulting to well-meaning critics (including many Jews) who oppose Israeli behavior on democratic grounds, and extremely dangerous in the long run to Jewish people. Americans are no longer buying this. Israeli interest group cries of “anti-Semitism” in this country are sounding shriller and more desperate, and Americans are tired of being told to shut up. Many of them think that excessive Israeli influence on U.S. policy is partly responsible for getting us into the Iraq war. They are beginning to wonder “what’s in it for us” to support Israel. It is only making our relationships with Arab countries, which after all have the oil we need, more difficult. It seems likely to cause Arab counties to deal with China, or some other country less supportive of Israel. What does Israel have to offer us? What good is Israel as an ally in a region where Israel is universally hated? The American people are having their doubts, and I believe a courageous leader (such as I hope Barack Obama is) who stands up to AIPAC, etc. and says that unqualified support for Israel is bad for America will lose some Jewish votes, but he might pick up more votes than he loses. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is wrong. It does not sit well with the conscience, and the American people are beginning to smell something fishy about the U.S.–Israel alliance, something that is not good for this country. It is time to change the nature of this relationship. Unqualified U.S. support for Israel is enabling immoral Israeli behavior as well as causing the U.S. to be hated. We must make our support contingent on a just resolution of the conflict.

When speaking with Jewish people on this subject, I always point out how dangerous the tactic of smearing every criticism of Israeli behavior as “anti-Semitic” is. It is desensitizing the world to real anti-Semitism, causing real anti-Semitism to increase world-wide, and allowing real anti-Semitism to hide under the cover of legitimate criticism of Israel. I say this as one who is a long-standing member of the SPLC who knows something about real anti-Semitism and is proud of his record in fighting it. Israelis are getting ever more alarmed as they sense this growth in anti-Semitism, but they blame critics of Israel instead of Israeli behavior itself. Their strategy is to “kill the messenger”. This will not work much longer. In the short run they may make people shut up this way, but resentment will keep building, and in the long run Jewish people everywhere are being harmed. I recommend to everyone to read Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (Univeristy of California Press, 2005) for an excellent scholarly treatment of this subject.

A One Democratic State (abbreviated ODS) solution to the conflict depends primarily on the Palestinians. They must produce a movement with a leader clearly committed to non-violence and peaceful struggle for democracy – something like the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela in South Africa – or like the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King in this country. So long as Arab nationalism prevails among Palestinians, there is no way to get to an ODS solution. Israeli security concerns are valid to this point. Jewish nationalism has to be opposed with democracy. To oppose it with Arab nationalism means war. Israel cannot be asked or expected to surrender to Arab nationalism. It CAN be asked and expected to be fully democratic and include everybody equally, but only if the people it then includes can be expected to behave democratically and as fellow citizens working together for the common good. This process involves long and careful negotiation, a slow working out of how to live together and share power, but it can be done, as it was in South Africa, and it must be done. The first step has to be the emergence of a credible democratic Palestinian leader. There are many leading Palestinians who are interested in an ODS solution, and Senator Obama should contact these people. Among these are Azmi Bishara, the well-known Israeli Knesset member accused of treason and in exile for advocating a new Israeli constitution that says that as long as Israel is defined as a Jewish state, its laws will always fall short of basic democratic principles and, more particularly, the right of all its citizens to full equality. Leading Democrats including Senator Obama should contact this man and offer their support. There are many other democratic Palestinians. There are people currently living in the West Bank and Gaza who are trying to start an ODS party. Blessed are these peacemakers. They need our help They are very brave, for they are considered traitors by the Arab nationalists and more dangerous than the Arab nationalists by the Israelis, who fear a Palestinian democratic popular struggle for equal rights and its effect on world and U.S. opinion far more than they fear the puny rockets of the nationalists. Look at this telling statement by Ehud Olmert in Haaretz, February 19 2004:

“We don’t have unlimited time. More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated,two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against “occupation” in their parlance, to a struggle for one man-one vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish State.”

We must join with the Palestinians in this struggle for their human and civil rights. We must do everything we can to encourage growth of the ODS movement among Palestinians. We must support it in every possible way. Only the United States can make this possible. Only with U.S. help can an ODS movement succeed. The United States should begin by announcing opposition to Israeli apartheid. It should join a world-wide boycott of Israel similar to the one that helped end South African apartheid. It should make clear that it will support Israeli security provided Israel announces willingness to end apartheid in principle. That means the abolition of all laws in Israel discriminating against non-Jewish people. Once this principle is accepted, the United States in concert with the United Nations must do everything possible to aid this transition and to guarantee Israeli security. All this must happen in the context of a larger Middle East peace conference. The ODS agreement between Israelis and Palestinians should be accompanied by agreements from all government s in the area to recognize a unified Israel with clearly defined borders. ODS should be presented to voters in the United States as an all-American, bipartisan, middle-of-the-road idea, not one of the left or the right. Peace and democracy are ideas that all Americans can support. Thank you for your attention.

References: Virginia Tilley, The One State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock, Michigan (University of Michigan Press)
Association for One Democratic State in Palestine/Israel, (Link Nimir Musa, The Promised Land Revisited: Two Failed Entities in Need of a New Paradigm by Professor Published by Alquds Alarabi daily newspaper, February 13, 2007, London, available in PDF format at Link
Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (Univeristy of California Press, 2005)