I am surprised and disappointed to see that Bob from Brockley - a normally sensible left-wing blogger - appears to have embraced the one state solution. The reasons he offers are the following:
Many of my friends on the anti-anti-Zionist left think that the one state solution is essentially equivalent to the genocidal destruction of the Jewish nation. They argue that the Arabs (who have demography on their side, and formidable military allies in the form of the Saudis, Iran and so on) have proven themselves unable to share space with Jews. I reject this fatalistic view, and having recently been in Northern Ireland am more confident than ever that we can forge our own futures if we unshackle our imaginations. It feels to me that the idea of the two state solution [I think this must be a typo and that he means “one state solution”. Otherwise the rest of the text makes no sense] is steadily gaining ground, not just among the hardcore advocates of a “free Palestine”, but among younger Jews in both Israel and the diaspora. This slow awakening comes with a growing sense that another Zionism is possible, and a recovery of the memory of pre-1948 Zionism, the Zionism of Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Joseph Trumpledor, AD Gordon and Judah Magnes, which called for a “national home” for the Jews and not necessarily a nation-state. By the way, I have at various other times in my life called for a one state solution also for South Africa, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Ireland and Cyprus.
Continue reading ‘Bob From Brockley Goes One State’
Here’s British parliamentarian Sir Gerald Kaufman on Israel’s operation in Gaza against Hamas: “”We have had a fuss in our country about the inability of certain Israeli politicians to visit Britain for fear of being arrested…Anybody who uses white phosphorus should be arrested and should be tried for war crimes.”
Sounds like a bold interventionist on behalf of human rights, no?
Here’s what Gerald Kaufman, then the Shadow (opposition) Foreign Secretary, said at the onset of the Serb onslaught against Bosnia, in June 1992: “The situation is far too confused for forcible intervention from outside to do any positive good…The Foreign Secretary is equally right to make it clear that the Serbs are not the only guilty party - that others share the guilt.” (Quoted in Brendan Simms, Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia, Penguin 2001, pps. 297-98.)
And here he is again in early 1993, when the genocidal nature of the Serb campaign was becoming increasingly clear: “The European Community should have no military role in this conflict or indeed in any other. The need is not to extend the conflict but to maintain it [sic].” (See Brendan Simms, p. 298.)
To maintain it. To maintain, in other words, a state of affairs which enabled the punishing siege of Sarajevo, the concentration camps in which women were raped and men brutalized, the massacre at Srebrenica and myriad other atrocities.
Gerald Kaufman was perfectly content for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia to continue apace. So whenever you hear him delivering one of his inchoate, hateful rants against Israel, ask for the salt.
