Israel is the only state in the world that has a population of 200%. And that’s a fact.
Public opinion polls show that it has two simultaneous majorities. One is peace’loving, theother supports extreme nationalism.
At the present time, it looks like this: In every public opinion poll there is a large majoritythat supports the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Sharon wants, of course, to enlarge thesettlements, intensify the war against the Palestinians, eliminate Yasser Arafat,postpone a permanent solution and refuse any peace negotiations until unattainableconditions are met. Anyone who supports him must be a radical right’winger.
But the very same public opinion polls show also that a majority agrees to withdraw from(almost) all the occupied territories, dismantle (almost) all settlements and accept theestablishment of a Palestinian state in return for peace.
How is this possible? Can a state have a population of more than 100%? If so, Israel is a veryspecial country.
This curious situation did not come about yesterday. It started long ago.
I remember public opinion polls of more than 20 tears ago, which also revealed two majorities.The first majority supported the idea of expelling all Arabs from the country west of theJordan river. The second one supported a withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.Together with those who were against both proposals, this totaled 200%.
Statisticians and sociologists examined, researched, shook their collective heads,shrugged their shoulders, raised both hands and thought: a crazy people. Doesn’t know what itwants. Mixed up. Schizophrenic. Suffering from a split personality.
But the people were not mad at all. The professors just did not know how to read the results oftheir polls.
What the public tried to say was: If it were possible to drive out all the Arabs, that would bewonderful. If it’s impossible, let’s get the hell out of there.
Why? For a simple reason: the one thing that unifies almost all Jewish Israelis is the wish tolive in a state where there are only Jews. If we could achieve such a state in all the countrybetween the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, O.K. If not, let’s leave the occupiedterritories. Not “land for peace”, but “withdrawal for the sake of safeguarding ahomogeneous Jewish state”. This is the majority opinion, and there is, indeed, only onemajority.
Some call this “racist”. Some call it “nationalist”. Some say that this is “apartheid”. Butthis attitude is rooted in the fact that for thousands of years Jews have lived as areligious’ethnic community dispersed throughout the world and often suffered cruelpersecution (especially in the Christian world). They have developed a ghetto mentality.They want to live among themselves, separate from others, surrounded by a high fence.
Zionism wanted to achieve this by establishing a state where the Jews would live together,without Goyim (Gentiles). Even the presence of a considerable minority (the Arab citizens)in Israel creates severe mental stress. For most Israelis, the ideal situation would be astate without a single non’Jewish citizen. (The presence of foreign workers does not botheranybody; it is temporary, and they are devoid of any rights.)
Lately this aspiration has found new expression in an idea which is becoming quite popular: totransfer the Israeli Arab villages adjoining the West Bank, together with theirinhabitants, to the future Palestinian state, which means giving up territory so that Israelwill have less non’Jewish citizens.
This is quite unusual. The French, for example, have shed rivers of blood in order to keepAlsace, whose people are of German descent. India is ready to wage a nuclear war in order to keepKashmir, which is populated by Muslims. For other nations, territory is more important than ahomogeneous population, geography precedes demography. Israelis, too, like territory ‘but demography is by far more important to them.
One example: after the 1956 war, during which Israel conquered the Sinai and the Gaza Strip,David Ben’Gurion was compelled to give up the Sinai. At the time there was a clamor from theright and the left to annex the Gaza Strip. Ben’Gurion adamantly refused, because he did notwant to increase the number of Arab citizens by hundreds of thousands at any price. (Thebrilliant idea of an eternal military occupation, which allows the occupier to abstain fromconferring citizenship on the occupied population, was not yet invented.)
Today, too, there is only one majority in Israel. Most Israelis are ready to pay the pricedemanded for peace. So why do they support Sharon, who represents the opposite? For one simplereason: they have been brought to believe that “we have no partner”. There is a completeunanimity, from Avigdor Liberman and Effy Eitam on the right to Haim Ramon and Yossi Sarid onthe “left”, that “there is no partner”. And since there is no partner for peace, let’s supportSharon, who knows (or so it seems) how to wage war. The aim of this brainwashing is precisely tomake it possible to keep the occupied territories and, God willing, to drive the Palestiniansout.
The real criminal in this story is Ehud Barak. In order to hide his monumental failure as apeace’maker, he created the legend that “we offered them everything and they rejectedeverything.” This historic lie is the connecting link between the two seeminglycontradictory results of the polls: the majority is ready to pay the price of peace but does notbelieve that peace is possible. So let’s support Sharon.
There is no riddle here. Israel is not a mad cow. It is, at most, a maddened cow.