By Ted Belman
This article in Haaretz by Asher Maoz, a law professor, caught my eye
ACRI & Democracy / We can’t withdraw yet
Recently I received an e-mail from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI): “On the 40th anniversary of 1967, the association asks citizens this question: Can the State of Israel, which for 40 years has been ruling over millions of people who are deprived of the basic human rights that are the condition for democracy, still be considered a democratic country?”
Essentially it argued that the occupation invalidated the democracy. This is a faulty proposition.
It suggests that since we rule over the Palestinians in some matters we must either annex them and give them a vote or withdraw and end the occupation. Mind you, it doesn’t argue the first response because there are many reasons why it would feel annexation is not an option. Thus it argues Israel must withdraw to remain a democracy.
Moaz argues that Israel must remain until it has secure and recognized borders. This email makes no reference to Res 242.
I would argue that Israel can be a democracy within the green line even though it controls Judea and Samaria. I see no conflict.
Now if you thought Avraham Burg was in left field, pardon the pun, when he made his remarks that a Jewish State would bring about its end, Sami Michael, the president of ACRI, said the following about the idea of the Jewish state:
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“I think that it is the most foolish thing that the Jewish people has done in the past 1,000 years. Putting down a stake in a permanent place is an invitation to a new Holocaust. A Jewish state is a dream, a fiction, a journalist’s romance … to which we have related with excessive seriousness.”
There you have it, it is not the nature of the state that is the issue, i.e. how Jewish should it be, but whether the Zionism should be rejected in toto.
