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May 25, 2010

Eldad Yaniv Mismaps Zionism and Settlements

"Zionists are not settlers. Zionists are not racists" is the online headline of an Op-Ed in Ha'aretz today by Israeli attorney Eldad Yaniv, author of the National Left Manifest, who unfortunately errs about Zionism and settlements.

In an effort to separate Zionism from a history of settlement, Yaniv fumbles:

[In an earlier Op-Ed Israel Harel] claims that Ofra is the equivalent of the prestate "tower and stockade" settlements, that today's settlements in the territories are a continuation of the pioneering enterprise of that time.

But when David Ben-Gurion and the Jews in Palestine encouraged settlement under the nose of the British, they were building Jewish sovereignty and creating a Jewish majority in places that the world had designated for a Jewish state.

In fact, many Jewish settlements founded during the time of David Ben-Gurion were located in areas designated by the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan as part of a future Arab state. They include Nahariya, Matzuva, Hanita, Eilon, Yehiam, Kfar Hahoresh (in the Galilee), Nitzanim, Yad Mordechai, Kfar Darom, Nirim (in the Gaza Strip area), Ben Shemen, Hartuv, Kfar Menachem, Kedma, Galon, Gat, Revadim, and many, many more (in the central region).

Take a look at this map from Martin Gilbert's Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, clearly depicting the Jewish settlements sitting within areas designated by the U.N. as part of a future Arab state:

Eldad Yaniv settlements.jpg

Posted by TS at May 25, 2010 05:04 AM

Comments

Outstanding point made here.

I too was bothered by Yaniv's article, but for more philosophical reasons. Yaniv spouts the unfortunately common (mis)belief that:

"if we do not leave the territories, Zionism will drown in a binational ocean and Ahmed Tibi will be prime minister."

This statement is the very reason that Israel has zero chance of convincing the Arabs to compromise, and ironically turns Yaniv into what he most loathes: a racist occupier and settler.

How so? The key is the leftist premise that democracy equals geocracy, i.e. that everyone who regularly lives in a territorial unit is automatically part of one nation. This false equation forces its believers to accept the demographic threat as a moral force. But what a slippery slope indeed. Now for the ramifications:

1. It is utterly in the pragmatic interests of the Palestinian leadership to prevent a negotiated settlement, because geocracy promises them 100% of Palestine within a generation. IOW, why should they accept 22% to save enemy Israel, when they can wait just a few more years and get 100% while getting rid of Israel.

2. If geocracy is moral, then Israel should never have been founded in the first place, as only Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias had local Jewish majorities before Zionism. At best, the early Zionists could have asked for municipal autonomy - if geocracy is legitimate.

3. If indeed geocracy is moral, then Yaniv should have no problem with Ahmed Tibi as PM, regardless of whether this is in a binational state or Israel today. The fact that Yaniv is terrified by the thought of an Arab PM is because he is a racist.

4. Finally, given that Yaniv supports the founding of Israel in 1948 despite the local majority's opposition, he is ipso facto a supporter of occupation, and his living here is a form of illegal settlement.

There is much more to say, but the above lays bear the basic issues.

Posted by: Robert at May 25, 2010 04:34 PM

Spot on. Yaniv himself is the racist and is a hypocrite too - would he make personal concessions for piece, I meant peace? i.e. giving up his posh Tel Aviv apartment - probably funded by the EU - as a sacrifice to the gods of Oslo.

Posted by: slim shim at May 22, 2011 03:41 AM

They woke up October 2016? What did they do prior? Can we trust they actually change their ideology, or is it yet another subversive trick to deceive the Jewish donors?

https://www.algemeiner.com/2016/10/28/us-jewish-federation-to-allow-visits-to-settlements-during-israel-missions/

Posted by: Truthale at December 14, 2016 02:39 PM

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