ZGram - 7/7/2002 - "Avnery: Israel - A Maddened Cow"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

July 7, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Here comes your Sunday treat:

[START]

Israel - A Maddened Cow
By Uri Avnery
Former member of Israeli Parliament
7-6-2

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, the other supports extreme nationalism.
 
At the present time, it looks like this: In every public opinion poll 
there is a large majority that supports the Prime Minister, Ariel 
Sharon. Sharon wants, of course, to enlarge the settlements, 
intensify the war against the Palestinians, eliminate Yasser Arafat, 
postpone a permanent solution and refuse any peace negotiations until 
unattainable conditions 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 the establishment 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 very special country.
 
This curious situation did not come about yesterday. It started long ago.
 
I remember public opinion polls of more than 20 years ago, which also 
revealed two majorities. The first majority supported the idea of 
expelling all Arabs from the country west of the Jordan 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 it wants. 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 of their polls.
 
What the public tried to say was: If it were possible to drive out 
all the Arabs, that would be wonderful. 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 to live in a state where there are only 
Jews. If we could achieve such a state in all the country between the 
Mediterranean and the Jordan river, O.K. If not, let's leave the 
occupied territories. Not "land for peace", but "withdrawal for the 
sake of safeguarding a homogeneous Jewish state". This is the 
majority opinion, and there is, indeed, only one majority.
 
Some call this "racist". Some call it "nationalist". Some say that 
this is "apartheid". But this attitude is rooted in the fact that for 
thousands of years Jews have lived as a religious-ethnic community 
dispersed throughout the world and often suffered cruel persecution 
(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 a 
state without a single non-Jewish citizen. (The presence of foreign 
workers does not bother anybody; 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: to transfer the Israeli Arab villages 
adjoining the West Bank, together with their inhabitants, to the 
future Palestinian state, which means giving up territory so that 
Israel will have less non-Jewish citizens.
 
This is quite unusual. The French, for example, have shed rivers of 
blood in order to keep Alsace, whose people are of German descent. 
India is ready to wage a nuclear war in order to keep Kashmir, which 
is populated by Muslims. For other nations, territory is more 
important than a homogeneous 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 the right and the left 
to annex the Gaza Strip. Ben-Gurion adamantly refused, because he did 
not want to increase the number of Arab citizens by hundreds of 
thousands at any price. (The brilliant idea of an eternal military 
occupation, which allows the occupier to abstain from conferring 
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 price demanded for peace. So why do they support 
Sharon, who represents the opposite? For one simple reason: they have 
been brought to believe that "we have no partner". There is a 
complete unanimity, from Avigdor Liberman and Effy Eitam on the right 
to Haim Ramon and Yossi Sarid on the "left", that "there is no 
partner". And since there is no partner for peace, let's support 
Sharon, who knows (or so it seems) how to wage war. The aim of this 
brainwashing is precisely to make it possible to keep the occupied 
territories and, God willing, to drive the Palestinians out.
 
The real criminal in this story is Ehud Barak. In order to hide his 
monumental failure as a peace-maker, he created the legend that "we 
offered them everything and they rejected everything." This historic 
lie is the connecting link between the two seemingly contradictory 
results of the polls: the majority is ready to pay the price of peace 
but does not believe 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.

[END]

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(Source:  http://www.rense.com/general26/cow.htm )