Editor’s remarks: In this article eminent scholar and peace activist Richard Falk shows the delusional side of the liberal Zionism and debunks all the claims made by its vocal advocates. His penetrating analysis cuts across the deception and misleading projections that are tossed around as a way forward in the present situation. Diverse views and opinions offered by the liberal Zionists are meant to cover-up the designs of the Israeli government and facilitate the expansionist policies in the West Bank by illegal settlements and marginalising the Palestinians to the extant that they have nothing left but to accept what the occupier decides for them. It is easy to see that the ‘two-state solution’ has been a useful tool in the hands of Israel while expanding its illegal settlements and thus making a viable Palestinian state virtually impossible if it didn’t relinquish the land it occupied in 1967. We have to keep in mind that Israel has not planted 600,000 militant Jewish settlers in the West Bank with the idea of dislodging them at some time. On the contrary, they have been put there as an essential part of the colonisation of the occupied Palestine. Their numbers are increasing and new settlements are expanding. The Palestinians have hopes and aspirations for self-determination and creating a sovereign state in their own land. But Israel has the military power and the backing of the United States to impose its will on a captive people.
Nasir Khan, Editor
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Richard Falk, MWC News, January 5, 2015
Frustrated by Israeli settlement expansion, excessive violence, AIPAC maximalism, Netanyahu’s arrogance, Israel’s defiant disregard of international law, various Jewish responses claim to seek a middle ground. Israel is criticized by this loyal opposition, sometimes harshly, although so is the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and activists around the world. Both sides are deemed responsible in equal measure for the failure to end the conflict. With such a stance liberal Zionists seek to occupy the high moral ground without ceding political relevance. In contrast, those who believe as I do that Israel poses the main obstacle to achieving a sustainable peace are dismissed by liberal Zionists as either obstructive or unrealistic, and at worst, as anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic.
Listen to the funding appeals of J Street or read such columnists in the NY Times as Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman to grasp the approach of liberal Zionism. These views are made to appear reasonable, and even just, by being set off against such maximalist support for Israel as associated with AIPAC and the U.S. Congress, or in the NY Times context by comparison with the more conservative views of David Brooks (whose son currently serves in the IDF) who published a recent ‘balanced’ column lionizing Netanyahu, “The Age of Bibi” [Jan. 2, 2014]. Of all the deformed reasoning contained in the column, perhaps the most scandalous was comparing Netanyahu to Churchill, and to suggest that his story has the grandeur that bears a resemblance to Shakespeare’s MacBeth, an observation that many would find unflattering.
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