Here’s another example of ideas rather than individuals giving the lead. Originally from the Guardian but linked below to ZNet, I’ve pasted a part of the footnote. This is what you equate with Zionism?

“Please note: this statement was drafted and then circulated, for around 48 hours, by a few individuals working without any formal organisation and without affiliation to any particular group…”

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20270

Another might be this http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20268 to do with the Republic Windows Workers. Possibly a ‘minority’ acting without full union endorsement?

That the effects of Left Wing authoritarianism is less than, as you say, imperialist warmongering and Zionist fascism, could be due to the fact that they have less influence these days than had the bastardised communist Bolshevik tradition on which they draw.

On the other hand your argument can be read to mean that because I merely punch people’s lights out rather than kill them like that other guy , that I am not violent.

Either way.

[lprent: and the rest was a cut'n'paste - if you want it accessible on the site, then link to it.]

Your claim that I carefully avoided talking about the 1948 refugees is baseless.

You replied to my comment about the 1948 refugees on the January 12 11.35pm post itself, to focus on descendants of them to imply that my reference to 1948 refugees in that post excluded them. It did not. I took up this issue in my reply January 13 9.37pm). Now it is you who have chosen to refuse to continue any debate about the issue as to whether their numbers are sufficient to overturn the Jewish majority within Israel and my related comments referring to Trotters take on the politics of this matter for the left.

It is your claim that a “two state peace has been tried since 1948 when it was first proposed” which is baseless.

One cannot try something which has never been. Arabs in 1947-48 and in following decades rejected the concept of a two state peace onto the late 1980′s. First Egypt, then Jordan, then the PLO and more and more members of the Arab League
chose to recognise Israel and support a two state peace. This formed the basis for the Oslo Accord and the PA being formed. The purpose to prepare for Palestinian self government and a formal peace agreement.

That this has not yet been achieved does not mean a two state peace has been tried.

Your argument that it has been, is merely the premise for a unitary state where Arabs would have the majority. Because as I suspected, you want a peace where Jews are the minority and not the majority. Which is why you run away from a two state peace as soon as the fact that the right of return does not of itself overturn a Jewish majority within the state of Israel is declared to you.

Thus a need to list a negative portrayal of Israel – to justify your position against the continuance of a nation state (sounds a lot like the sort of approach used to justify removing an entire people from Europe earlier).

“Of course Israel could give back the parts of the nascent Palestinian state that they pinched in 1948 …”

Territory taken in war before 1949 is recognised by the UN and thus the UN recognised the state of Israel as a member within those borders. The two state peace called for by the UN is based on that reality. Which is why the 1948 refugee is issue is what it is.

Of course it did not survive some ethnic cleansing, a number of wars, and the habit of Israel to block all borders and do major military incursion whenever they feel like it. Not to mention some extremely illegal settlements in the west bank, a wall that sort of ignores previous agreements that they are party to .

Of course Israel could give back the parts of the nascent Palestinian state that they pinched in 1948 along with the bits that they have pinched since 1967.

Perhaps if Israel started to observe international law then people may start to believe them. At present they can only be perceived as lying about as much as…. umm the similarities are uncanny.

I notice that you carefully avoided talking about the descendants of the 1948 refugees. Of course if you want then we can evict the immigrants and descendants since 1948 on both sides? Just to be even handed….

Why is supporting a two state peace to be seen as parroting a right wing media bias, or why are facts inconvenient to chosen partisanship associated with a right wing media – without actually being refuted? What one does know is that when this done, its because the left are supposed to take a party line on an issue without question.

Well as a certain aging former communist party boss put it in yesterdays media, what is anti-communist or anti-China about support for freedom for the people? Sometimes the party line is bunk and needs to be challenged.

Or from Joe the Plumbers reporting of the Gazan Massacre…

Dumbass-Joe

Given the UN set up the Israeli state on an area of land with a Jewish majority, it was not an area of land occupied by another people with some greater claim on it.

{No more than setting up Pakistan out of the Indian part of the British empire – even if Hindus lived there as a minority, or Croatia as a nation state on territory “occupied” by the people of Yugoslavia – even if there was a Serbian minority. And then all the separate nations which emerged out of empires such as Austro-Hungary or the Soviet Union.}

The idea that Israel is some exception to the liberation of national peoples to self government is nonsense – as is the idea that migrants have no right to become a majority or don’t have an equal right to self government as others.

The British (League of Nations) mandate on Palestine was on the basis that Jewish migration was allowed (it had begun earlier with the consent of the Ottomon empire)
and that consequent from this that self government to this people would then occur. Sure this arrangment also included the commitment that the Arab population would have an equal right to self government. The UN decided that this could occur through partition, so that in the area where either people were the majority there would be a separate nation state.

It was presumed that because both peoples would be a minority in one of the two states that both states would guard the rights of minorities. Essentially the peace process is about returning us to that sort of human rights issue.

If the UN had sent in peacekeepers (or the British had not cut an run, but provided the force to secure the partition borders), this would have been the issue of debate -how well each state provided for its minority citizens.

Essentially the UN failed in its duty to secure both states within the partition borders. It acted in 1949 to prevent the borders from changing again – by denying nation states the ability to expand by the means of war. But the 1948 event compounded the failure in the case of the Palestinians – which is why I think the international community owes compensation to the Arab refugees.

First I accept the matter of refugees is about the 1948 state of Israel area and not the original partition awarded.

But the population of Israel is known, as is the make up of its population. .

So how many refugees with descent from the 1948 refugees are there exactly? I presume you think the number is over the amount required for it to constitute an Arab majority over those there by the state of Israel law of return policy (a Jewish grandparent). I have no seen a figure showing the number of refugees to be large enough for it to be a majority, let alone the reality that not all of the refugees would actually return (just insist on their right to).

Your position sounds like that of the 1960 city of Chicago democratic machine – finding as may votes as necessary to win the state contest.

Chris Trotter has explained the political imperative of the left to claim such things – the need to show the Jews as a democratic minority to deny them their legitimacy and champion another ruling order in their place.

But the facts on the ground are otherwise.

I suppose really that’s the million $$$ question – did the UN have the right to set up a country for a people on a piece of land that was already occupied by another people? Interestingly enough the UN charter says that they didn’t.

I’m not ‘slagging off’ Authoritarian Left Groups and Orgs. They are a serious and destructive problem within left politics. Deemac said it. I agreed.

And I offered examples of this as well other modes of organising that get around the problems they cause. This makes me….like Israel? You’ll need to explain that one.

I don’t quite get the ‘self selected minority’ thing either. That would be ‘vanguardism. Something I strenuously oppose but that is embraced by….well, the LW Authoritarian groups and orgs..

Did you read the caveats placed around the proposed actions of a meaningful number of people from a constituency? (Meaningful in so far as they are enough in number to effectively execute what they propose? Which btw could be a majority because that many are needed.) Do you understand that although they can act they cannot claim to speak for or represent the wider constituency? ( No party line, no clique, no command and control) That although they can publicly identify with the wider constituency they speak from a personal viewpoint only? Many people, many voices.

And where does the self selection come in…unless you simply mean that people with something in common are a self selected minority? And if that is what you mean, why is that a bad thing? Do you understand the fact that there is a constant flux of people and ideas/ proposed action and not some set group of individuals within the constituency ‘running the show’? If there was a set group, that would be elitist and vanguardist…giving birth to a party line perhaps? And how are they not accountable? If any person ( and I mean one person) has a compelling reason for them not to act (eg their action was going to have unacceptable negative consequences for them…the person objecting) then that would be taken on board and ways explored that the negative consequences would not eventuate.

It is a dynamic way to organise and act that contains a fair number of (uncomplicated) subtleties. The problem with it, all things being equal, is the media. Or rather how to interact with them as they seek spokespeople and authority. On the good side, the cops are left flapping.

You raised the issue. You slagged off left groups for being authoritarian. I called you on your own minority rules viewpoint (i.e idea). That makes you more like Israel than any left group that I know off. Reason:(Idea) That the norm of majority rules can be held up to account. Your minority rule can mean anything a self-selected minority wants it to mean.
This has actually got nothing to do with being working class or not, its basic bourgeois liberalism i.e. bourgeois democracy, the thing that Israel lacks which is the topic of this thread.

The issue for Jews of Israel is why would one want people who don’t support your states continuance as fellow citizens. For some there is a fear of a possible Arab majority decades in the future – because of declining Jewish migration and higher Arab birth rates.

As for talk with Hamas, all they want is an Islamic government of Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem – in return they offer a hudna to Israel (no formal peace settlement as Hamas sees destroying Israel as a diving mission as per its founding mission statement purpose (while they bring rockets to the West Bank and develop an army to defeat Israel, the cause of this final struggle will be right of return (a replay of 1948 involving other Arab armies) and possibly control of the Mount.

The way to peace is known – it involves compensation to 1948 refugees (funded by the international community) and their access to both Palestinian citizenship and a right of residence in Israel (and an equal right of legal residence to Jews in Palestine. This by the EU process of free movement of labour or economic union. Whether Hamas would support any compromise settlement is doubtful.

[lprent: And the right of return to their families? And not just to the area of Israel as per the UN partition, also to the areas that Israel took over and expelled people from. Nett result would be a major jump in Arab population. It's be interesting to see if it did hit a majority - personally I think it would.]