One Man, One Vote

by Charley Reese

Palestinians should give up the idea of a two-state solution. It is as plain as a hippopotamus at a tea party that the only kind of state the Israelis will give them, if at all, is a politically and economically unviable collection of tiny enclaves separated by Israeli territory.

Instead, Palestinians should demand a unified Palestine, with one-man, one-vote democratic government and equal rights for all.

Of course, the Israelis won't agree to that, either. They know that while initially Palestinian Arabs would be a minority, in a few years they would become a majority because of a larger birthrate and a decline in Jewish immigrants.

Zionist ideology demands that Israel have a Jewish majority and Jewish control, which is why, to this day, the Israelis persist in various ways to try to ethnically cleanse the land of the original majority, which was Arabs.

Great Britain had no right to take an Arab country and present it as a gift to European Jews. Israel is today an ethnic-based state with discriminatory laws that would not be tolerated by the world community in any other state.

For example, under Israel's Law of Return, any Jew anywhere in the world can come and be pronounced a citizen when he steps on the tarmac. Across the border in the wretched Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are people and their descendants who lived in Palestine for generations until driven out by the Israelis. They are not allowed to return and, of course, would never be granted citizenship.

This oddity that is Israel is maintained because the U.S. and Europe deliberately shut their eyes to its basic flaws and obfuscate the issues with endless talk about an alleged peace process that, in fact, does not now and never has existed. They are supported in this willful blindness by powerful Jewish lobbies, most of them run ironically by people who wouldn't dream of immigrating to Israel, where taxes are high and military service is compulsory.

Members of a Christian cult that supports the Zionist state simply demonstrate to the world their ignorance of Christianity and Judaism, as well as their pathetic naïveté. The religious right in Israel would not only like to cleanse the land of Muslim Arabs but of Christians as well, though it is willing to use the willing dupes for the time being.

Christianity began in Palestine. The oldest church in Christendom is in Palestine. Christians have lived in Palestine since the days of Jesus. Yet the extreme hardships imposed on Palestinian Christians are ignored by most American Christians, many of whom have been brainwashed into supporting people who hate them rather than their Christian brothers and sisters.

You don't see it reported in American newspapers, but there is a prominent rabbi who likes to boast publicly that a Jewish life is worth more than a gentile life. There is a rabbi who said publicly that a Jewish fingernail was worth 100 Palestinians.

Granted, more secular Israelis vehemently disagree with these views, but they are trapped in an artificial state that is artificially maintained with outside support.

The rallying cry for Palestinians should become one Palestine, equal rights for all and one man, one vote. They have lived under Israeli occupation for 40 years, and it is time for that to end.