One-state solution likely also one-religion solution: Islam

Oregonian op-ed writer overlooked important point

By PAUL HAIST

article created on: 2009-04-01T00:00:00

On March 21, The Oregonian reprinted a Los Angeles Times guest-opinion piece by writer Ben Ehrenreich in which he argued that Zionism is the central roadblock to peaceful coexistence between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
 
Regarding the creation of modern Israel, Ehrenreich, the author of the 2006 novel “The Suitors,” a modern retelling of “The Odyssey,” said, “Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion…or to wholesale ethnic cleansing.”
 
The core of Ehrenreich’s piece was an argument for a one-state solution, instead of the two-state solution that has been the centerpiece of all recent peace efforts and, in fact, was what the United Nations envisioned and Israel accepted in the first place, but which the Arab states rejected in 1948 when they attacked the newly established Jewish state.
 
When Ehrenreich lobs volleys about “the politics of exclusion” and “ethnic cleansing,” as well as references to Israeli “apartheid” elsewhere in his article, he is indulging in disingenuous and politically motivated histrionics that are out of touch with the reality of decades of life under fire in Israel. What Israel is engaged in is self-defense against foes so brutal or cowardly that they use their own children as shields while targeting Israeli children.
 
Still, some of what Ehrenreich says will resonate for many people here. For us in the West, especially in the United States—and despite our status as a highly religiously observant nation as contrasted with our partners in the West—a secular democratic state is sacrosanct, at least for most of us.
 
While there are highly vocal factions here in the United States that argue to the contrary, for more than 200 years we have succeeded—to varying degrees at various times and in various places—in holding to the principle of church-state separation as set forth in the First Amendment, regarding both free exercise and no establishment.
 
Judging from the online blog response to Ehrenreich’s article, the almost genetic commitment among Americans to church-state separation makes it difficult for them not to sympathize with at least some of Ehrenreich’s views.
 
When Ehrenreich invokes the vision of “a single, secular, bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs have equal political rights,” many and likely most Americans are going to think, “Of course. Why not? Makes sense to me.”
 
What most or many Americans fail to remember then is that Israel lives in a neighborhood in which what some have called its flawed democracy (unlike ours) is far and away the best thing going, nothing else comes close.
 
In response to the Ehrenreich article, Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Community Relations Director Bob Horenestein asked in a letter to The Oregonian, “In which of the current 22 Arab states do non-Muslim minorities have anything remotely resembling equal rights?”
 
His point was not to suggest that the absence of equal rights for Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims in Arab states justifies similar treatment of Muslims and other Arabs in Israel.
 
His point was that in a one-state solution in which there would be an Arab/Muslim majority there is no reason whatsoever to believe, when one looks at the human rights records of all other Middle East states, that a Muslim majority in what would become the former Israel would show any more tolerance for non-Muslims than one sees in the Arab states today.
 
In short, while a one-state solution would not only mean the end of the Jewish state, it would almost certainly also mean the loss or suppression or dismissal of rights for the more than six million non-Muslims who now inhabit Israel.
 
And that is something the West, and especially the United States, should not countenance and must not permit because it would be diametrically contrary to our most central beliefs regarding the dignity and inviolability of the individual—here and everywhere.
 
In looking at the Middle East, Israel and the decades of conflict since the creation of Israel, one shouldn’t be faulted for asking now and then, “Why can’t they be more like us? If only the Arab states shared our commitment to the values that seem universal to us.”
 
The Arabs and Muslims we meet individually here and abroad usually seem more like us than not. But when we look at the Arab states and their free-ranging political and militant arms—certainly the radical Islamist element, we shouldn’t be faulted for feeling a bit like Professor Higgins in “My Fair Lady” who—in Alan Lerner’s memorable lyrics—asked, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
 
When we characterize others as not like us, we risk dehumanizing them, demonizing them and making them into an other, and thereby enabling acts of inhumanity. We need to be mindful of that and conduct ourselves accordingly. Few know better than Jews the risk of being the other.
 
Still, if, as with the long history of the American civil rights movement and as writer Russel Banks has observed, change occurs only at the edges and works its way in, and the radical Islamists are the edges and not the fundamental hard core of Islam, then the prospects for Middle East peace at any time in the future are dim because there is a great deal of activity at what may be the edges of Islam.
 
Israelis and their friends believe justifiably that Israel’s Arab neighbors truly are very unlike them, that they don’t share their Western values and that the freedom they enjoy as Israelis and that is their right—as it is that of every human being—will be lost if they lose the Jewish character of their state, and none of that will change unless and until the Arab states and their political movements change—until they forego and atone for both their intolerance for those not like them and their indiscriminate, criminal and sinful disregard for the sanctity of human life.
 
That’s what Ben Ehrenreich seems not to understand. His failure to understand or acknowledge that on the matter of human rights they are not like us makes his otherwise commendable expression of commitment to human rights flawed in this case and dangerous for the safety of the people of Israel and all freedom-loving peoples, to the extent that the influence and credibility accorded him by The Los Angeles Times and The Oregonian leaves the readers of those and perhaps other journals emotionally moved but insufficiently informed.
 
Now we might ask, “Why can’t Ben Ehrenreich be more like us?”