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chapter four
to and exercise of the right of migration to Israel is racially configured,
prejudicial, and worthy of condemnation.
In the end, the liberal-Zionist authors posit a numbingly circular argument; and one that deserves careful attention and deconstruction. We
need a Jewish majority so as to have a Jewish state. But at the same time, we
need a Jewish state because the Jewish majority wants this and “[t]hose who
reject the Jewish state do a disservice to democratic principles by failing to
respect the democratically expressed will of the majority of Israel’s citizens.”
(Yakobson and Rubinstein 2009, 25, emphasis added) Taken together, the
Jewish state begets practices of demographic engineering to ensure a
Jewish majority, and simultaneously, the Jewish majority is then made a
prerequisite for the consummation of the Jewish state. One brings about
the other, and any proposal for a re-conception of Jewish statehood in a
manner that is reconcilable with Palestinian access and return to their
homeland is rendered a denunciation of both. Such a liberal-Zionist mandate for population management shies away from the obvious question:
What happens if the non-Jewish population grows within Israel? What
tools and mechanisms, compatible with principles of human rights and
dignity, are available to the Zionist state in its efforts to maintain Jewish
demographic supremacy? If the population of an unwanted or undesired
ethno-national group is increasing, particularly if this legally translates
into a security concern and an existential threat to the state as it does
in Zionist discourse, a state has a number of possible options for action.
It can prevent the growth and repress, displace, expel, refuse to recognize,
deprive basic services, and/or transfer the population elsewhere. Obvi
ously, none of these are compatible with liberal notions of human rights
and dignity. Nevertheless, they are a daily reality for the Arabs in Israel
through chauvinistic state-led practices of transfer, home demolitions,
unrecognized villages, systematic socio-economic depravity, forced exile
and more. Indeed, the legislation and practices mentioned in Chapter Two
supporting these racist and exclusionary mechanisms show that active
practices of demographic engineering are antithetical to principles of
democratic citizenship, equality and human dignity.
Liberal Rubber Stamp for Israeli Crimes
Throughout the text, the rationalizations promoted by Yakobson and
Rubinstein seeks to affirm the chimera of Israeli liberalism. To this end,
word choice is a key tool for diluting and blurring the Zionist record
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