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From: martillo@hector.UUCP (Yakim Martillo)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion.jewish,net.nlang.africa,net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Apartheid on the West Bank (defining racism)
Message-ID: <176@hector.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Nov-85 17:26:51 EST
Article-I.D.: hector.176
Posted: Thu Nov 28 17:26:51 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Nov-85 06:39:50 EST
References: <4188@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <360@ubvax.UUCP> <614@unc.unc.UUCP> <366@ubvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: martillo@hector.UUCP (Yakim Martillo)
Organization: MIT Project Athena
Lines: 66
Xref: watmath net.politics:12245 net.religion.jewish:2773 net.nlang.africa:160 net.politics.theory:1499
Summary: 


>To my sense (ignoring the corrupted rhetoric), racism is a pathological
>relationship between members of a powerful ethnic (or religious) group
>and members of a less powerful group, such that all the powerful ethnic group
>needs to know about a member of that minority group is that he or she
>is a member of that group, AND the member of the powerful ethnic group
>assumes that the member of the less powerful group is an inferior.

>The pathology is in letting a person's membership in one or another group
>blot out one's checking out anything that might make that person an
>individual, with special valuable qualities, in situations where
>knowledge of the presence or absence of these qualities would normally
>be checked.

So what I can know there is something wrong with Nazism without getting
to know individual Nazis.  The situation is similar with Islam.

>Given this definition (which I support), to call Zionism racist is wrong
>because it was an escape for the Jews from the racism of Europe.  Jews
>were never in a more powerful position, as far as states were concerned,
>so they could never institute a racist relationship in the first place.
>They were victims, not leaders, in politics.  Anti-semites might point
>to Rothschilds as an exception, but they haven't read their history, I'd
>submit.

And as such zionism was one of the biggest failures in history, since
it did not save the Jews of Europe.  Zionism's main success was willy-nilly
getting Sefardic and oriental Jews away from Muslims.

>In Israel, Jews are leaders, not victims.  There they have to face
>claims and charges that they could be racist towards Arabs, with the
>understanding that their leadership positions make it possible for
>them to become racists.  I don't think immigration policies constitute
>sufficient evidence, or even a major indication, of racism.  Expulsion
>policies do.  Racist laws do.  Laws that define Jews on the West Bank
>as citizens and Arabs on the West Bank as Jordanians, while Israel rules
>the West Bank, are racist laws.

Since the West Bank is not part of Israel, I see no reason why the Muslims
there should have Israeli citizenship.  The Jews of Sidon did not become
Israeli citizens when Israel occupied Sidon.  Likewise Samaritans in Nablus
have had to specifically request Israeli citizenship.  They did not 
automatically become citizens.

>But these are just some laws and some practices.  I still don't think
>that racist laws are the major basis for the legitimacy of the state
>of Israel.  Its legitimacy is still based on an anti-racist Zionist movement
>dispersed throughout the world, on the Jewish diaspora.  What worries
>me is that as Israel gets its own identity and moves on its own
>political track, as it's starting to do today, that track will be
>based on the Likud right-wing resentment-based scapegoating racist
>dynamic.

>If that movement takes over, Israel will be Zionist no more.  And
>it will be racist.  And what it might become is being foreshadowed by
>what is happening on the West Bank today.

Personally, you still have not explained to me why Israelis should worry
about the feelings or political rights of former persecutors who explicitly
state a desire to become current persecutors.