for over 25 years, from the time we walked the Knesset halls together, he with Shinnui, me with Techiyah. His book, Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights, written with Amnon Rubinstein is superb.
Excerpts from his attack on Sayed Kashua:
If Jews were the conquered ones...There would be no occupation, because there would no longer be two peoples in this land.
Haaretz columnist Sayed Kashua asks Israeli Jews to imagine a situation in which they were the weak and conquered party...Kashua apparently believes that Israeli Jews’ apathy to Palestinian suffering stems from the fact that they never ask themselves what would happen if the roles were reversed. But I think just the opposite is true: This apathy is to a great extent the result of dwelling on this question too much. Because the answer the Jewish public gives itself when it imagines a military defeat and Arab conquest is that in such a case there will no longer be two peoples in this land.
...only a few have any illusions regarding what an Arab occupation would be like...
...And when an Israeli Jew today ponders the internal disputes raging in the surrounding Arab world – and face it, there is no Israeli citizen, Jew or Arab, who doesn’t do this – there is no reason for him to be optimistic....when a Jewish Israeli remembers what the Hamas takeover of Gaza looked like – even though in regional terms it was exemplary in its moderation – there’s no reason for optimism, either.
He is not a rightist:
None of this in any way contravenes the need to end the occupation and divide the land between the two peoples. That’s the just and proper thing to do, and is in Israel’s ultimate interest. Because if Israel ends up defeated in this conflict, it’s safe to assume that it won’t be a military defeat, but a diplomatic defeat that will result in the establishment of one state between the river and the sea. Such a state won’t be Israel. What’s ironic is that those who seek to impose this defeat on Israel call themselves the “national camp.”
Of course, I dispute that conclusion but for sure there will still be Arabs residing there.
Unlike what the Arabs have planned for us.
And we are not either Shunni nor Shi'a.
^
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