On the weblog of Charlie Stross (liberal sci-fi author, atheist of Jewish origin) I found an interesting take on Israel's hostility to Lebanon. Would you agree with it?

The big honking problem for the Zionist project, all along, has been that there is a large ethnic minority within their borders that, were it to be enfranchised and given the vote, would vote Israel into a non-Jewish state. Indeed, back in 1947 the Palestinian Arabs were near-as-dammit 50% of the population of the mandate territory. Therefore the minority had to be either expelled or neutralized if an explicitly Jewish state was to exist.

Both strategies have been pursued — the West Bank and Gaza Strip were for many years run as Bantustans, on the South African model — but partition isn't terribly viable in the long term because demographics shift.

Lebanon is interesting because it's a model of a nation where a Moslem and non-Moslem community managed for a long time to live together on a more-or-less democratic basis. It's no surprise that radicals in Israel focussed for many years on schemes to destabilize Lebanon politically, contributing to the civil war of the 70s and then moving the Israeli army in during the 80s (and again today): its mere existence is deeply subversive to the project of building a Jewish state — it demonstrated the availability of an alternative one-state model — so it had to go.

Bluntly, democracy and ethnic identity nationalism are incompatible ideologies. Democracy has been losing the argument inside Israel for decades now, as all the major parties agree (as an axiom of their participation in political life) on the necessity for ethnic identity nationalism as a foundation stone for the nation.

And while it pains me to admit this — I still identify ethnically as Jewish — I cannot view Israel today other than as a failed attempt at building a democracy, poisoned because the foundations of the building are tainted with racism.

I hadn't considered it, and I don't know how large a part it plays, consciously, in the determination of Israeli policy, but it makes sense, in its own twisted way. I have absolutely no problem with a Jewish ETHNIC identity and the contributions the Jewish ethnic group has made to, for instance, American culture. For several years, it was literally true that my best Friend (some of my older friends will know why that's capped) was Jewish, tho he wandered among religions, being even Catholic at one time); and I've worn a yarmulke at my brother's wedding, after nominal conversion to Judaism so he could marry his college sweetheart (tho that marriage ended in divorce, I still have Jewish blood-relatives, including, alas, some in Occupied Palestine, including a rabbi (my nephew David) in Jerusalem), attended a Seder, etc., here at home, and work in an industry (law) in which there are a great many Jews. But when Jewishness becomes the equivalent of racism, the whole world must "call" the Jews on it.
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The real problem, however, is that Jewish identity in Zionism is even worse than racism because it is imbued with (literally) "Holier Than Thou" pretensions to be God's Chosen People who OWN the land, exclusive of anyone else's claims, because of an express gift from God. Somehow, some people outside the Chosen group have allowed that madness some legitimacy, even tho it insults them. When Hitler made similar claims, without, perhaps, the express benediction of God but with hints of ancient German paganist benedictions — that the German people have a divine right to lebensraum and mastery over others — outsiders didn't buy into the German delusion. Why some others are buying into the Jewish delusion, I do not understand.
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The issue comes down to how willing the Jews are to part from their delusion and accept something less than exclusive control of "the Holy Land" or "Promised Land". Why SHOULDN'T they be content to walk where David, Solomon, and various of the prophets (but, tellingly, NOT Moses) walked? Why do they have to CONTROL the land and oppress others, kill others, to do so? That's what an American cannot understand.
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I, for instance, am a white man who lives in a predominantly black neighborhood in a city with a black mayor and largely black council. I don't need my group to control; I need my principles and values to control. And then we can all live in peace, as good neighbors. That's The American Way. It is certainly not the Zionist way, Hitler way, Tojo way, or Islamist way.
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There could indeed be a worldwide Pax Americana if "Americana" meant American in values, not enforced by American power. We really did find the way, not because we invented it from a blank slate but because we had to find a modus vivendi for 13 different societies that had had separate histories for as long as 169 years before 1776 (Jamestown, 1607;* Plymouth, 1620). We couldn't impose a unitary state and rule by a single unified ruling class even if we had wanted to; so we learned not to want to. Always, however, there has been this tension between the centralizers and the federalists, which we see playing out today in the attempts by the Bush Administration to seize more and more power for the center, and especially the Executive Branch, and the people of many different types resisting the creation of an oppressive unitary state. And always, in recent times, we have had the example of Lebanon to scare us away from extremism, because we know that if the various communities here have to fite for dominance, the Lebanese civil war will look like a walk in the park by contrast with ours.
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I was going to say that at least we don't have an Israel on our border exacerbating our internal problems. But we do, don't we? The End Times loons and Christian Zionists have corrupted American churches, and the model of a "Jewish State" has emboldened people who want to make the U.S. a "Christian Nation" and impose a New Testament 'Islamic Republic' here. Again, this argues for annexing Palestine and imposing the American Way there, lest its alien ways instead destroy us here.

The Far East has its Mecca, Palestine its Jerusalem, France its Lourdes, and Italy its Loretto, but America's only shrines are her altars of patriotism — the first and most potent being Jamestown; the sire of Virginia, and Virginia the mother of this great Republic.
— from a 1907 Virginia guidebook

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:47 PM