print:New: Charles Manekin and Steve Kowit Weigh-in on the Cohen-Chomsky Debate

Editor's Note: We thank Steve Kowit and Charles Manekin for these contributions to the Cohen-Chomsky Debate. Kowit's article was published earlier. Manekin's article is the latest submission and can be found at bottom of this page. The debate began with Noah Cohen's challenge to Noam Chomsky's position on Palestine and solutions to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. We invite other readers to comment on this debate which goes to the heart of the history and dynamics of the occupation. - LMB

Noam Chomsky's critique of Noah Cohen's one-state argument seems somewhat odd, since its premise is that the two-state solution is the only "realistic" solution, largely because it's the only one that the major players are seriously considering. But that itself seems a weak argument -- and simply untrue. It would be surprising if Hamas --surely one of the major players -- wouldn't quickly embrace this solution -- as would, more than likely, the majority of the Palestinian people, once the realization dawns, as no doubt it already has on many, that the two-state solution is a fantasy and the one-state solution means having their stolen coutnry back. It is likely that, if promoted, it will be embraced throughout the world, since it's a genuine solution, a just and meaningful solution, to the horrible Palestinian predicament. Much of the world would be delighted to see the racist state of Israel dissolve without a single individual facing harm of any sort from that collapse. And surely the nations of the Middle East would be overjoyed to see real justice in Palestine.

The Israeli government, continuing to build settlements in the West Bank even now, has never seriously contemplated the establishment of a Palestinian state, Sharon's duplicitous "acceptance" of that "two-state" proposition notwithstanding. His Likud Party, in its rejection, is more honest. The two-state solution is an Israeli-U.S. con game and always has been.

Arik Sharon has found it all but impossible to get Israeli settlers in Gaza to agree to so much as the mere possibility of withdrawal sometime in the future. But a two-state solution means removing hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers from Gaza and the West Bank. To say that it is unlikely that either the Israeli government or the international community can effect such an exodus is to understate the case. It is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to remove the bulk of the West Bank settlers from the West Bank and surely no one is about to try it. But if that is the case, then the two-state solution is nothing but a chimera. It would be hard for anyone with a realistic perspective to imagine it as a plausible option. The two-state solution is nice for Israel and the United States to talk about, to discuss, to pretend to embrace. Practically every Zionist in America today can feel righteous and compassionate by "embracing" the two-state solution -- especially knowing full well that it will never come to pass. Of course, the PLO, in desperation, signed on to the idea in 1988. It was, its leadership thought, the best they could hope for in a grim situation. But the concept of that Palestinian state is now one of a "demilitarized" state, and a demilitarized state is, of course, not a state at all. It is simply a name for another kind of colonial entity of impotent and impoverished refugee camps. Not the right of return but the right to be a vastly overcrowded, impoverished, completely unarmed sea of subject people living under the state of Israel's watchful and hostile eye, is what a two-state solution comes to. Nor is that pseudo-state for the palestinians likely to encompass even 22% of that people's stolen homeland.

The "two-state" solution is neither a state nor a solution. It is a con game. Nor does that "solution" solve the root problem of Israel's continuing to be a racist state with a master race in control of the land, water and government. Nor does it solve the problem of Israel being an aggressive, militaristic nuclear state with a relentless colonialist mind-set and long-held expansionist ambitions.

And --please forgive me for injecting a note of ethics into this discussion-- the two-state solution does not begin to serve the interests of social justice. The entirety of the Palestinian homeland was stolen and Noam Chomsky seems perfectly content with the Palestinian people being given back 22% (or less) for a non-state.

There is a solution, as Noah Cohen rightly insists -- one that doesn't require the impossible task of removing hundreds of thousands of Israelis from land they consider to be theirs and which under no circumstances would they be willing to abandon. It is to force Israel, through a total, unremitting international boycott --(one that might, in the end, have to include the United States as well as Israel)-- to end its racist state system and declare itself a nation in which people of all religions and ethnicities have absolutely equal rights. The Palestinian Right of Return would then be enforced --since Palestinians, like everyone else, will have a perfect right to emigrate to this new, genuinely democratic state. There will be, most likely, a Palestinian/Arab majority in this new state, along with very appreciable (and powerful) Jewish minority. That Chomsky is certain that the Jews will be oppressed and its rights ignored, seems unlikely. If it is a genuine egalitarian race-blind nation, such oppression, by definition, will not be in the cards. Moreover, in realistic terms, the wealth of Occupied Palestine today, the political power and the ownership of property and industry are, of course, completely in the hands of Jews and much of that wealth and power will, of necessity, remain for a great period of time in the hands of Jews. It is unlikely that even as a minority, the Jewish population will be devoid of power. Look at the white minority in South Africa today.

The struggle will be to create an egalitarian race-blind society... the very sort of culture that Americans, ideally, wish to have in the United States.

Since this solution does not involve the mass removal of large populations, indeed, does not necessitate a single person being thrown out of his or her home, it is far more realistic a goal. The Right of Return can be managed so that financial compensation and the right of Palestinians to build, live, work, farm and operate a business anywhere in the new multinational state is guaranteed. It seems a far more realistic solution -- to say nothing of a far more authentic solution, one that actually brings real justice to the Palestinian people.

This is, if enough pressure is put on Israel, a distinctly possible historic outcome. It is, of course, the very solution we all experienced not long ago in South African --when the Apartheid regime fell in a bloodless, democratic revolution brought on by an international boycott and international revulsion at Apartheid. It is a truly just solution, a truly democratic and truly egalitarian solution. And, given international determination --even in the face of US rejectionism-- it is a perfectly feasible one.

The two-state solution which probably wasn't operable even in the good old Rabin days, is nothing but a fantasy today. The One-state solution, on the other hand, is a perfectly reasonable goal toward which the nations of the world, by instituting a thoroughgoing and unrelenting boycott of Israel, can meaningfully begin to engender. Noam Chomsky, who remains both courageous and correct about so many urgent matters, and who remains very much at the forefront of progressive thinking here in the United States, our most honored progressive intellectual, is simply mistaken about this one.

*Steve Kowit, a well-known American poet, comes from a large Zionist family. His study of genocidal colonialism and the Xhosa mass "suicide" in South Africa appears in the current issue of Skeptic.

From Charles Manekin, University of Maryland/Bar Ilan University, Israel

Dear Axis of Logic,

I must say that Cohen has really not come to grips with Chomsky's point that the secular, democratic state historically proposed by the Palestinians for all of Palestine (fewer and fewer Palestinians propose it today) would end up destroying "all Jewish political, social, and cultural institutions". Instead, he misrepresents Chomsky as saying that Jews would not have guaranteed freedom of worship in the hypothetical state. But the issue is not whether Jews could worship freely (Mr. Cohen may be unaware that most Israelis -- I am one -- are hardly of the worshipping type), but what level of autonomy they would enjoy in the hypothetical state. Would they possess group rights of the sort enjoyed by other autonomous groups throughout the world? Or would, in this hypothetical Palestine, they be denied the right to group identity and cultural autonomy, in the same way that Israel has denied its Palestinian citizens that right?

As long as Israeli Jewish and Palestinian nationalism are strong, the only sensible first step is a partition of historical Palestine, within the framework of federation and open borders. That is not a whole-hearted adoption of the Geneva Initiative; I, for one, reject both its provisions that Palestinians give up the right of return and demilitarization -- provisions that were included, according to its framers, in order to placate the Israeli public. Mr. Cohen (and Mr. Chomsky) may disapprove of nationalism, but nationalism is what most Israelis and Palestinians still want, and that can only mean two states at the present time. Moreover, there is no guarantee that Palestinians would form a majority in a secular, Palestinian state, unless Jews are expelled. So how can Mr. Cohen demand of Palestinians to sacrifice their own nationalist aspirations in order to share power with millions of Israeli Jews?

Finally, Israel has been recognized by virtually all the world, including representatives of the Palestinian people. To conjure up a scenario in which the world will pressure Israel to disband is simply fantastic. Israel may have been born in sin, but it is immoral to kill bastards, or, for that matter, adulterers. The world should pressure Israel into behaving like a civilized nation, both to its own citizens and to those outside of its lands -- but, as Edward Said liked to say, you don't fight injustice by committing more injustice.

Charles Manekin, University of Maryland/Bar Ilan University, Israel