Israel not democratic
Trudy Rubin indulges in the convenient fiction that has been standard in American political discourse (“Settlements wrong path for Israel”, Jan. 4). She claims that Israel can remain a democracy, but only so long as an Israeli Jewish majority enjoys supremacy over a non-Jewish Palestinian minority.
According to that logic, Israel was a democracy in its first years after having cleansed itself of 750,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949. It was a democracy as it kept the remaining non-Jewish population under military rule until the end of 1966 when it granted them separate but unequal citizenship. Israel was a democracy in 1967 when it took control over the Palestinian refugees and native inhabitants in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel remained a democracy as it expropriated Palestinian lands and facilitated the transfer of Israeli citizens into Jewish-only extraterritorial settlements.
Here’s the rub: Trudy Rubin asserts that Israel can remain a racist state because there is nothing racist about a Jewish majority ruling over a non-Jewish minority. An apartheid state is an apartheid state whether a minority rules over a majority or a majority rules over a minority. Israel was founded as an apartheid state. It’s time to end Israeli apartheid.
Wayne Kraft
Spokane