IN wake of the piece by David Pratt (There is now no denying the apartheid state that is Israel, July 20), and subsequent responses in the newspaper, I would also like to make a contribution.
The article encouraged a letter from Andrew D Mowatt (Letters, July 21) provided a historical background, though elements of his analysis can be taken to task. Among other things, he talks of that immediate post-First World War period when the former Ottoman regions of the eastern Mediterranean and beyond became British and French Mandates. He explains how Britain denied independence to Palestine, but fails to tell us that a very large part of the mandated British territory became the protected Arab Emirate of Transjordan in 1921 (the Arab country we now call Jordan).
He then laments the 700,000 Arab refugees from the remaining part of the mandated territory after the events of 1948 (the declaration of independence by representatives of the Jewish population). However, he fails to mention the almost equal number of Jews forced from their homes and possessions across the Arab and Moslem world from the late 1940s and early 1950s in wake of the failure of combined Arab armies to kill the Jewish state at birth.
And what of the article by David Pratt itself? Calling Israel an apartheid state has always been instantly rounded on, and there is never a shortage of “vociferous voices” likely to say so, he writes. This is probably just as well, because no matter how often or for how long an untruth is voiced – and by Mr Pratt’s own admission he has been voicing the untruth for a decade or so – it doesn’t make it any more true. Israel is no more deserving of pariah status than Slovakia, which has a minority population of almost 20% (Hungarians, Roma, Czech and many others) and whose constitution opens with the words, “We the Slovak nation”. Indeed, doesn’t Latvia, a country with a large Russian minority, have a constitution that talks of the inalienable right of the Latvian nation to self-determination in order to guarantee the existence and development of that nation?
Mr Pratt talks of disquiet about the Basic Law in Israel, and in the Jewish diaspora of America, and in the UK. One can’t help think though that if, over the last decade or so, there had been more pressure from Europe and North America on the Palestinian governments (and remember there are two, one in Gaza City and another in Ramallah) to accept their own roles, responsibilities and obligations towards the peace process, and to put weapons out of use by terrorists, then the Israeli Government might not have proposed this Basic Law when it did seven years ago. They might also have placed some pressure on President Abbas to moderate his statements about the proposed “Judenrein” nature of any future Palestine.
Having said that however, the Basic Law (2018) joins a succession of Basic Laws and other laws which make up the unwritten Israeli constitution. Itself, this new Basic Law on the nation state does not infringe on the individual rights of any Israeli citizen – Christian Arab, Moslem Arab, Druze, Armenian, Circassian, or Baha’i – nor does it create individual privilege, and so, yes, Mr Pratt, there is indeed a denying of the apartheid nature of the state that is Israel.
The nation state law declares that Israel is a country, and gives manifestation to the right of the Jewish people (a nation) to national self-determination. To a large degree the 2018 law is a re-statement of some of the content of the Declaration of Independence 70 years ago.
In another letter responding to Mr Pratt, Lovina Roe (July 21) lauds Ireland. Let me ask her if the Israeli Basic Law is any different from the 1916 Proclamation to Irishmen and Irishwomen in Dublin. “In the name of God”, it proclaimed, “and of dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom”.
Graeme D Eddie
East Lothian
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