    Avnery's Two States idea is fully applicable everywhere,
    if it applicable in Palestine.

    Wolf, Lamb and Ouroboros
    By Israel Shamir

    Often meeting Uri Avnery at Israeli demos and in Palestinian villages, I
    came to admire this active octogenarian and the perennial symbol of
    Israeli peace camp. But even more I love reading Uri Avnery for his
    skilful pen and for his glib ability to make palatable even the least
    acceptable ideas. Bertolt Brecht wrote: a perfect propaganda man could
    make cat lick mustard, at least by pushing mustard up under cat’s tail.
    Avnery’s last essay called The Bi-National State is a similar exercise:
    he wants us to love and accept the Jewish state, for (he claims) the
    fate of Palestinians would be worse without it.

    Why it is better for Palestinians to be locked up in their small
    enclaves than to be equal citizens of the whole of Palestine? In a
    mental somersault, Avnery breaks a new ground in public discourse and
    proclaims: Jews can’t live with non-Jews. The Jew and the Goy are like
    wolf and lamb; if you want the Wolf dwell with the Lamb, please provide
    a fresh lamb every day. There was, I understand, a slight difference of
    opinion who of the twain is a wolf, (classic Zionists clamoured the lamb
    skin), but Avnery leaves us in no doubt: while sojourning together, the
    Goy will lose to the Jew. In his own words, “In a joint state, if it
    were to be set up, the Jews would dominate the economy and most other
    aspects of the state, and try very hard to preserve that situation.”

    Well, this is the opinion of many men in many countries. They point up
    Jewish dominance in Hollywood and the media, as well as in banking and
    finance from Moscow with its oligarchs to New York and Washington and
    conclude as Avnery does: the Jews can not live in one state with
    non-Jews, for the Jews would dominate the economy and most other aspects
    of the state. Usually they call for transfer of Jews, too. However,
    until the present publication of the Avnery’s ground-breaking article,
    this opinion was effectively banned from majority of websites and
    printed media. Now, the Counterpunch presented the discerned reader with
    the opinion, and none of the ADL gang expressed shock or
    dissatisfaction. Indeed, if you support Zionism you may express any
    opinion including that “the Jews can not live in one state with
    non-Jews”.

    Avnery made a great improvement upon the old line by presenting it as
    benevolent care for the weak goy: ‘Let them have a separate state, for
    otherwise Jews will dominate them’. But there is no reason to
    distinguish between Palestine and other lands with sizeable Jewish
    communities. Here is Rhodes, as Greeks said to a man who claimed he can
    jump very high – on the isle of Rhodes. Avnery’s idea is fully
    applicable everywhere, if it applicable in Palestine. It should be
    equally applicable in the US, where a Jewish state should be created
    soonest so that Jews wouldn’t dominate the Goyim.

    The Jewish State of America (the JSA) does not have to be contiguous: it
    can use the pattern established by Jews for the Goyim in Palestine.
    However, the citizens of the JSA should not be allowed to vote in the
    USA, or influence its discourse, or hold property in the USA, in full
    compliance with Avnery’s ideas on Palestine. Their property outside the
    boundaries can be dealt with the same way the Jewish state in Palestine
    dealt with Gentile property. It will solve the main problem on the way
    to democracy in Palestine presented by Avnery, namely: “American Jewry
    has immense political, economic and media might, and they will not lose
    it for many years to come”. The might of American Jewry contained within
    the limits of the JSA would not matter much for the rest of the world.
    It will solve the second problem presented by Avnery: “the Arabs are
    becoming more and more the bogyman of the Western world”, for with the
    Jews safely contained in the JSA, the USA will pay attention to its own
    interests and will become the best friend of the Arabs.

    If that doesn’t suffice, Jewish states can be created elsewhere too: the
    Jewish state of France, the Jewish state of Russia, the Jewish state of
    Germany, for Avnery’s approach to Palestine contains a universal
    message. (Germans actually tried to create a Jewish state in Poland,
    probably for the same altruistic reasons.)

    And then, we will be able to undo the Jewish state in Palestine. Extreme
    Jewish nationalists from the settlements will trek back home to Brooklyn
    (surely an integral part of the JSA), while millions of ordinary
    dwellers of Palestine, of Jewish or other origin, will be able to live
    together in peace.

    For the witty construction of Uri Avnery is built on a mirage.

    He says: ‘according to the bi-national idea, the territory between the
    Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River--Palestine / Eretz Israel—will
    again constitute one state, as in the days of the British Mandate before
    1948.’ But it is not an idea, it is the only reality on the ground. The
    existing apartheid state occupies the territory, so it has to be
    democratised, not created.

    He says: basically it is a clash between the Zionist movement and the
    Arab-Palestinian national movement, of two nationalistic peoples. It is
    an attempt to create symmetry where is none. Palestinians are real
    people possessing their language, literature, culture, growing their
    olives in their own terrain. They do not need nationalism. ‘Jews of
    Israel’ are nothing without their Zionist idea, a mishmash of sundry
    immigrants without single unifying element. That is why Avnery’s
    comparison with Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Russia and Canada is misleading.
    De-zionised ‘Jews of Israel’ can become Palestinians, like de-zionised
    Jews of America can be just Americans, but they can’t create a new
    nation.

    Not only is his position immoral, as he supports equality for Jews
    elsewhere and their supremacy in Palestine. A Jewish state is
    impossible, because in any state, somebody has to work, and I do not
    mean work in advertising, sales, real estate and security & intelligence
    apparatus. In the Jewish state in Palestine, the work is done by native
    Palestinians, and imported Chinese, Thai and Russians.

    This arrangement is collapsing. One-million-strong Russian community is
    increasingly restless. ‘The Israeli elites ruined us, sucked our blood
    through their real estate schemes, hooked us on their mortgages, while
    keeping at the arm’s length from real positions of influence in the
    society’, editorialised Globus, usually docile Russian Israeli weekly.
    Restless are the North Africans represented by the "single mothers’
    march", for the neo-liberal Bibi Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon inverted the
    usual Jewish approach to Goy and applied it inside the ‘Jewish society’
    to consume its weaker elements.

    The Wolf has to eat; and if there are no lambs, it will eat itself,
    starting from the weaker tail. It won’t be a Wolf anymore, but rather
    Ouroboros, the emblematic serpent of ancient Egypt and Greece
    represented with its tail in its mouth continually devouring itself. Now
    the Jewish Ouroboros already devoured itself up to its neck. Avnery’s
    ‘two-state solution’ is a means to reinforce the controlling positions
    of the old Ashkenazi elite, but it is unsustainable. The creation of the
    Jewish state was a great experiment that proved the futility of this
    idea. It has reduced itself ad absurdum and pointed out the true
    dichotomy of the world: not Jews versus Gentiles, but Wolf versus Lamb.
    Instead of creating a Wolf state, we should de-fang wolves and
    peacefully live together – in Palestine, in the US, in France and
    elsewhere.

    Too many things in Avnery’s writing remind us: Zionism and Nazism grew
    of the same desire to combat Communism. He writes:

    “The 20th century has seen several "utopias" that have caused terrible
    disasters. The communist vision, for example, was based on the
    assumption that there is a perfect human being or that human beings can
    be perfected. It clashed with a reality of imperfect human beings. As
    the German post-communist leader, Gregor Gysi, once told me: "We tried
    to impose the perfect system on imperfect human beings. So we tried to
    impose it by force." Thus a system of terror came into being and
    millions were slaughtered, from the Ukraine to Cambodia”.

    As if the imperfect system of Mammon worshipping replete with
    consumerism, egoism and alienation had not been imposed by force. As if
    the system of terror established by the US did not slaughter millions
    from Hiroshima to Guatemala. Avnery’s preference for the Zionist
    anti-utopia reminds me of a man who preferred to marry an ugly woman for
    beauty passeth.

    Zionism is Protean if anything. It has its tentacles in all lines of
    thought. It is represented in the extreme right, who says “Saving Israel
    is even more crucial than defeating the Left” and We should not relax in
    the battle against cultural Marxism, but even more urgent than waging
    war on Marxism is the need to save Israel from its own leaders and from
    total destruction”. It is represented in the left, who says, “The cause
    of Israel is the quintessence of Marxist liberation struggle. It is
    represented by Jared Israel and plethora of other ‘libertarians’, by
    anarchists of Antifa, by finance analysts of Wall Street Journal and by
    some pseudo-communists of Eastern Europe, old buddies of late Robert
    Maxwell, the Mossad agent. It would be strange if Zionism would not be
    represented in the extremely important struggle for Palestine. Alas,
    Avnery’s essay confirms that the good man is a proponent of Zionist line
    in the peace camp. It should not surprise us for he actually sued an
    Israeli newspaper that called him ‘non-Zionist’ and won. Witty Uri
    Davis called him ‘the only Jewish citizen of the State of Israel who can
    produce a court ruling attesting to his Zionist credentials’.

    There is a non-Zionist Israeli peace camp. In the same time the Avnery’s
    essay appeared, his good friend and a member of his Gush Shalom,
    Yehudith Harel from Tel Aviv published her impassionate call to return
    Palestinian refugees home: ‘This beautiful and rich human resource could
    not only boost the local economy but also contribute to our cultural
    richness and diversity’, she wrote. Harel supports One State, and calls
    for ‘de-zionization of Israel, equality and rejection of apartheid’.
    There are many less privileged Israelis who have no place in the
    self-devouring Ouroboros. They should be brought together.

    There is an urgent need to create a Palestinian version of Mandela’s ANC
    that would integrate all non-elitist forces in a united front. The
    Native Palestinian leadership should give up chasing the Fata Morgana of
    ‘independent Palestinian state’ and assume the key position in the new
    alliance.