Abdul El Sayed, a progressive Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, told an audience that he “struggles” to answer questions about whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.My first reaction to people who question whether Israel has “a right to exist” is usually, “Go pound sand.” Israel is a nuclear power with one of the most advanced militaries, economies, and technological infrastructures in the world. And yet, for some reason, and it’s not difficult to guess what that reason is, people are constantly pondering whether a Jewish state should exist. They exist because they fought to exist.But El Sayed’s reasoning exposes a confused and warped worldview.
“The question becomes,” he goes on, “how do you sustain democracy if you don’t have a Jewish majority? And then to say it’s Jewish by power, are there particular offices that have to be held by Jewish people? If so, what kind of Jewish people?”
First of all, El Sayed has it backward. Israel sustains a democracy because it’s a Jewish state.
I’ll tell you how you don’t “sustain a democracy”: by giving the Palestinians a state or any “right of return” to Israel proper. That would destroy any semblance of “liberal values,” tout de suite. Forget the nihilistic tyranny of Hamas, the regime that took power after Israel gave Gaza autonomy in 2006. Someone should ask El Sayed if he struggles with the fact that Fatah, the “moderate” wing of Palestinian politics, hasn’t put on an election in the “West Bank” for nearly 20 years. It has good reasons, of course. It knows extremists would win.
