Back in February, Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick got wind that Harvard’s Kennedy School of government was planning a conference on the “one-state solution” to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The reason for the conference, its organizers explained, was that “To date, the only Israel/Palestine solution that has received a fair rehearsal in mainstream forums has been the two-state solution. Our conference will help to expand the range of academic debate on this issue.”
To Glick, it smelled of Nazism. “In the decades before the Holocaust,” she wrote, “an evil wind blew through academia and other elite quarters throughout the Western world. The doctrines of race and eugenics became all the rage of the anointed intellectuals…Anti-Semitism was an elitist way of masking intolerance, even genocidal intolerance for Jews and making it socially acceptable to seek our annihilation. And this is the precise function that the term anti-Zionism serves today.” Glick, it appeared, considered discussion of the “one-state solution” a very bad thing.
But appearances can be deceiving, because now Glick has come out in favor of the “one-state solution” herself. As she explained in a recent Jerusalem Post column, “There is no chance whatsoever that the two state paradigm can work.”
So what distinguishes Glick’s one-state solution from the one that was discussed at Harvard? Two things, it seems. First, the Harvard one-staters want Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to receive equal voting rights. Glick, by contrast, wants only Palestinians in the West Bank to receive equal voting rights since Gaza is already a “de facto Palestinian state.” (Not de facto enough for the United States government, which still considers Gaza under Israeli occupation, but never mind). Second, Glick is certain that enfranchising West Bank Palestinians won’t threaten Israel’s Jewish character because Palestinians are declining as a percentage of the population of Israel and the West Bank. The Harvard crowd, best as I can tell, considers a discussion of dueling birthrates to be unseemly.
There you have it. The difference between Glick’s super-Zionism and the Nazi-like anti-Zionism of the Harvard crowd is that they want to include Gaza and she thinks Jews will have more babies. In one column, Glick has brilliantly exposed the absurdity of the boundaries established by American Jewish leaders to determine who can be included in polite discourse. In practice, Glick’s proposals might well endanger Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. But not one synagogue or Jewish organization will disinvite her as a result because, after all, those same synagogues and Jewish organizations have been for decades welcoming speakers whose support of settlement growth endangers Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. To be accepted by the organized American Jewish community, all you need to do is declare yourself in support of Israel as a Jewish state, the more fervently the better. Whether your policies actually serve that goal is irrelevant.
So listen up, Harvard one-staters, you’re going about this all wrong. Here’s a better approach: Declare that Palestinian birthrates are falling. Explain that your desire for Palestinian enfranchisement need not threaten Israel’s Jewish majority. Stop being so explicit about your anti-Zionist desires. The best way to dismantle Israel as a Jewish state is through subterfuge. Look how well it’s working for Caroline Glick.
