Israel's identity crisis
For decades, Israelis have put off facing a simple question: Is Israel a Jewish state, or a state of all its citizens? But with Palestinians soon to become a majority, the issue can no longer be ducked.

Demography is the underlying force driving Israel's policy toward the Palestinians. It determines political debate over the Jewish state's identity and borders. And it is the unspoken, but crucial factor behind Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decisions to unilaterally withdraw Israeli settlers from the Gaza strip, to build a "separation barrier" in the West Bank, and more recently, to approve a controversial law preventing any Palestinian who marries an Israeli from becoming an Israeli citizen. All these measures are aimed at preserving the Jewish majority, seen as a pillar of long-term national survival. And they are forcing Israelis to address head-on the most fundamental and delicate questions about their national identity. When Israeli Jews mention "demography," what they really mean is their fear of becoming a minority in the land, given the Arab population's higher fertility rate. Public threats by their adversaries, that "the Palestinian womb" will eventually decide the decades-old contest for Palestine, are fueling this fear. The recent intifada, the four-year Palestinian-Israeli war of attrition, convinced many Israelis that their country's future as a Jewish state, as opposed to a binational one, is dependent upon winning the demographic war. Even diehard right-wingers, former believers in "greater Israel," now advocate partition along ethnic lines, with a large Jewish majority on the Israeli side. And in recent years the "demographic left" has grown stronger, certainly compared to Israel's shrinking ideological left. In the end, it seems, births have helped the Palestinian cause more than bombs and bullets.

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The Palestinian Gandhi

So the problem is the perpetrators, not the victims: it's Israel, not the Palestinians. The Palestinians don't have to watch the Gandhi film. They fought the First Intifada with stones (1987-1993) and were answered with Israeli bullets. They fought the Second Intifada (2000-2004) with weapons and were answered with Israeli tanks, Caterpillar bulldozers, and airplanes. And they now start a Third Intifada, a popular, unarmed, nonviolent struggle against the strangulating fence, which is answered with Israeli undercover soldiers who throw stones and want us to believe the Palestinians have done it. There are thousands of Palestinian Gandhis out there, then: whole villages that demonstrate daily and peacefully against the robbery of their land and livelihood. Alas, their voices are unheard – because of the Israeli undercover soldiers who throw stones from within these peaceful demonstrations, and because of commentators and movie stars who then wonder, "Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?"

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PALESTINE HAS NEW POWERFUL FRIEND

The Chinese push to line up a web of interlocking alliances and accords and trade agreements is historic and astonishing and amusing to witness particularily since 90% of this activity is deliberately hidden from the American people by our own media which considers this to be a non-story. It is the biggest story. Bar none. Bigger than anything else going on right now. Tracing this activity and understanding what it means is very important. The latest conquest without firing a shot: Palestine.

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