Yes for most Israeli Jews, Israel/Palestine is their home. Many of the settlers will go back to Brooklyn or wherever and that will be no great loss but the majority of Israeli Jews will stay because it, as you say, their home. But there are different types of home!

when it is used politically to suggest that a whole group of people, who are scattered across the globe, have a home other than where they live then yes, that is racist.

So you are saying that the 6 million Jews of Israel cannot consider this place their homeland though they’ve lived there for four generations (some more)? Where do they go? Back to their shtetls in eastern Europe? After all Israel is the place “where they live” as you say.

I have no problem ending or severely curtailing the Law of Return. But there are some Jews outside Israel who will always see in Israel a place that is either their spiritual homeland, & if not their homeland, at least a deeply spiritual field of dreams for them. You may dislike that this bond exists but it does & simply waving it away will not do.

structures aren’t being put in place to cement already existing antagonisms but lay the basis to eliminate them over time.

Whether or not a unitary state intensifies antagonisms there will be tremendous antagonisms. I respect & appreciate that you wish to see “structures’ (whatever that means) that will eliminate hostility “over time.” That’s great. But what do you do until then when you have ethnic riots of the sort that plagued Palestine from the 1920 till 1948? Because that will happen in this unitary state. I’m not saying I want this to happen or that it will be a good thing or anything of the sort. But it will happen because the pecking order of ethnic/democratic power will not yet be sorted out. How does one deal with this?

once you remove the impediments to unity people no longer think on ethnic lines alone.

That sounds lovely, it really does & I mean that. But I’m not a utopian nor do I trust someone who says things will be swell because of something that appears to me almost as a magical formula. I just don’t see things quite as you do. But it would nice if you could be right.

That is what they are talking about at the moment

Political talk is cheap in Israel. Everybody talks. All politicians mouth platitudes, blather & hot air. They’ve been talking about transfer for decades. Does the talk worry me? You bet. Does it mean that transfer of anything like it will definitely happen? Not at all.

until the end of the 1st world war Jews of the Old Yishuv and Arabs got along without problems

Well, yes. But what happened after that? And before WWI there were relatively few Jews in Palestine. The more Jews came the more hostility there was.

Palestinian is the correct term to use

You know I get tired of being corrected by pedants. I didn’t use Palestinian because I don’t want to confuse Palestinians inside Israel with those in Palestine. So I used a term that was far too broad & which was an error of shorthand, but everyone but you knew what I meant or at least didn’t disapprove. Perhaps others objected too, sue me.

Jewish is also a racist term

Gimme a break. You’re loopy.

Such a system denies freedom of religion to its citizens, and it denies the freedom to marry whom one chooses.

More loopiness. Where do you get this from? IT would do nothing of the sort. There is no rule in such a state that a Jew can’t marry a Palestinian Israeli or vice versa or that a Jew can’t be an atheist or convert to Islam or whatever they wish. Again, you’re making things up out of whole cloth.

Noam Chompsky [sic]

I believe you’re think of Noam Chimpsky…or is this the Chomsky who chomps on a cigar?

that document on when is it ok to kill non Jewish babies.

This is what a Jewish homeland perpetuates.

Nonsense. Pure stuff & nonsense. The book you’re referring to was written by a settler rabbi who would want nothing to do w. the state I’m proposing because it wouldn’t be an exclusivist or supremacist Jewish state. You’re confusing the current Israel w. what I’m proposing which is ENTIRELY diff.

Israel is not my homeland.

I didn’t say Israel was THE Jewish homeland. I said it was A Jewish homeland. No one says you have to see in Israel YOUR Jewish homeland. Frankly, I don’t care how you define yrself as a Jew or even IF you do. Nor would Israeli Jews living in the state I’m suggesting. But for 6 million Israeli Jews it IS their homeland & contrary to you I believe this should be honored as long as it doesn’t prevent the 1 million Israeli Palestinians fr. making this place their homeland as well.

It is not their homeland

This is so completely divorced fr anything that actual Palestinians believe as to be simply ludicrous. A people is connected to a land. That is their homeland. Do you think that those expelled in 1948 & now living in Jordan, Lebanon or God knows where believe that Palestine however you define it is NOT their homeland? Of course it is. And if we take yr nonsense to its extreme then you’re denying not only the Law of Return but the Right of Return. Are you sure that’s the way you want to go?

every term can be racist depending on who uses it and the context in which it is used.

Arab is a reference to linguistic and cultural and possibly national term not a racial one so the comparison with whites is not like with like.

Similarly Jewish can be used in a racist manner but there is nothing inherently racist in it. Why do u say that?

a homeland is where one makes one’s home! Again there is nothing racist about it per se, but when it is used politically to suggest that a whole group of people, who are scattered across the globe, have a home other than where they live then yes, that is racist. And that is why the Zionists, who allied with some of the worst anti-Semites like AJ Balfour, were in effect both proponents and reflectors of anti-Semitism. They didn’t accept that Jews belonged anywhere other than in a British colony.

As for socialism being a fantasy it might be in the world main imperialist power, the USA but it is a dire necessity in the rest of the world. Surely global warming and the banking crisis have told us that capitalism is incapable of behaving in a rational manner as it is by its very nature anarchic and unplanned.

But no doubt it is a fantasy to imagine a world where no one starves whilst others face the problem of obesity or where the wealth of the world is spent on the needs of humanity rather than weapons of mass destruction.

And if you have something to say on the subject then explain, don’t just throw out a few phrases that say nothing.

I don’t see Israel as a Jewish state, but rather as a state that is a Jewish and Arab homeland respectively.

Arab in this context is a racist term. Palestinian is the correct term to use. Otherwise we might as well as talk about all the countries “white” people control, and ask the question of isn’t 3 continents enough? Why do white people need Israel as well?

Interestingly, Jewish is also a racist term. I am not sure racism is quite the right word, but it will do. Ultimately what is being demanded is that people be loyal to the state. If the state is a Jewish homeland/Arab Homeland that demands that its citizens fit themselves into the square hole and the round hole. Individuality is ok so long as you fit into the correct hole.

Such a system denies freedom of religion to its citizens, and it denies the freedom to marry whom one chooses. It dictates life choices thorough out ones life. If this is what you support, then deal with the reality that you are proposing to create.

Now I believe that Noam Chompsky manages to support a similar situation without stepping into racism, so it can be done.

I would share your dislike of the socialist fantasy that Tony Greenstein promotes. Never the less, I am not going to accept the Jewish post utopia that you are proposing. A Jewish state provides about as much long term protection for Jews as – say Christian Europe did for Christians.

This is the ugly inside apartheid Israel style.

http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2010/01/hitler-was-right-so-say-two-angry.html

Oh – and that document on when is it ok to kill non Jewish babies.

This is what a Jewish homeland perpetuates. Hitler would have been happy to put a star of david on me and ship me off to Auschwitz. Israel is not my homeland. I can’t tell you how upset it makes me to find that others, like Hitler, believe that they can define me as a Jew and completely ignore me as a person.

Palestine is the physical place where ancestors, and a large number of a people we call Palestinians live. It is not their homeland. A Palestinian who moves to the US and becomes a US citizen has every right to declare that the US is their home, and Palestine is not. Their children have no right to declare that Palestine is their home. I do not have the right to declare that Latvia is my home, even though there is a Village there – or was before Hitler – with my last name on it.

Homeland is a racist term. Surely at least that should be an obvious lesson from apartheid South Africa.