PM Netanyahu reveals what makes the State of Israel special

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In the wake of the murders in France of a dozen people at Charlie Hebdo, four hostages at a kosher market, and a policeman by three jihadists claiming association with al Qaeda and the Islamic State, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu made the bold claim that the state of Israel represented Jews everywhere as he called for legislation that would make it easier for French Jews to move permanently to Israel. He sees this emigration as the solution to anti-Semitism in Europe:

“This week, a special team of ministers will convene to advance steps to increase immigration from France and other countries in Europe that are suffering from terrible anti-Semitism,” Netanyahu said.

“All Jews who want to immigrate to Israel will be welcomed here warmly and with open arms. We will help you in your absorption here in our state that is also your state.”

This short statement tells us volumes about the Zionist worldview of Israelis like Netanyahu. It takes a very filtered focus to see anti-Semitism as the main element of this string of murders. The kosher market was chosen because the terrorist knew the people there were likely to be Jewish and a CNN piece on the 17 murder victims indicates that the 4 killed in the kosher market were Jewish, but the lone killer said his motive was to avenge the Prophet and support his two friends. The 12 people killed at the magazine were gunned down because of what they stood for. The CNN piece does say that one was born in Tunisia of a Jewish father from Poland and a French-Italian mother but that was besides the point; he was murdered for being a political cartoonist by people with no sense of humor. The policeman that was killed was a Muslim. So to focus on anti-Semitism in this context is very narrow minded.

It is also very self-serving for someone who is trying to build a Jewish state and so would like to encourage as many Jews as possible to emigrant to Israel. To a large extent, Israel originally justified itself as needed for refuge after the extreme anti-Semitism that was the Holocaust. Seventy years later Netanyahu is still counselling European Jews to yield to the anti-Semites, pack it in, and move to Israel. Ironically, this view is remarkably similar to that held long ago by some US black Muslims that once promoted emigration to Africa as the way black Americans should deal with white racism. This is a segregationist method of dealing with differences between peoples. It doesn't work and its not a way forward for humanity.

Most significant though is what his words reveal about his thinking on the question of the state, since he is the head of state of the State of Israel. To avoid confusion let me first state that the word "state" has many meanings in English, and the one we are concerned with here is state as in government, which the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines as:

5.a : a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially : one that is sovereign
b : the political organization of such a body of people
6 : the operations or concerns of the government of a country
7 a : one of the constituent units of a nation having a federal government
b plural capitalized : The United States of America
8 : the territory of a state

By telling all French Jews, and only Jews, that Israel is their state and they are welcome there, Netanyahu reveals what makes the State of Israel fundamentally different from just about every other state on the planet; what makes it a dangerous new type of state.

All the other states of the world are based on territory, the United States, Mexico, Japan, France, England, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, Iran, etc., all claim to be the state governing a certain territory with the people in that territory being subjects of that state. In the most enlightened states, those born in their territory automatically become citizens. In a democracy, those citizens, together with those who have immigrated to that country and become naturalized, elected their state officials.

Netanyahu shows us here that what the Zionists are really demanding for the "State of Israel" is a state of a new type, an extra-territorial state organized along religious or ethnic lines that bases its territorial claims on its mythology, and says it is not just the state of all the people living in a given country, but the state of a certain people based on religion or ethnicity no matter where they live. Naturally, to challenge this new type of state or it actions is to deny the right of the Jewish State to exist.

Once we understand that this is a core value of the State of Israel we can also understand why it so often acts as through the normal rules of international law doesn't apply to it. It can easily justify operations that violate the sovereignty even of its closet allies in the name of its sovereignty over Jews everywhere. Its territorial ambitions are not bound by current borders and treaties; they grow from a mythology in which it represents God's chosen people on Earth.  

There is another would be "state" that seeks to be of this new type, and like Netanyahu's Israel, it defines itself as the state of all the people of a specific religion or ethnicity and at least one of the Paris killers claimed allegiance to it. It is the Islamic State. It started out as a jihadist and anti-Semitic group fighting US occupation in Iraq. Then it was known as Al Qaeda in Iraq [AQI]. After it developed pretensions of being a state, but still a state in the normal sense, one tied to territory, it renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq [ISI], and after it expanded into Syria it changed its name again to reflect these larger territorial ambitions and declared itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. Now, with its latest transformation, it has followed Netanyahu's lead and declared itself the true state of Muslims all over the globe, or simply the Islamic State.

In a world increasing beset by crises which affect all of humanity and conditions which imperil the whole planet, we need the existing states, based on countries, to make great strides in working together. The last thing we need is a new type of state, first pioneered by Israel and now copied by the Islamic State, designed to divide people along religious, ethnic or racial lines.

Doctors without Borders
Reporters without Borders
States without Borders?

While the world is shattered by the death of 17 Europeans at the hands of 3 jihadists, the dying goes on without notice in other places.

The murder of over a thousand at the hands of Boko Haram in Nigeria recently was hardly a blip in the media and the death of this child went unreported:

Frozen to Death another refugee infant #Syria pic.twitter.com/Yuq9bC2JLS
— Free Syria Media Hub (@Free_Media_Hub) January 12, 2015

Non-White Lives Matter!