Israel's Ideology of Genocide Must Be Confronted and Stopped
https://www.commondreams.org/杰弗里·萨克斯 | 2024 年 9 月 30 日 | 共同梦想
现在控制政府的以色列暴力极端分子认为，以色列拥有圣经许可，实际上是宗教授权，可以摧毁巴勒斯坦人民。
上周，当以色列总理本杰明·内塔尼亚胡在联合国大会上发表讲话时，数十个政府退出了会议厅。内塔尼亚胡及其政府受到全球谴责，原因是以色列对其阿拉伯邻国实施了堕落的暴力。内塔尼亚胡宣扬一种原教旨主义意识形态，使以色列成为世界上最暴力的国家。
以色列的原教旨主义信条认为，巴勒斯坦人对自己的国家没有任何权利。以色列议会最近通过了一项宣言，拒绝在以色列的土地上建立巴勒斯坦国，以色列的土地指的是约旦河以西的土地。
以色列议会坚决反对在约旦河以西建立巴勒斯坦国。在以色列土地的中心地带建立巴勒斯坦国将对以色列国及其公民构成生存威胁，使以巴冲突持续下去，并破坏该地区的稳定。
将约旦河以西的土地称为“以色列土地的中心”令人震惊。以色列只是约旦河以西土地的一部分，而不是整个土地。国际法院最近裁定，以色列占领巴勒斯坦土地（即 1967 年 6 月 4 日，即 1967 年 6 月战争之前，位于以色列边界之外的土地）明显是非法的。联合国大会最近以压倒性多数投票支持国际法院的裁决，并呼吁以色列在一年内撤出巴勒斯坦领土。
值得回顾的是，当英国帝国于 1917 年承诺在奥斯曼帝国巴勒斯坦建立犹太人家园时，巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人约占总人口的 90%。在 1947 年联合国分治计划时，巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人约占总人口的 67%，尽管分治计划提议只给阿拉伯人 44% 的土地。现在以色列声称拥有 100% 的土地。
以色列的这种厚颜无耻有很多原因，最重要的是美国军事力量对以色列的支持。如果没有美国军事力量的支持，以色列不可能统治一个种族隔离政权，在这个政权中，巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人占人口的近一半，却没有任何政治权力。后代人将惊讶地回顾以色列游说集团在操纵美国军队方面取得的成功，严重损害了美国的国家安全和全球和平。
然而，除了美国军队之外，以色列对巴勒斯坦人民的严重不公还有另一个根源，那就是自称法西斯分子的贝撒列尔·斯莫特里奇、以色列财政部长和国防部长伊塔马尔·本·格维尔等狂热分子所宣扬的宗教原教旨主义。这些狂热分子坚信《约书亚记》，根据《约书亚记》，上帝应许以色列人这片土地“从南部的内盖夫荒野到北部的黎巴嫩山脉，从东部的幼发拉底河到西部的地中海。”（约书亚记 1:4）。
上周，内塔尼亚胡在联合国再次以圣经为依据主张以色列对这片土地的主权：“去年我在这里讲话时说过，我们面临着摩西在数千年前向以色列人民提出的同样永恒的选择，当时我们即将进入应许之地。摩西告诉我们，我们的行为将决定我们留给后代的是祝福还是诅咒。”
内塔尼亚胡没有告诉他的同僚（他们中的大多数人无论如何都离开了大厅），摩西为通往应许之地（申命记 31）制定了一条种族灭绝之路：
[耶和华] 将在你们面前消灭这些国家，你们将剥夺他们的土地。约书亚是那个走在你们前面的人，正如耶和华所说的。“耶和华必待他们，像他从前待亚摩利人的王西宏和噩以及他们的土地一样。耶和华必将他们交给你们，你们要按照我吩咐你们的一切诫命对待他们。”
以色列的暴力极端分子认为，以色列拥有圣经许可，实际上是宗教授权，可以摧毁巴勒斯坦人民。他们的圣经英雄是约书亚，他是摩西的继任者，领导以色列人进行种族灭绝性征服。（内塔尼亚胡还提到了亚玛力人，这是上帝指定的对以色列人敌人进行种族灭绝的另一个例子，这显然是向他的原教旨主义追随者发出的“狗哨”。）以下是圣经中关于约书亚征服希伯伦的记载（约书亚记 10）：
于是约书亚率领以色列众人从伊矶伦上到希伯伦，攻城。他们占领了希伯伦，用铁锤击打了城中的居民，然后又用铁锤击打了城中的居民。
Israel's Ideology of Genocide Must Be Confronted and Stopped
https://www.commondreams.org/Jeffrey D. Sachs | September 30, 2024 | Common Dreams
Israel’s violent extremists now in control of its government believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people.
When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium at the U.N. General Assembly last week, dozens of governments walked out of the chamber. The global opprobrium of Netanyahu and his government is due to Israel’s depraved violence against its Arab neighbors. Netanyahu purveys a fundamentalist ideology that has turned Israel into the most violent nation in the world.
Israel’s fundamentalist credo holds that Palestinians have no right whatsoever to their own nation. The Israeli Knesset recently passed a declaration rejecting a Palestinian State in what the Knesset calls The Land of Israel, meaning the land west of the Jordan River.
The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region.To call the land west of the Jordan the “heart of the Land of Israel” is breathtaking. Israel is one part of the land west of the Jordan, not the entire land. The International Court of Justice has recently ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian lands (those outside of Israel’s borders as of June 4, 1967, before the June 1967 war) is plainly illegal. The U.N. General Assembly has recently voted overwhelmingly to back the ICJ ruling and called on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories within one year.
It is worth recalling that when the British empire promised a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine in 1917, the Palestinian Arabs constituted around 90% of the population. At the time of the 1947 U.N. partition plan, the Palestinian Arab population was approximately 67% of the population, though the partition plan proposed to give the Arabs only 44% of the land. Now Israel asserts the claim to 100% of the land.
There are many sources of this Israeli brazenness, the most important being the backing of Israel by U.S. military power. Without the U.S. military backing, Israel could not possibly rule over an Apartheid regime in which Palestinian Arabs constitute nearly one half of the population yet hold none of the political power. Future generations will look back in amazement at the success of the Israel Lobby in manipulating the U.S. military to the severe detriment of U.S. national security and global peace.
Yet in addition to the U.S. military, there is another source of Israel’s profound injustice to the Palestinian people, and that is the religious fundamentalism purveyed fanatics such as the self-proclaimed fascist Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Minister of Finance, and Minister of National Defense Itamar Ben-Gvir. These fanatics hold fast to the biblical Book of Joshua, according to which God promised the Israelites the land "from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west." (Joshua 1:4).
At the U.N. last week, Netanyahu once again staked Israel’s claim to the land on Biblical grounds: “When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land. Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.”
What Netanyahu did not tell his fellow leaders (most of whom had in any event vacated the hall), was that Moses laid out a genocidal path to the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 31):
[The LORD] will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the LORD has spoken. “The LORD will do to them just as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when He destroyed them. “The LORD will deliver them up before you, and you shall do to them according to all the commandments which I have commanded you.”Israel’s violent extremists believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people. Their Biblical hero is Joshua, the Israelite commander who succeeded Moses, and who led the Israelites’ genocidal conquests. (Netanyahu has also referred to the Amalekites, another case of a God-ordained genocide of foes of the Israelites, in a clear “dog-whistle” to his fundamentalist followers.) Here is the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of Hebron (Joshua 10):
Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron, and they fought against it. They captured it and struck it and its king and all its cities and all the persons who were in it with the edge of the sword. He left no survivor, according to all that he had done to Eglon. And he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it.There is a deep irony to this genocidal account. It almost surely is not historically accurate. There is no evidence that the Jewish kingdoms arose from genocides. Most likely they arose from local Canaanite communities adopting early forms of Judaism. Jewish fundamentalists adhere to a 6th century BCE text that is most likely a mythical reconstruction of purported events several centuries earlier, and a form of political bravado that was common in ancient Near Eastern politics. The problem is 21st century Israeli politicians, illegal settlers, and other fundamentalists who propose to live by—and kill by—6th century BCE political propaganda.
Israel’s violent fundamentalists are some 2,600 years out of step with today’s acceptable forms of statecraft and international law. Israel is duty bound to the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, not to the Book of Joshua. According to the recent ICJ ruling and UN General Assembly resolution backing it up, Israel must withdraw in the coming twelve months from the occupied Palestinian lands. According to international law, Israel’s borders are those of June 4, 1967, not the Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea.
The ICJ ruling and U.N. General Assembly vote is not a ruling against the state of Israel per se. It is a ruling only against extremism, indeed against extremism and malevolence on both sides of the divide. There are two peoples, each with roughly half the overall population (and with no shortage of internal social, political, and ideological divisions within the two communities). International law calls for two states, living side by side, in peace.
The best solution, which we should strive for and hope for sooner rather than later, is that the two states, and the two peoples, get along, and actually draw strength from each other. Until then, however, the practical solution will be peacekeepers and fortified borders to protect each side from the animosity of the other, but with each having the chance to prosper. The utterly intolerable and illegal situation is the status quo, in which Israel rules brutally over the Palestinian people.
Hopefully, there will soon be a State of Palestine, sovereign and independent, whether the Knesset wants it or not. This is not Israel’s choice, but the mandate of the world community and of international law. The sooner the State of Palestine is welcomed as member state of the U.N., with the security of both Israel and Palestine backed by U.N. peacekeepers, the sooner will peace come to the region.
