Former speaker of the Israeli Parliament seems to have gotten wise now that he is outside the mental and psychological bubble of the Israeli military/political establishment. He recently published a book reflecting on the Judaism, his life, and the modern history of the Jewish political movement. He seems to think that defining Israel as a Jewish state, is exactly what’s wrong with it, and asked his people to shed the apartheid-like ideology in favor of humanism and pluralism:
Avraham Burg, former Knesset speaker and former head of the Jewish Agency says “to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It’s dynamite.” In an interview in Haaretz Weekend Magazine, he said that he is in favor of abrogating the Law of Return and calls on everyone who can to obtain a foreign passport.
Burg, who was interviewed on the occasion of the publication of his book “Defeating Hitler” said “the strategic mistake of Zionism was to annul the alternatives. Israeliness has only body; it doesn’t have soul.”
“Judaism always prepared alternatives,” says Burg, who three years after leaving Israeli politics is now a citizen of France and a successful businessman.
What, might you ask, the response of his former colleagues was? Well, Meretz chairman, Yossi Beilin, who is considered among the most “progressive” of mainstreamers in Israel, expressed sadness: “a man like Burg, who is salt of the earth, can say things like that. Obviously I don’t agree with him, if this country is not the Jewish State, and has no Jewish majority, it doesn’t interest me.”
But this Zionut actually wants him to be banned from burial in Israel, or at least its “national” cemetery. I’m sure Burg will be disappointed if not allowed to be buried among the military officers-later-turned-politicians who dedicated their lives to make Israel an ethno-religiously exclusive state.
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Notice the amount of Israeli’s and Jews worldwide who recognise the illegitimacy of Israel… and yet you never hear a single voice from the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim camp who stands up and says anything even vaguely similar to “Israel should keep on keepin’ on.”
“There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” — David Ben-Gurion quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Jewish State, Knesset, Avraham Burg
A Case for Palestine 
Piscataway,