Could it be that there are Israelis who want this country to be"Arab-rein" ("cleansed of Arabs,") just as the Nazis wanted Germanyto be "Judenrein" (cleansed of Jews)?
Otherwise, how could they ever conjure up so repugnant andinhumane a notion as the proposed "transfer" of Palestinians from theoccupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to the surrounding Arab states?
If I carried the analogy all the way, there would be screams ofindignation from Israel's friends and sympathizers. They might arguethat the Nazi "transfer" of millions of European Jews from theirnative lands "to the east" was part of a diabolical genocide program.Israel's advocates of "transfer," they might add, merely want toremove the local Palestinian Arabs from this country, encourage themto resettle elsewhere and thereby leave "Eretz Israel" (the Land ofIsrael) exclusively to the Jews.
The new "Homeland" political party established by a reservegeneral named Rehav'am Ze'evi sums up the idea in its electioncampaign slogan: "The Land of Israel for the People of Israel."
Isn't all this incredible? Don't the terminology and rhetoricrecall some of the most tragic episodes of the World War IIHolocaust? Can you not see in your mind's eye the pathetictrainloads of forlorn Jewish men, women and children beingtransported to unknown destinations against their will? Is itconceivable that Jews who fought for their national survival andsecurity under their own free and democratic government would emulatethe Nazis in any way?
Gen. Ze'evi and his Jewish redneck followers don't have anIsraeli copyright on the "transfer" idea. That distinction belongsto an American-born extremist: Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of theroughneck "Kach" party.
He infuriated Israel's 700,000 Arab citizens by offering to buythem out of here. He would like to see them go along with the1.5-million Palestinian Arabs who supposedly pose an insoluble"demographic" problem for Israel's nearly 4 million Jews.
What an affront to the Zionist precepts upon which the State ofIsrael was founded 40 years ago! Israel's first president, Dr.Chaim Weizmann, said the Jewish state's democracy will be tested bythe way it treats the country's Arabs. And so it is.
Besides, aren't Ze'evi and Kahane confessing to ideologicalbankruptcy: Instead of believing that Israeli Jews will stop leavingin droves for the United States, that Soviet Jews will redirect theirexodus to Israel rather than opting for refugee status to reach theUnited States and that Western World's Jews will eventually choose to"return to Zion," they opt for the cruelty of "transfer."
Arabs have been living here for 1,300 years. They love theHoly Land no less than do the Jews.
Jay Bushinsky runs the Chicago Sun-Times' Middle East Bureau.
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