On Israel, racism, and when to consider armed resistance acceptable

Peter Beaumont, The Guardian

What has made the issue even more murky - as Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law at the LSE has noted - is the way in which terrorism is less and less regarded as a "technique", albeit a horrible one, in pursuit of a political agenda. Instead, it has been deliberately redefined, largely by states, to mean a "category of person" - making it easy to ignore the underlying causes while concentrating on the acts.

None of the above should be read as a defence of terror, or even as an argument for armed resistance. The tragedy of Gaza is the acceptance on both sides that killing and oppression have more value than negotiation. And while many in the international community - and in Israel - remain stuck on the idea that the Jewish state has a monopoly on the deployment of the language of "supreme emergency", more violence is inevitable.

I think resistance to opression and occupation by a powerful state should be rethinked and redefined in the era of state monopoly of violence. I would make a difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. I think Hezbollah's armed resistance has worked against Israel. Hamas's technique is not working. They are occupied and their society is exhausted. They should first rebuild the social fabric of Gaza and Palestinians in general before taking up armed resistance again. They have done it in the past and Israel, the US, and the international community, have worked hard to destroy the Palestinian society in the name of the fight against terrorism.
Now it is time to rebuild Palestinian society from the inside, even if it means renouncing armed resistance for a while. I have a suggestion, Israel should be attacked at its weakest point, the definition of Israeli society and democracy. As the two state solution has faded to a point of no return, the only way and option left for Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank to gain the same civil rights as Jews is to convert to Judaism, all of them. The racist rabbis will go nut and Israel will have to refuse them this right. And so Israel will appear to the world as it is, a racist state based on race and not religion. There are of course purely Muslim states in the ME as we are always reminded by zionists who refuse the fact that a state based on religion is not a democratic state. But anybody can convert to Islam. Can anybody convert to Judaism ? If I was to take the road of pacifist resistance to the state of Israel in order to rebuild Palestinian society, I would do it by confronting the central racist tenants of the zionist entity, the state of Israel.