About Zionism Ghetto
| quote: | Ex-parliament speaker paints Israel 'Zionist ghetto'
Fri Jun 8, 11:19 AM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - A former speaker of Israel's parliament considers the country a "Zionist ghetto" whose self-definition as a Jewish state is the key to its ruin, in an interview published on Friday.
It can't work anymore. To define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite," Avraham Burg, parliamentary speaker from 1999 to 2003, told the Haaretz newspaper.
"People find this (Israel as a Jewish democratic state) very comfortable. It's lovely. It's schmaltzy. It's nostalgic. It's retro. It gives a sense of fullness. But 'Jewish-democratic' is nitroglycerine."
Burg has newly written a book, "Defeating Hitler," in which Haaretz says he describes Israel as a "Zionist ghetto" and compares Israeli behaviour in the occupied Palestinian territories to that of Nazi Germany.
Also a former chairman of the semi-governmental Jewish Agency responsible for immigration to Israel, Burg called for discussion of the law of return, under which any Jew is able to come to live in Israel.
"The law of return is an apologetic law. It is the mirror image of Hitler. I don't want Hitler to define my identity," he said.
Religious and a former activist in the anti-settlement Peace Now movement, Burg is today a businessman who considers Israeli society paranoid and comparable to pre-Nazi Germany.
"The separation fence (built by Israel in the West Bank) is a fence against paranoia ... There is something so xenophobic about it. So insane," he said.
He criticised targeted assassinations carried out by the Israeli army against Palestinian militants and compared "some of the certainly" to murder. |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2007060...cs_070608151920
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