Constance Hilliard and Abdur-Rahman Abou Almajd about the future of Israel.

We have a fresh opportunity to reflect about the future of Israel, more particularly its role in the public square. At this point Professor Constance Hilliard is going to speak about her views on the future of Israel.

The discussions about the future of the Jewish state analyzed in your great book are some of the most significant to engage Israelis since 1948

Connie Hilliard: 

Constance Hilliard is an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Texas, specializing in the Middle East & Africa. She received a PhD from Harvard University and has done research work in West Africa and Egypt. As an Arabist, she has translated original manuscripts from a literary tradition that evolved around Timbuktu in the 16^th centuries to the Sufi poetry of Dhu Al-Nun of Nubia. In the early 1980s, Professor Hilliard served as foreign policy adviser to the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. She has also worked as a journalist, writing international editorials for the Dallas Morning News, and later as a businesswoman in Kuwait.

Let's start the interview.

Q: I am amazed at how insightful, compassionate, and readable your great book is, as you say: The Jewish people are in greater danger than ever before, Could you elaborate on that?

Connie Hilliard: First, let me take this opportunity to thank you for inviting me to talk about my ideas on Israel, Zionism, and the future of the Jewish State.

 
Yes. Sometimes the trajectory of political events is clearly laid out, but the psychological impact of “denial,” blinds us to simple reality. Israel has a highly functioning economy, but it is a society on the verge of emotional collapse. It cannot go on forever in a perpetual state of war with its Arab and Muslim neighbors. This was true even before the “Arab Spring.” The suppression of Egyptian public opinion under Hosni Mubarak and that of other Arab publics by dictators controlled by the West, gave Israel a false sense of security. But those days are over. More than half of all Jewish Israelis possess or have applied for passports to a second country, because deep down they know that their country has reached a strategic dead end. Israel believed that it could batter the Arab world into submission given the overwhelming military power they possess, with America’s help. But this strategy never took into account the agency, that is the potential for empowerment of those displaced by Jewish nationhood.

Q: Why Should Zionism be replaced by a post-Zionist state that welcomes all people, rather than one that privileges only the Jews?

Connie Hilliard: Israel will never attain political stability and peace until it evolves into a secular state, which recognizes and honors the religions of all the ethnicities who live there. The time is coming when both Israel and the U.S. will have to let go of the exhausting diplomatic fiction that the Palestinians and Jews will ever have two separate but equal states, living in peace side-by-side. But if the two groups cannot manage two states, how would one state solve the problem? A one-state solution would solve over night the problem of Jewish settlements, since both Palestinians and Jews would be free to live in whatever part of the country they prefer. It would also result in the combining of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and police with the various Palestinian security organizations and militias. This shared responsibility for security matters would be far more effective in controlling violence than matters now stand with the Palestinians and Israelis attacking each other and the Palestinian factions fighting among themselves.

Critics of this one-state solution insist that the Arabs and Jews could never live in one country, or forgive one another for their traumatic past. But I believe that if the Israelis could forgive Germany for the Holocaust, which they have done given the cordial relationships between the two nations, then surely they can forgive the Arabs for fighting to regain their homeland.

Q: What about straight talk and painful truths?

Connie Hilliard: Regrettably, the U.S. is not ready for straight talk about Israel. Of course the political clout of the Zionist lobby is the reason why the U.S. Congress will refuse to look at Israel’s internal problems. That nation will not be able to maintain itself as both a Jewish state and a democracy, in the near future because the Arab population is growing substantially faster than the Jewish one. Israel is garnering more foreign enemies rather than fewer. The population is exhausted from constant warfare, and young Israeli Jews are even protesting in the streets over the enormous wealth gap between themselves and the wealthy businessmen in their country. The country is a magnet for religious fanatics, who wish to bring about the Biblical Apocalypse by blowing up The Dome of the Rock or other Muslim holy sites in order to provoke war. But why are none of these issues discussed in the American media? Were the U.S. to acknowledge the fact that the Jewish state might be on the verge of collapse, what would it be willing to do about the situation? The answer quite simply is nothing. Americans today are just as unwilling to embrace full-scale Jewish immigration to the U.S. as they were during and after World War II, when they slammed their borders shut to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler’s death camps. It is far more convenient for U.S. politicians to give unconditional support to a Jewish state in the Middle East, than it would be for creating one in New Jersey, Vermont, or California.

Q: Do you think the tiny Jewish state is fast becoming the ultimate death camp? Why or why not?

Connie Hilliard: In 1948, the founders of the Jewish State believed that they were creating a political entity that could protect Jews for all time. But rather than becoming a safe-haven for Jews as early Zionists had dreamed, Israel is, indeed, devolving into the most dangerous place on earth for the descendant of the ancient Hebrews. The Israel Defense Force is no longer seen by the surrounding Arab nations as being invincible. Iran may be developing nuclear weapons. While Western governments continue to deny reality, many Israelis do not. The number of Jews in Israel who have applied for or gotten second passports that would allow them to emigrate at short notice should the need arise, has climbed to fifty-nine percent. It is a tiny nation that has, since its founding, fought seven major wars and countless skirmishes. And the situation is getting worse. The reason that westerners are so unwilling to recognize the vulnerability of the Jewish state is simple anti-Semitism. Israel was created in the aftermath of the Holocaust not because the U.S. and Europe cared so deeply for the Jews. It was rather because they did not want an influx of better educated Jews to compete with their local labor forces, which had just begun to recover from the Great Depression. The virulent anti-Semitism that led Hitler to launch the Holocaust was prevalent throughout Europe and in the U.S. The West’s embrace of Zionism after World War II was self-serving. These countries could keep Jewish refugees out of their own countries, while dumping their Jewish refugee problem in Palestine because the Arabs did not have the power or clout to stop them.

In short, Zionism became a convenient excuse for western nations, who had slammed their borders shut to Jews fleeing the Holocaust and continued to do so after World War II. While Zionism is more than a century old, it was considered a fringe movement among Jews until two things happened. First was the Holocaust, and second was the closing of Western borders to Jews fleeing Hitler’s Germany. It was only after World War II, that Zionism became the dominant ideology within the Jewish community.

Q: The Muslims have a religious right concerning the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa, but the Jews do not have a similar right to what is considered their most holy site, Could you elaborate on that please?

Connie Hilliard: The issue of these holy sites is one of the most volatile in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And yet, Israel is not only a place of holy sites for Jews and Muslims, it is also one for Christians and members of the Bahai faith as well. Israel’s central problem in resolving these issues relates to its self-identity as “a Jewish state.” Because of the country’s sacred value to many religions, Israel must in time evolve into a secular, democratic state. Otherwise, growing tensions between groups will contribute to the eventual collapse of the state.

Q: In "Burn Out" Could you elaborate on suicide rates in Israel?

Connie Hilliard: Studies have shown that the number one cause of death among Israeli soldiers is suicide. These are young men and women, who no longer believe in the mission of the Israel Defense Force. Other Israelis react to similar feelings of hopelessness and the sense that the Jewish state has reached a strategic dead-end by getting second passports to European countries and the U.S. Nearly 800,000 Israelis now live abroad in a total population of barely 5 million. 
 

Q: Haven't you thought of God's Promise to Israel?

Connie Hilliard: I admit to having no theological expertise on what God may have promised to whom two thousand years ago. But I am familiar with ultra-orthodox Jewish sects, who insist that Zionism is a dangerous mis-reading of Judaic religious texts. From its inception the small Orthodox sect called “Neturei Karta” has opposed the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. But why would these conservative, religious Jews reject Zionism? It is because their beliefs stem from an interpretation of the scriptures that sees Judaism as a religion of the spirit. The more central the Jewish state becomes to define what Judaism is, the weaker will spiritual and human values become within the Jewish community. Another Orthodox Jewish sect, “Satmar,” is one of the largest groups of Orthodox Jews in the world. The late Satmar rabbi and Talmudic scholar, Joel Teitelbaum, preached that only the Messiah himself would have the divine mandate to bring Jewish communities from around the world together into a Jewish state. Not only would secular attempts, such as the efforts of contemporary Zionists, fail, but they would bring down God’s wrath on the entire Jewish community. The Orthodox Jewish scholar Yakov M. Rabkin wrote: “Zionism epitomizes not only the very worst of European nationalism – exclusivism that leads to genocidal violence, but the triumph of arrogance and a lust for power that run counter to the commands of the Torah.”

Q: You have written "Does Israel Have a Future?" in the hope that some will recognize as you do that while the Palestinians have suffered the most casualties in this conflict, Could you elaborate on the Palestinians have suffered?

Connie Hilliard: The suffering of the Palestinians is the greatest injustice of our time. While America advocates freedom of the press, the Palestinian story was hidden from the U.S. public for decades. But now with the Internet and more balanced coverage coming from stations like Al-Jazeera, that situation may be changing albeit slowly. I cried when I saw video footage of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, the bombed out buildings, the dead children lying in the streets, and the people left homeless. Future historians will, no doubt, look upon Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people as well as the West’s complicity in it, with shock and rage. How is it possible that Palestinians were removed from their ancestral lands and today must face a growing list of humiliating limitations? How can the world community stand by and allow the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, now adding half a million Jews to already overpopulated areas? These instances represent the “politics of denial.” But just as the “Arab Spring” liberated many in the Middle East from the lies of its dictators, the U.S. is moving towards its own “American Spring.” This day of reckoning will come sooner than many might have imagined because of the changing political landscape in the Middle East caused by the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and other Arab dictators.

Q: Could you elaborate on “The History of Violence.”?

Connie Hilliard: Over the years I have given a great deal of time and reflection to issues of human violence. Are our brains hard-wired for aggression, or is the tendency towards violent behavior a function of societal conditioning? I still don’t have an answer. But I have recognized the way powerful nations “sanitize” their violent acts over time, by re-writing history. America’s genocidal extermination of the American Indians is one example. An even more immediate one is the West’s refusal to acknowledge the violent behavior of religious fanatics in Israel, who would like nothing better than the extermination of all Palestinians. We cannot fix what we refuse to see. 

Abdur-Rahman: You deserve to be congratulated for your great effort, Thank you Professor Connie.