For the record, I no longer hold the opinions of this earlier post, nor will I defend (or attempt to clarify, unless one asks) those words in any public or private discussion. It was written in the heat of the moment, and it now looks ignorant.

Anyway, I think that Israel is heading towards a binational architecture of government, or at least that’s what will happen with the further increase of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria/West Bank. I also think that the Israeli government knows the inevitability of a binational architecture, which is why it is widely reputed in its own press scene for its encouragement of larger orthodox and Ultra-orthodox families (including Haredi and Religious Zionist) and higher orthodox birth rates; in short, Jewish religious fundamentalism (and all that is entailed, including "natural growth") is the government’s insurance against the Jewish/Hebrew culture being swamped by Arab/Muslim culture in the scenario of a binational Israel.

And who can blame them? A binational state seems to frighten those who fear the end and assimilation of the Jewish character of the state and its culture more so than those who move into the hinterland for religious (and apolitical) reasons. It would not be surprising to see a Gaza-West Bank-like split between the religious and non-religious Hebrew-speaking populations, with the Jerusalem-centric, hinterland-dwelling religious population remaining more dependent upon natural growth and the Tel Aviv-centric, coastal plain-dwelling non-religious population remaining dependent upon Aliyah from other countries.

For the Arabs who dwell within this new binational or federal state, the experience of delegated self-governance would remain centered in Samaria (where Ramallah is located), while the Arab experience in North District. They would have to deal and cooperate with a Hebrew-speaking resident minority in Samaria – one which is a naturally-growing mix of both religious and non-religious settlers – and would have to work out a suitable solution to access to ancient remains of Jewish civilization in Samaria while retaining or gaining equitable empowerment for the non-religious and orthodox Muslim Arab residents.

Jerusalem and Judea, on the other hand, is probably the most visibly and acerbically contentious portion of the entire conflict. Religious settlement in the Judean portion surrounding Jerusalem, and Haredization of the Jewish-majority portions of inner city Jerusalem, is obviously meant to tilt the demographic majority in the favor of Jewish fundamentalism and orthodoxy, neither of which have had as much of a historical dominance in Tel Aviv. This, of course, brings Israel and Judaism into direct conflict with the Islamic world and orthodox Islam, a demographically-skewed conflict for which Israel has long felt – at least since the Six Day War – woefully unprepared.

So perhaps Israel is delaying the binational solution until a solid Hebrew, Jewish fundamentalist majority is stacked into all sides and corners of Jerusalem and surrounding Judea. I doubt that such a majority will hold for long in the region after a full annexation and binationalization is instituted, since Judea is right next door to Jordan, but Israel has a shot at sowing the seed of the majority through Orthodox natural growth and religious immigration from the coastal plain region.

I surmise that it’ll take another two decades before the government finally annexes the West Bank and institutes binationalism as state policy.

I created the Zionism template on Wikipedia, and it was rather easy to do: everything placed inside was linked in some way to Zionism’s development as an ideology, from the Revisionist to the Anti- to the Post- to Kahanism, etc. I then "revived" on Sunday the Religious Zionism template as well, and that went well.

But in light of the recent air raid on Gaza which everyone’s going nuts over, I was thinking about creating an anti-Zionism template, and started by using the articles in the anti-Zionism category. Then I stopped, and realized that this was not going anywhere.

Like many, I’m not sure about how to exactly delineate between Anti-Zionism (against the state of Israel’s existence), anti-Judaism (against the religion’s existence) and anti-Semitism (against the ethnicity’s existence), or at least other editors, including those who added the Anti-Zionism category, are just as lacking in such details. Anti-Zionism is usually seen as a little-removed extension of anti-Semitism, an ideology that is hardly evolved far from such roots; unless you’re listening to someone of Jewish religious ancestry, expressions of anti-Semitism by the right-wing are usually accompanied by expressions of anti-Zionism, while expressions of anti-Zionism by the left-wing are often accompanied by smidgens of anti-Semitism.

The fact that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are both conflated with each other (with the occasional conflation with anti-Judaism) by the opposing groups (a "self-fulfilling proof", as I call it) makes the delineation difficult to surmise outside of the Jewish circle; if one only accounts for the anti-Zionism that is exhibited by Jewish and/or Israeli groups (both religious and secular), then it is probably more easy to separate and examine anti-Zionism further from anti-Semitism.

To complicate matters, I think that out of anti-Zionism has arisen yet another "anti-" ideology: "anti-Israelism". It may already exist in that you can possibly have criticisms of the Israeli state’s actions which only judge Israel as just another nation-state, not as a "Zionist entity" as it is called by supremacists like Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, and Haniyeh who:

• simply judge the state as a fledgling exercise of Zionism-as-an-ideology and not as a fully-realized nation-state that was simply born from that ideology
• simply judge the people as mere Jews and not as native Israelis (or "Sabras", if you will) who, like it or not, were born and raised in the state
• simply judge the religion as an imported, foreign religion and not as an entrenched cultural trait of the state and the demographic majority.

If anti-Israelism is defined as being against or denying the effect of actions and structure of the Israeli government’s instruments (i.e., the military, the Chief Rabbinate, etc.), then I think that Israel’s Religious Zionists and settlers may already be on such a path, as they are flatly aligned against the pragmatist goals of the Israeli government (the unilateral pullout was a watershed moment for them) and are in favor of gaining the entirety of the West Bank and Jerusalem (which I think will happen within the next four decades); they also regularly come into conflict with the Israeli secularists who would not want any recent reinstitutionalization of a modern Sanhedrin (which I think is intended to replace the Knesset).

Anti-Israelism from non-Israelis and/or non-Jews, on the other hand, can be easily seen and construed as anti-Zionism, anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. But it, I think, is the more predominant "in"-ideology among the anti-authoritarians and anarchists; for that same reason, it may also be the more potent worry of Israel’s national government, which tends to view anti-authoritarians and anarchists as merely vulnerable patsies of anti-Zionists, anti-Judaists and anti-Semites. 

At least, that’s what I took of the explanation of Israel’s 2004 expulsion of British journalist and human rights activist Ewa Jasiewicz, who talked to a CNN journalist in Hong Kong last night concerning the effects of the Gaza incursion. She was put out due to accusations that her journalism was biased towards coverage of Palestinian victims of bombings in comparison to Israeli victims of bombings, and that she was vulnerable to influence and exploitation by pro-Palestinian groups due to her convictions; she protested this accusation, but she is probably an example of the Israeli state’s mistrust of individuals who may not be particularly or openly fawning over any state, ethnicity, or religion (even their own) that may be for or against Israel’s existence, but are merely anti-repression and anti-violence to a fault.

In other words, they don’t like bleeding-heart anarchists.