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Follow Us on TwitterDora McPhee (VIC) responds to Koutsoukis’ “Everyone’s a loser in Mid-East stalemate” The Age 24Sep09 September 24, 2009
The Age: “Everyone’s a loser in Mid-East stalemate” by Jason Koutsoukis
Jason Koutsoukis is half right in his analysis “Everyone’s a loser in Mid-East stalemate” (24/9), when he points out that though Netanyahu won this standoff over the settlement freeze there will be long term corrosive effects of the continuing occupation on Israel’s national identity as a democratic Jewish state. The problem is not just the occupation and blatant colonisation of Palestinian land but the very definition of Israel as a “Jewish” state that discriminates against one-fifth of its non-Jewish Palestinian “citizens” within its 1967 borders, means at its core Israel is not a liberal democracy, where its citizens are treated equally. The inability to address the underlying injustice of creating an exclusive “Jewish” state in a land that was for centuries predominantly Arab and non-Jewish means Israel has a long way to go before it can achieve peace and reconciliation with the people it dispossessed and is continuing to dispossess today.
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