Catalans demonstrating for an independent Catalonia. (Photo credit: AP)
Right to self-determination is enshrined in international law.
But, the law doesn’t provide this right at the expense of the self-determination rights of others and incumbents.
Jewish right to self-determination in Palestine, ever since the inception of Israel, has come at the expense of the Palestinians.
And that is unacceptable.
Many other groups of people around the world have legitimate self-determination claims, if they so wish.
The Catalans, Basques, Kurdish, Yazidis, Tamils, Pashtuns, Cornish, Celts, etc, etc.
Their claims however, cannot be at the expense of any of the incumbents.
The Catalans can’t claim a separate state without the consent of Spain.
Nor can they take over large swathes of Spain and call it their country.
We have allowed Zionism to do that.
We have allowed it to carve out a country in a land that was not theirs, without the consent of the incumbents and at the expense of the incumbents.
The world wouldn’t accept the Catalans to do that in Spain.
The world wouldn’t accept the Tamils to do that India.
The world wouldn’t accept the Kurds to do that in Turkey.
Yet we have allowed Zionist Jews to do it in Palestine.
Some would argue that Palestine was not a “sovereign” state. That it was under occupation.
Well, India was under occupation too. As were many other regions of the world. There is no precedent in the world where a new country was carved out so people from a different continent could move in.
When India was deoccupied – it was left to the incumbents to decide what to do next. They decided to create two separate countries, India and Pakistan.
Two separate countries for the incumbents to live in.
It was left in their hands, no one else’s to decide for them.
When Palestine was deoccupied, it should have been left in the hands of the Palestinians.
It wasn’t. They were forced and dictated to.
They empathically rejected the partition of their nation, dictated to them by external actors.
The partition was championed by Zionism. A European ideology originating in eastern and central Europe.
Imagine for a second that this happened when India – where a movement from Europe argued that upon deoccupation, there should be a new state created in India so Europeans can move in.
It’d be ab….surd!
It is time to hold Zionist Jews to the same standards as all comparable others, and stop treating it on highly preferential terms – just because of the collective hangover we still feel in “the West” from the actions of a German madman, that happened generations ago.
