A member of the Likud party has proposed “massive ethnic cleansing” of non-Jews in Palestine-Israel as a “final solution” of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Uzi Cohen, a member of Ariel Sharon’s right-wing party and a deputy mayor of the town of Raanana, told Israeli public radio on Sunday there was widespread support in Israel for “the idea of ethnic cleansing”.
“Many people support the idea but few are willing to speak about it publicly,” he said.
[…]
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has so far been circumspect about the idea of banishing the Palestinians from their ancestral land.
Last year, when members of his Likud party approached him with the idea, Sharon reportedly told them: “The international situation wouldn’t be conducive to expelling the Palestinians.
And the international community was silent.
“Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.”
Last time I checked he is correct. Polled Israeli support for ethnic cleansing by Israel is at about the same as Palestinian support for driving Israel into the sea, though either are in the minority, something like a third.
Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies’ annual national security public opinion poll found “46 percent of Israel’s Jewish citizens favor transferring Palestinians out of the territories, while 31 percent favor transferring Israeli Arabs out of the country.”
“In 1991, 38 percent of Israel’s Jewish population was in favor of transferring the Palestinians out of the territories while 24 percent supported transferring Israeli Arabs.
When the question of transfer was posed in a more roundabout way, 60 percent of respondents said that they were in favor of encouraging Israeli Arabs to leave the country.”
In other words, when the rough edges of ethnic cleansing are rounded out the majority support it and the international community ignores, in fact, enables this descent into madness.