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Articles: A Self-Determined Struggle for Rights
Written by Ben Bixby
Published in The Hoya on 11/19/2004[see original] and
in Israel Campus Beat on 11/21/2004[see original]
See also
other articles published in The Hoya
other articles published in Israel Campus Beat
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
— Hatikvah (Israeli National Anthem)
It is distressing that we, the Jewish students of Georgetown, must defend the right of our people to exist in freedom. Yet, some groups and individuals vigorously and proactively oppose the right of the Jewish people to live as a free people in our own land. Georgetown Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), by organizing a panel promoting a “One State Solution,” is advocating denying us of this basic tenet and has unequivocally placed themselves in this ignoble camp of rejectionists.
The Jewish people are neither any better nor any worse than any other people. We are equal and equally entitled to the fundamental right to self-determination — a right accorded to all peoples simply by virtue of their existence. We want and we deserve to govern ourselves in our own state, just like any other people.
Zionism is the Jewish national liberation movement. The Jewish, democratic State of Israel is its realization.
Our history compels Jewish people to defend and depend on our right to self-determination. If we are not able to determine our own destiny, then others — sometimes benignly and often malevolently — will determine our destiny for us.
Two thousand years of Jewish history in exile is not lacking in tragic examples: the Inquisition, the ghetto, the shtetl, the pogroms and the Holocaust. Jews need the sovereign state of Israel in order to ensure our own security and, ultimately, our continued survival. Jews neither can afford to, nor should have to, depend exclusively on the goodwill or the whim of others.
No people should have to depend exclusively on the will or whim of others.
The right of self-determination is universal. A two-state solution — the creation of a situation in which Palestinians and Israelis each live in sovereign, secure states — is the only option for both peoples to realize their respective right to self-determination, and the only conceivable culmination of any peace process. This is the only reasonable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Why, through the creation of the world’s 21st Arab state, must the world’s only Jewish state disappear? The “one-state solution” implicitly endorsed and certainly not disavowed by SJP is an unjust deprivation of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. Neither the Jewish Students Association nor the Georgetown Israel Alliance denies the right of the Palestinian people to govern themselves in their own state, and we will not tolerate anybody’s efforts to deny our same right.
On behalf of the Jewish Students Association, we challenge SJP to acknowledge that the Jewish people are equally entitled to self-determination in our homeland and to join us in advocating for the rights of both our peoples.
Ben Bixby is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and the president of the Jewish Students Association. Deidre Moskowitz is a senior in the College and former president of the Jewish Students Association.