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Yoseph Needelman-Ruiz
Maggid of Cannabis Chassidis, PopCartoonKabala

Hey Bibi! Need a plan for Gaza? Consider Naturalization!

Quite a crisis we’re in. Hamas has to be destroyed and removed from power, but what should become of Gaza in their absence? Fatah expects it to come under their jurisdiction once this is all over, as part of a finally accomplished State of Palestine. But this is deeply unacceptable to many people and groups, not the least of which we must include the people of Gaza themselves. Pushed out by Fatah and purged from the naescent normativity created and maintained by Fatah in Ramallah and Bethlehem, Gazans probably can’t feel very safe or liberated under the thumb of a Palestinian Authority made of the secular, academic Palestinians who they voted out of power in the first place.

So maybe it’s time to solve the problem of Israel/Palestine creatively, in a way that validates both Right Wing and Left Wing concerns, of both Israelis and Palestinians.

It’s time Israel took responsibility for Gaza. By which I mean: full citizenship in the State of Israel. As a Right Wing humanistic alternative to the conventional Two State solution, the one that none of us want or trust.

Whereas the failure and flaw and threat and terror of a two state solution is the fear of another corrupt Arab country, suddenly armed, equal in size and popular numbers, defined ultimately by it’s hostility to Israel, specifically and maybe even inherently.

Alternately, the threat of Israeli co-option of Northern Gaza, and unwillingness to acknowledge a Palestinian State in Judea/Samaria threatens to trap us in a human rights atrocity where every comparison of Israel to China, Aparteid South Africa, and maybe even Yimach Shimom in Germany will be justified, by our keeping of a captive population who can never have equal rights with us.

Annexing and naturalizing all of Gaza solves all these problems. Instead of an apartied regime, something more like a 1948. But with no refugees! And a true end to this war.

The idealism that created the Settlement project after 1967 was the hope of not creating a refugee crisis, but instead, a permanent second class status for Arabs living in the settlements was ratified, and Israel became less democratic, not more. As disruptive and torturous as the refugee crisis of the Naqba was, at least it led to the creation of some of Israel’s proudest benificiaries: Israeli Arabs, relieved by the opportunities, social, economic, and even cognitive that the State of Israel provided, more liberated and educated than most Arabs in most Arab countries.

We can do something similar now.

Give Ramallah and Bethlehem to the people already in charge of it. Acknowledge and validate the (demilitarized) Palestinian state, already functioning there. Maybe even give Gazans the option of citizenship there! But absorb the people and land of Gaza into Israel fully, as fully empowered and naturalized citizens. Liberate and emancipate the people of Gaza into Israel, as fully respected citizens, with all the attendant priviledges, and invite social workers to come take alot of responsibility, along with police from diverse southern districts, to enforce against, not terrorism, but crime, thus preventing a long term Hamas from recurring. Instead, bring our schools and work with our Sunni Arab allies across the global spectrum to rebuild a demilitarized Gaza as a devotional mission, to heal the impact and bring a better humanistic gospel, like Abu Bakr and Sheik Umar did the first time around. We can have Israel protect the Gaza holy sites like they protect and respect the Jerusalem and Bethlehem ones once it identifies with them as is identified within them and this models a better model, of a new population of only 2 million or so people, or however many survive the next wave of horror and impact.

We can do better and we owe them better, now, having destroyed so much of the entire infrastructure and maybe it’s better if we didn’t just go full judeo-nazi, just in case it turns out that that wasn’t the moral Moshiach Tzidkeinu really had for us, not the way he really ever liked to read the end of Sefer Bamidbar, Yehoshua or Shoftim. Just in case the Baal Shem Tov was right and the only redemption Israel can ever have, the only chiddush of Moshiach, is specifically no more killing or stealing, the end of bloodshed. Maybe there’s a better thing we can offer to do to make this something like something that we can all appreciate,and let each other keep doing their thing. From there, we can work out every next resolution, and better, every next construction and education.

Free and Acknowledge Palestine! Fatah’s not perfect but Ramallah really seems to be doing pretty well. They did not seem to contribute to this whole kerfuffle almost at all, despite being constantly pushed against and demanded from. They’ve proven they can be a stable secular state, and maybe it became easier when they stopped being responsible for the psychotic devotional piety of their neo-classical chareidim, pushed off to the Southwest. Give them acknowledgement, out the dynamic with them and the Saudia, and do a humanistic thing that can restore all our faith in the hope of a moral Likud, authentically connected to the highest priorities of traditionalism as populism, in contrast to the condescending Mapai of the Naqba, the Maabarot and stolen Yemenite babies.

The hope that our defense was in service of a better way after all, that isn’t just about comforting ourselves through our own commitment to viciousness and violence when it benefits us to feel entitled to do, and take, like the worst of peoples. Chalila Bibi– I know things are rough right now, and they keep trying to knock you down, but… this could really be a good chance to do a better thing.  Annex Gaza, naturalize the people there, they’ll vote for you and Gallant and Ganz all together when you guys make a Centrist normal people party with a broad consensus of extreme Left and Right wing parties, to climb out of the legal and reputational hole we might be digging, deeper and deeper. It’s probably easier and better than turning us all into the Amalek we were kvetching about this whole time. Y’know? Despite whatever Joe Biden said to Menachem Begin.

About the Author
Yoseph Needelman-Ruiz a.k.a. Yoseph Leib Ibn Mardachya is the author of "Cannabis Chassidis: The Ancient and Emerging Torah of Drugs" (Autonomedia press, 2012) an epic devotional study of Cannabis and other ethneogens in Judaism and its heresies throughout history, into super-modernity, in the hopes of passing on a useful counsel with regards to their use beyond "do" or "don't." He is currently working on a book about Pop Cartoon Kabbalah, and alternates between leading services and sermons in Williamsburg Brooklyn at Cong. Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom, and living in Israel's Elah Valley.