Last year, Howard Dean – candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election – decided to opine on what grants the Jewish people their nobility.
Apparently, he was not yet done. Just a few days ago, he decided to tweet about the meaning of Tikun Olam and being a Jew.
Besides not having the slightest idea about ‘Tikun Olam’, Dean also does not understand ‘ethnic cleansing’, defined as “the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous.” The very Ha’aretz report he shared mentions
According to the Trump administration, “these communities, which largely self-identify as Palestinian,” would become part of the lands that Israel would give the Palestinians in return for annexing all Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
In addition, the plan “contemplates the possibility, subject to agreement of the parties, that the borders of Israel will be redrawn such that the Triangle Communities become part of the State of Palestine. In this agreement, the civil rights of the residents of the triangle communities would be subject to the applicable laws and judicial rulings of the relevant authorities.”
It’s not at all clear whether the “parties” that would have to give their consent to this arrangement are the Israeli and Palestinian governments, or the Israeli citizens living in the Triangle.
Besides the fact the plan speaks of this as a possibility only, contingent on the agreement of the parties, the residents of these areas would not actually be removed from them. Rather, these areas would just be considered part of a palestinian state.
Also, if Dean he bothered reading the Trump plan, he might understand it is just a vision, which could form the basis of a peace agreement as negotiated by the parties, and is not an imposed solution.
In other words, nothing about this is ethnic cleansing.
So my message to this has-been is
STFU Deanie!
