by Eamonn McDonagh
El País is a leading liberal and progressive newspaper in the Spanish, Roman Catholic and Democratic Kingdom of Spain. It has long campaigned to put an end to Jewish self-determination and today’s contribution to that campaign comes in the form of an op-ed from M. Á. Bastenier, one of its most senior journalists.
The central point that it seeks to make is that Israel cannot be a state for Jews because it contains an Arab minority. There’s nothing necessarily anti-Jewish about this. All over the world national minorities are struggling to vindicate the collective rights history has denied them. There are now more nation states than ever and there are still plenty of minorities that want one of their own.
However, if you think the national rights of Jews are voided by the presence of the Arab minority in Israel and this view is a reflection of a broader political philosophy and not simply the expression of a prejudice, you need to make this clear. One way you can do so is to point out that there are plenty of other states that have restive national minorities too and that you regard them as equally illegitimate as Israel.
Furthermore, if your name was M.Á. Bastenier and you wrote for El País you wouldn’t have to look farther than your own country to find a good example of such a state. And given that you and your paper have been consistent supporters of its 1978 Constitution, which excludes the possibility of any of Spain’s national minorities deciding for themselves whether they wish to continue forming part of the Spanish, Roman Catholic and Democratic Kingdom of Spain, then it would be difficult to interpret your enthusiasm, and that of your paper, for extinguishing Jewish national rights as anything other than an example of hypocrisy and foul prejudice.
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