Bi-national state unrealistic

Editor: Not having attended the recent showing of John Pilger's film Palestine is Still the Issue, I can't comment on Pat Johnson's report on the film or the discussion that followed. ("Movie takes aim at Israel," Bulletin Archives, Feb. 14) However, I was baffled by his remark that in Pilger's film, "Israel's various historical offers of a bi-national state were dismissed as Bantustans."

The idea of a bi-national state which would belong equally to Jews and Arabs was indeed advocated in the pre-state period by a small minority within the Zionist movement, including such groups as Ichud (which included figures such as Judah Magnes, Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt) and the socialist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair. However, I doubt very much that the state of Israel ever proposed the creation of a bi-national state, which would imply the abandonment of the existence of Israel as a "Jewish state."

Carl Rosenberg
Vancouver

(Editor's note: The original sentence in Pat Johnson's article was intended to read "Israel's various historical offers of a bi-national solution were dismissed as Bantustans and 'stateless states' by Pilger." Due to a copy-editing error, the word "state" was used instead of "solution.")