Ahmed Tibi's Contradictions

I always marvel at MK Ahmed Tibi's willful distortions of the truth. Now, the doctor from Taibeh has seized the stage of the New York Times op-ed page to capitalize on Lieberman and Bibi's latest loyalty oath mischief. That business - a law that applies only to non-Jewish immigrants - is indeed shameful and another expression of the evil and stupidity currently residing in the foreign ministry. But Tibi's argument consists of a lie and a calculated one at that. According to Tibi,

there is far more wrong with the loyalty oath than simply the original intent of applying it only to non-Jews. Swearing allegiance to an Israel that is Jewish and democratic is logically inconsistent and an attempt to relegate Palestinian citizens of Israel to inferior status.

Palestinian citizens of Israel comprise 20 percent of the population. The insistence of some Jewish leaders on the state being “Jewish” is a punch in the gut to Palestinians who for more than 60 years have struggled to achieve equal rights in Israel.

There is racism and discrimination against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in Israel. But the definition of the state is not the problem and in itself cannot be called racist. Furthermore, there is nothing new about that definition. Tibi apparently is trying to turn back the clock of history with some sleight of hand.

Israel's Declaration of Independence and its Basic Laws already define the country as a "Jewish State." Indeed, the United Nations itself called for its establishment in 1947. There are many people who want to distort the meaning of this simple description. In part, the word "Jewish" lends itself to such distortions because, unfortunately for the Jews, it describes both a confessional identity and a cultural, ethnic, or national one (this apparently confuses many people in the modern world; 300 years ago, few people would have recognized any sort of problem). But the original intent was quite simple: Israel is the "nation-state of the Jews," which means that any person who is "Jewish" may immigrate there. And 62 years later, this continues to be one of the guiding principles of the state. Is there a problem with that? Let Ahmed Tibi say so straight up: I don't believe that there should be a Jewish state.

The problem of course is that Tibi seems to have no issue with the nation-state or with nationalism per se - if he did, he would object to any number of Arab states in the region and nation-states elsewhere. He also would not be suggesting that

The international community could address our situation by calling on Israel to recognize us as a national minority.

Tibi, in other words, wants Kosovo or Bosnia. This is not the game of liberal democracy but of nationalist secession - in other words, exactly the game that Lieberman wants.

Was the Yishuv Indifferent to the Holocaust?

BY AMOS

The notion that the Zionist leadership in the Land of Israel and yishuv society as a whole reacted with indifference to news of the extermination of European Jewry during the Second World War has become almost a commonplace among non-specialists in the subject. In the past two decades, critics of contemporary Israel and the enterprise of Zionism in history, have led the charge in alleging that the yishuv took little interest in the victims of the Holocaust because of its ingrained negative view of Diaspora Jews (shlilat ha-golah) and single-minded devotion to the enterprise of state-building. Tom Segev's The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (1991, English translation published in 1993) unfortunately strengthened this sentiment. Although his book is still a classic - composed in beautiful prose like all his works and revealing a wealth of insights about Israeli society, its third chapter, "Rommel, Rommel, where are you?" paints an exaggerated picture of Zionist callousness toward the plight of European Jewry.

A new work by the Israeli historian Yosef Gorny significantly challenges the revisionist accounts that emerged in the 1990s about the yishuv and the Holocaust. The book, entitled קריאה באין אונים:העיתונות היהודית בארץ ישראל, בבריטניה, בארצות הברית ובברית המועצות לנוכח השואה, בשנים 1939-1945 ("Helpless Cry: The Jewish Press in the Land of Israel, Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union during the Shoah, 1939-1945," was published in 2009 and has now been reviewed in Ha'aretz by Dina Porat. The reviewers herself is the author of a pioneering related work, The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939-1945 (Hebrew version in 1986; English translation published by Harvard University Press in 1990).

Gorny's book lays to rest the myth that the Jewish press in the Land of Israel ignored the victims of the Holocaust or that the yishuv's inhabitants and its leading personalities were indifferent to the fate of European Jewry. According to Porat,

Reading and comparing the various newspapers show that the Jewish press, both within and outside the Land of Israel, covered the Holocaust extensively, with the newspapers here writing about it more. A comparison between Hebrew newspapers Davar, Haaretz and Hamashkif shows that Davar, the Labor movement daily, which has been criticized from all sides (especially by the first to research the issue, S.B. Beit Zvi, in his book "Post Ugandan Zionism on Trial" ), actually published a lot more about the Holocaust than either of the other two papers. At the time, Hamashkif, the Revisionist paper, was incessantly attacking Davar, for explicitly political reasons, to the point that it became an uncontested axiom that Davar was ignoring the Holocaust.

The comparison between the newspapers also shows that they published pretty much whatever information they received about what was happening to the Jews in Europe, including some hair raising stories that were inconceivable at the time in terms of the number of victims and especially the cruelty of the killing methods. Indeed, readers and journalists alike argued during the first half of the war that the many articles describing atrocities were an exaggeration, akin to "spilling blood into the lines of the newspapers," and called on editors to exhibit greater responsibility in the kinds of pieces they published and stop demoralizing the public and creating panic.

The book's title, Kri'ah be-ein onim is a triple entendre, as the word "kri'ah" means both "call" or "shout" as well as "reading" (i.e., the act of reading). It can therefore be translated as either. The phrase "be-ein onim" literally means "without potency," i.e., "powerless" or "helpless." One could therefore translate the title either as "Helpless Cry" (more elegantly, "Cry in the Wilderness") or "Impotent Reading." To add to these possibilities, the plural noun "'onim" (אונים) has a homophone (at least for those Hebrew speakers who do not pronounce 'alef and 'ayin differently), עונים, which means "respondents," - in other words, "Reading/Cry without Response."

I see the charge that "Zionists didn't care about the Holocaust during the war" as related to those works of scholarship and political polemic which talk about Holocaust memory having been manufactured after World War II by Zionists or Jewish elites. Alongside the myth that the yishuv was indifferent to the Holocaust, a myth arose several decades ago that American Jews did not really talk about the Holocaust until 1967, and that it only became a major focus of their attention due to Zionist manipulation. That is the heart of the accusations contained in works like Peter Novick's The Holocaust in American Life and the (far worse) piece of propaganda by Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. These accounts have also been significantly undermined by recent, heavily empirical scholarship, most notably in Hasia Diner's We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962.

Simon Schama on Shlomo Sand

Excellent review by Simon Schama of Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People, which has now been translated into English.

Natan Sharansky, from Refusenik to Likudnik to Publicist

 

BY NOAH S.        

Natan Sharansky, the famous Soviet dissident and Israeli political leader, spoke yesterday evening at the University of California, Berkeley. Freshly appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu to head the Jewish Agency for Israel, Sharansky is touring college campuses in an attempt to foster a more positive image of Israel among American youth. The audience in the large lecture hall, however—considering the stature of the guest and the amount of publicity for the event—was surprisingly sparse and composed largely (in this author’s estimation, at least) of non-students who were old enough to remember Sharansky when he was a hero for Americans and Jews during the Cold War. But then, this is Berkeley—a “haven” for “anti-Israel forces,” as the student organizers put it—the speaker was Sharansky—famous now more as George W. Bush's favorite author than anything else—and the event was part of the dubiously titled “Caravan for Democracy” series, which is funded by such local favorites as Media Watch International (a group aligned with Likud) and the Jewish National Fund (among other things, since 1901 a major land-owner in Palestine/Israel which still refuses to lease its land to Arabs). It is a shame, though, that more students were not in attendance, because they would have been challenged by a trenchant thinker with a compelling personal story to think through some of the basic justifications for the existence of a Jewish state.

The talk was brilliantly composed and delivered, though problematic upon close scrutiny. Sharansky structured his argument around “two ideas” which he claims share a “deep connection”: “the desire to be free” and “the desire to belong,” or between “democracy” and “identity.” (The connection between the two forms the basis of a course Sharansky is leading at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.) Those familiar with his books The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (2004) and Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy (2008) will recognize the argument. It is directed mainly against those “intellectuals,” as he called them, who believe in “post-identity,” “post-nationalism,” “post-modernism,” and “multiculturalism” - in other words, the relativists who believe that “nothing is different, that everything is equal.” (Berkeley professors?)  In order to illustrate this caricatured line of thought, Sharansky quoted (God help us) none other than the hippie-icon John Lennon, who asked us in 1971 to “imagine” a world in which there are “no countries,” “no religion,” and “nothing to kill or die for.” (Actually, Sharansky only quoted “nothing to die for.”). The logic of Sharansky’s unnamed intellectuals, represented here by the post-Beatle, holds that “strong identities” like nationalism and religion are “the enemies of peace.” Strong identities in Europe supposedly led to two world wars; war is evil; therefore, identity is evil. For them, being a human rights activist and a nationalist is an internal contradiction. And by this logic, the nation-state of Israel, which claims to be a leader of the free world yet retains its identity as the homeland of only one people, is an anachronism in a post-identity Western world. Sharanksy has set out to prove these critics wrong.

Born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky in Donetsk, Ukraine (then the Soviet Union) in 1948, Sharansky never saw any contradiction between the desire to be free and the desire to belong because under the Soviet regime both were stifled if you were a Jew. He was neither allowed to voice a dissenting political opinion, nor to learn anything about his religious and cultural heritage. When he attempted to immigrate to Israel in 1973 and was refused passage—thus acquiring the title of refusenik—he became an outspoken dissident and spent years in Soviet prisons. He realized that he had found something—his Jewishness—which he was “willing to die for,” and it gave him the strength to withstand the KGB. In this brief biographical narrative, Sharansky did not take time to discuss why the struggle to express one’s political views and the struggle to express one’s cultural identity publicly—which in his case did coincide—should resonate with people growing up in a free world. A tighter case would have to be made; perhaps those who have read his latest book could chime in here. In any case, the argument offers some insight into the psychology of this Soviet dissident turned militant democrat.

In fact, most of the talk was about Sharansky’s own story, and the move from the personal to the contemporary political came only at the very end, in a rhetorical flourish when he accused European intellectuals of “having nothing to die for.” As a result, he claimed, when faced with a very small minority of possible fundamentalist terrorists whose identity is strong and who are willing to die for their cause, they feel bewildered and defenseless. In the wake of World War II, just as Europeans vowed never to fight again, Zionists vowed never to not fight again. Israel has paid the price in its international image for the post-war move toward pacifism and post-identity among "intellectuals," Sharansky claimed, because it became a nation-state precisely at the moment when the idea of the nation-state became unpopular. The Western nations said accusingly, “We have given up our nationalism, our colonialism - why not you?” Sharansky’s answer is that Israelis need to have a strong identity to fight and die (and kill) for if they are to defend against “all these totalitarian regimes” in its region. One senses that Sharansky’s experience in the Soviet prisons has left its indelible mark upon this man’s political philosophy. 

Angry Idiocy

Angry Arab blog entry on Monday:

Monday, March 09, 2009

Zionist games

"During recent months, children in the southern town of Rahat, near Be'er Sheva, have taken up a new and cruel pastime - burning dogs alive." (thanks Dan)

Dutch May Boycott Durban II

Photo Credit: Buitenlandse Zaken (Dutch Foreign Ministry)

Earlier today, Maxime Verhagen, Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, threatened that his country would not participate in the planned UN Anti-Racism Conference, which is to take place in Geneva in April 2009. 

Verhagen said that 

Nederland zal er niet aan meewerken dat deze top, net zoals de vorige, ontaard in een antisemitische hetze (Foreign Affairs press release).

The Netherlands will not take part if this conference, like the previous one, turns into antisemitic agitation [my rough translation - Dutch speakers, please correct mistakes!]

He objected to a draft that accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians. The minister has also opposed moves by Islamic member states to issue a declaration against "blasphemy" at the conference, and he has initiated a UN declaration calling for a decriminalization of homosexuality. 

A Dutch boycott of "Durban II" would be a significant blow to the conference and may result in boycotts by other European nations. At a talk about the conference that I attended recently, one audience member, who had recently interviewed Verhagen, expressed skepticism about the likelihood of the Dutch delegation walking out of the conference. Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, on the other hand, suggested that it was a real possibility. 

Richard Falk on Gaza

Yesterday's statement by Richard Falk, the UN "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967" and a former Princeton professor,  on the situation in Gaza:

Last week, Karen AbyZayd, who heads the UN relief effort in Gaza, offered first-hand confirmation of the desperate urgency and unacceptable conditions facing the civilian population of Gaza. Although many leaders have commented on the cruelty and unlawfulness of the Gaza blockade imposed by Israel, such a flurry of denunciations by normally cautious UN officials has not occurred on a global level since the heyday of South African apartheid. 

And still Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease. Such a policy of collective punishment, initiated by Israel to punish Gazans for political developments within the Gaza strip, constitutes a continuing flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

This man appears to be stuck in the same dream he was dreaming when he predicted that the Iranian revolution would provide a "humane model of governance" for the Third World. Who exactly are these "cautious UN officials" to which Falk refers? Are they the same officials who have made careers out of attacking Israel and defending some of the world's vilest dictatorships simply because they are "anti-Western"? 

As for the Gaza siege, the Hamas government has a very simple solution at its disposal: stop the rocket attacks and recognize Israel.

Durban II

Hillel Neuer (l) of Geneva-based UN Watch and Aaron Jacob of AJC (r)  in New York, December 2008

The last UN Conference against Racism in Durban, held in late August 2001, quickly turned into a disgraceful spectacle of Israel-bashing and downright antisemitism. Anyone interested in a personal, though occasionally melodramatic account, of the conference, should check out the "Durban Diaries," by a member of the European Union of Jewish Students who attended it as part of a large delegation of the NGO. A follow-up to the Durban conference, which was actually the third UN Conference against Racism, will be held at the end of April 2009. 

On Monday, December 8, Hillel Neuer of the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch briefed a small audience of AJC Access members in New York on what happened at Durban I and what might happen at Durban II. It does not look good.

The first Durban conference consisted of the actual governmental conference attended by UN member states, an NGO forum, and a series of street demonstration in the South African city. It was at the NGO forum and street demonstrations where some of the worst excesses of the "anti-racism" conference took place. But even the governmental conference involved a protracted fight by the US, Israel, and some of the European countries, against a declaration that specifically accused Israel of apartheid, crimes against humanity, and genocide, without mentioning any other states. This particular part of the declaration had been formulated at the Asian regional conference in February 2001.

At the 2007 preparatory conference for Durban II, Libya was chosen to chair the 2009 conference against racism. The 19 vice chairs chosen included Cuba and Iran. Worse, the current draft declaration includes a verbatim copy of the 2001 Tehran wording. 

Neuer outlined 3 categories of problematic language in the declaration proposals so far - a longer review of the document has been published in a report titled "Shattering the Red Lines." UN Watch has expressed concern in

1. specifically anti-Israel language, including the charge that the Law of Return is inherently racist
   
2. broadly anti-Western material
   
3. a campaign by the Islamic states  to import anti-blasphemy provisions and legitimize them in international law under the notion of “defamation of religion”
   

The latest draft proposals hammered out at the preparatory conference, by no means final, nevertheless testify to the direction in which Durban II might be headed.

So far, only Canada has announced that it is not attending the conference. Israel will be making a decision soon, and the U.S. will do so after the inaugaration of Barack Obama as President. Meanwhile, the Europeans have pledged to maintain certain red lines that, if crossed by the conference, will compel them to walk out of the process. However, it remains to be seen whether they will act on this. 

I hope to post more details later.

Qassams on Gaza and the Dream of Palestinian Statehood

Image: Map Showing Entry Points into Gaza (Source: Palestine Trade Center)

Once in a while, we read accounts of qassam rockets landing inside the Gaza Strip. Today, a mortar shell apparently hit a power cable that provides electricity for the Hamas-ruled territory. Unlike the April 9, 2008 attacks, which deliberately targeted the Nahal Oz fuel depot used by Israel to transport gas to Gaza, this latest incident appears to have been an accident. But many of the Palestinian mortar attacks and cross-border raids into Israel have struck precisely those points through which the territory receives supplies crucial to its inhabitants' lives. How can Hamas seriously complain about fuel or food shortages when its own actions directly threaten the infrastructure used to provide these necessities to Gazans?

Of course, in a larger sense, every qassam attack on Israel is an own-goal by the Palestinians. The rocket attacks that have plagued southern Israel since the withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005 as well as the cross-border raids such as the one that led to the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit on June 25, 2006, imperil the likelihood of a future withdrawal from the West Bank more than anything else. The Gaza evacuation showed that both Israel's leadership as well as the majority of the Israeli population support a withdrawal from much of the territory captured in 1967. But no responsible leadership can authorize such evacuations, when it results in more attacks on Israeli citizens inside the country's recognized borders. 

The Palestinians and their supporters will argue that settlement expansion and the IDF's actions in the territories have had a similar effect in undermining Palestinian trust as the qassams (and the suicide bombings before them) have had on Israelis. This kind of argument might fly in academia, but it is a dead end, especially for anyone who is serious about Palestinian statehood. Israel is in a position to grant Palestinians the land that they need for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza. It depends on Israel to realize these ambitions. But the Palestinian dream of statehood requires the Palestinian organizations to demonstrate their trustworthiness to Israel, not vice versa.

The best analogy might be that of a lender and a hopeful borrower. Even if the lender has failed to repay debts to other people or to the would-be debtor himself, s/he is still the one with the capital that the debtor hopes to borrow. In order to procure the loan, it is incumbent upon the debtor to demonstrate to the lender ability to return the principal and interest in the future. Everything else is irrelevant. 

I hope that my analogy, which equates Israel with a lender and the Palestinians with a debtor will not occasion yet another self-righteous diatribe on the alleged immorality of the Zionist enterprise. Those who believe that Israel does not have a right to exist or to be a "lender," are living in a dream world. They may continue idling away their time with stirring, moralistic pronouncements. But they would do well to remember that no state has been created on moral claims alone - not even the State of Israel, which, post-WWII had a stronger claim to a moral right for its existence than any other country in the world. Statehood is achieved by those who combine moral vision with pragmatic politics and, most importantly, attention to the contingencies of history and the vagaries of fortune.

Peres Silences Palestinians ... by Being Present

I was amazed by the strange logic of this letter, which was sent to the Angry Arab, on the occasion of Shimon Peres's appearance at Oxford:

We, the Oxford Arab Cultural Society and the Oxford Students' Palestine Society, alongside the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and concerned members of the public, held a demonstration outside starting over an hour before the talk, and lasting - audibly - throughout Peres' speech. Some of us attended the lecture and, at intervals, nine students got up and made loud statements beginning 'I represent all the Palestinians who...' One such student was bundled out of the lecture hall. Peres was visibly fazed by these interruptions and the sound of the protestors outside, while the audience were thus made aware of the point of view being stifled by Peres' presence today in Oxford, and every day in Palestine.

I think this is what happens when people take their literary theory too seriously and start viewing people as texts, which are said to repress subalterns by their presence. It is also rather insidious. What exactly are we supposed to do when someone's mere existence is said to marginalize another person's or people's point of view? 

The Jewish State Again

Michel Aflaq, Arab nationalist (Photo)

Before I wrote my post on A Jewish State, several weeks ago, a good friend of mine took objection to my lament that no one seems terribly concerned about the fact that there are many "Islamic States" in the world or that various countries in the region define themselves as "Arab states."

I cannot do justice to his entire argument here, and I anticipate that he will view whatever I post as a distortion of what he was saying. Furthermore, since he has not given me permission to do so, I cannot quote his words directly. Nevertheless, here is my attempt.

According to my friend, the comparison of "the Jewish state" with Islamic states lacks rigor. Islamic states such as the Islamic Republic of Iran are "Islamic," he argues, because they derive their laws from shari'ah (Islamic religious law). But Israel's laws are not derived from halakhah (Jewish religious law). Rather, the Jewishness of the state, according to him, is something that resides in people not texts. Citizenship is linked to blood in a way that citizenship in Islamic states and Arab nationalist ones was never conceived. That is, citizenship in Arab states was not a matter of "Arabness" - as evidence, he cites the Armenian citizens in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, and the Kurdish citizens of Iraq.

I think my friend is confused and mistaken on several fronts, but I have a feeling that this argument resonates with some people. I would like to use this opportunity to resume the discussion we began in the last post, by subjecting the argument above to critique in the comments.

A Jewish State

Theodor Herzl's 1896 work The Jewish State (or the "State of the Jews")

Most Jewish Israelis and most Jews living in the diaspora take it for granted that Israel is "a Jewish state." This particular description does not elicit a great deal of controversy for them; it seems obvious and relatively unproblematic. For many Arabs, whether Christian, Muslim, or atheist, and for many Muslims living outside the Middle East, however, the phrase seems unacceptable, and usually provokes an exclamation of disbelief that such a thing should be possible. To them it seems prima facie racist. Likewise, while most Jews see Zionism as the political expression of a belief in Jewish self-determination, dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for many Arabs and Muslims it is a fascist, genocidal, and/or racist ideology with none of the legitimacy granted to other nationalist movements, including Pan-Arabism.

To me, this discord invites two different lines of inquiry.

1. Of course, arguments must be made for and against. Indeed, I myself have been forced to engage in such arguments ad nauseam, a fact that at this point in my life tends to fill me with resentment as soon as I hear yet another person challenging me to resist their conversionary or enlightening zeal.


2. However, a different line of inquiry would proceed more phenomenologically (I think). It would ask: what do all these different people mean when they talk about a "Jewish state"? Further, it would try to investigate why some people sees this self-description as unproblematic, while others vigorously oppose it; it would, moreover, ask the same thing about the desire of many Jews (in Israel and elsewhere) to have the Palestinians as well as others accept the definition of Israel as a Jewish state. This would be a study of fears, hopes, and their consequences.

To kick things off on the first line of inquiry, I will cite the remarks of John Mearsheimer, made at a lecture delivered at UC Berkeley in late October 2006, which succinctly characterize the realist position when it comes to this question. So as not to be accused of taking things out of context, I have included the entire paragraph of remarks:

We think that the fact that there’s a Jewish state is a good thing given the history of antisemitism and our understanding of how the world works. Here in the US, we have a melting pot society. This is not a Christian or Anglo-Saxon state. It’s a liberal state. There is no one ethnic or religious group that dominates; it’s a melting pot. I don’t like the idea of living in state dominated by one culture. But around world, there are lots of states where people identify themselves largely in terms of culture – take Japan: most people there consider themselves to be Japanese. Same is true with Israel – it’s a Jewish state; the same is true for Germany. It’s not the way I like to do business; but it’s perfectly legitimate way to do it in the international system today. I believe in national self-determination. Zionism is a form of nationalism and perfectly legitimate one. There is nothing wrong with having a Jewish state. We are arguing that Palestinians are also entitled to have a state of their own. If there’s national self-determination for the Jews, it should also exist for the Palestinians. The principal obstacle to establishing Palestinian state at this time is Israel. Israel is interested in colonizing the West Bank and giving the Palestinians nothing more than a few enclaves, keeping them disconnected, controlling borders, air and water. As long as that’s the case, the Palestinians won't have a viable state. The same logic that leads us to support a Jewish state leads us to support a Palestinian state.

Norman Finkelstein

Anyone who believes that it is unfair that Norman Finkelstein did not receive tenure should read the man's review of Jan Gross's Neighbors. This piece of tendentious and antisemitic garbage, which he proudly published in a right-of-center Polish newspaper, should have been enough to sway any university committee against giving Finkelstein tenure.

Dissolving Lebanon

As'ad AbuKhalil has been trying to explain his political theology to his mother:

Knowing of my views against the very existence of Lebanon as an entity, she would always ask me how that is possible. I would tell her that the dissolution of the entity (into a larger Arab entity) is the solution. [...] I said that imagine when Syria is run well, and the Asad regime is overthrown (and hopefully not by the Muslim Brotherhood or the Khaddam version of Ba`thism): Lebanon would be better served by dissolving into a larger Arab entity. Like the Zionist entity, Lebanon has posed a danger to, and inflicted harm on, its inhabitants and on the Palestinian cause.

You see, he really has the best interests of the Lebanese in mind. The "Zionist entity" can go to hell. Its primal sin, one apparently also committed by Lebanon, is causing harm to the Palestinian cause. I am curious how this dogma, which has turned Palestine into Jesus (guess who killed it), came to occupy such a big role in the religion of the angry Arabs.

From Jo-burg to J-lem

A mural on the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa

I've recently returned from a short but rewarding visit to South Africa. Even the casual observer might notice that the Israel issue gets a lot of traction in the post-apartheid state. Perhaps somewhat naively, I felt I got a sense over the course of the 10 days I spent in the country of how and why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resonates with South Africans. To relate an anecdote, the weekend I arrived, the headline of the May 26 Sunday paper in Cape Town, the Weekend Argus, blared "Gaddafi 'is funding Zuma.'" As it turns out, a mysterious intelligence report from some nefarious source was circulated, which accused president Thabo Mbeki's ANC rival Jacob Zuma of receiving succour from the Angolan leader Eduardo dos Santos and Muammar Gaddafi in an attempt to oust Mbeki. There were other rumors making the rounds that Zuma, who may very well be the next president of South Africa, is in mortal danger, though I doubt he was fazed, as he's notorious for having slept with an HIV-infected subordinate and declared himself inoculated against the virus since, afterward, he took a shower! One person who should have been fazed by all this was Ronnie Kasrils, the government's Intelligence Minister. Indeed, Kasrils quickly distanced his agencies from the report. The man clearly has his hands full: many are speculating about what role if any the intelligence services will play in the impending ANC succession struggle. Yet I was surprised to find Kasrils -- in the very same day's paper -- blasting Israel. As journalist Chiara Carter put it, the minister had "wagged his finger vigorously" at the Israelis for failing to make "positive moves." Kasrils is the minister responsible for extending the South African government's controversial invitation of a state visit to Ismail Haniyeh. Kasrils was in Israel and the West Bank recently, and when he returned to South Africa, he published an essay in the Mail and Guardian, "Israel 2007: Worse than Apartheid." The point he makes, I guess, is that the system of restriction of movement exercised by the IDF in the West Bank resembles the ugly pass book system imposed on Africans under apartheid. An Israeli airport official born in the Johannesburg area tells Kasrils, "This is a fu*#ed-up place." Apparently, the guy was from Charlize Theron's home suburb, the working class Afrikaner bastion of Benoni -- also, I can tell you, a fu*#ed-up place.

I had the great fortune of meeting actor and writer Eric Miyeni while in "Jozi." Eric is the author of a book called O'Mandingo! The Only Black at the Dinner Party, his own rant, admittedly, but infinitely more interesting -- and entertaining -- than Kasrils'. I hung out at Talk Radio 720 in Sandton the night after Eric had interviewed Kasrils on a national radio show. Eric had needled the minister, asking him how it was that there was time in the face of the intelligence challenges both domestic and regional to spout off about Israel! The night I was in the studio, reprentatives of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies were on the air responding to Kasrils's denunciations. How, they asked, could one compare the tactics Umkhonto We Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, which assiduously avoided inflicting non-combatant, civilian casualties, to suicide bombers and men who launch Qassams indiscriminately at population centers? A Mail and Guardian piece by David Saks of the Board of Deputies gives you an idea of how the debate runs.

Now, it may be true that the governing ANC is still in some sense a liberation movement, and that its old guard, which is entrenched, and of which Kasrils is by definition a member, sees itself as part of a world liberation movement. Notice Mbeki's embrace of, say, the ousted Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, or his cautious approach to the problem of Mugabe's Zimbabwe. But I'm not sure that most South Africans are willing to make the connection between the anti-apartheid struggle and the Palestinian movement for national self-determination quite as quickly as Kasrils. I don't think Eric Miyeni is the only questioning voice in the crowd. On the campus of Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, I saw signs for a talk called "Comparing Zionism with Apartheid: Privileging or Undervaluing our Unique Victimhood?" I think it's a very open question -- in most South African circles. If I learned one thing from Eric and from the many other kind South Africans with whom I spoke, it was that apartheid's legacy, its relation to the endemic problems of South African society, is a matter of great confusion and uncertainty. This fact won't make for quick, glib analogies. But I'm sure that when Palestinian statehood arrives, the society that's born will in a similar way have to reckon with the combination of memories of enormous suffering and disappointment with the way things can in the end turn out.

"Lessons" from the Kisufim Attack

The Kisufim ("Yearnings") Crossing, marked in orange

The thwarted attempt by Palestinian militants to capture an Israeli soldier near the Kisufim crossing has again raised questions about the government's "policy of no response" (Debka Hebrew).

In the incident, which occurred on Saturday afternoon, a team of four Islamic Jihad fighters broke through the security fence in a white jeep marked "TV." Lookouts immediately alerted nearby forces from the Givati Brigade. Meanwhile, the militants, who were dressed in military fatigues, stormed an empty outpost (a pillbox) and started firing. When they realized that the outpost was unoccupied and saw IDF jeeps arriving at the scene, three of the fighters returned to Gaza. Israeli troops began combing the area. A dog from the Oketz unit discovered the fourth terrorist, who had hidden in a pipe. After he revealed his location when he shot the dog, Israeli soldiers surrounded the man, who was killed in the two-hour long gun battle that ensued (Ynet Hebrew, New York Times).

The vehicle used by the attackers (Reuters)

Soon after the initial news of the incident, army sources expressed concerns about "tactical shortcomings" in the response of the unit summoned to the scene (Ha'aretz Hebrew). "Why," they asked, "was there no pursuit of the [Islamic Jihad] crew at Kisufim?" To Lt. Colonel Bassam 'Alian, who commands the Rotem Battalion (one of the four battalions in the Givati Brigade) and was among the first to arrive on the scene, the answer is simple: the troops focused on securing the area first and making sure that the terrorists did not reach nearby residential areas. (A quick excursus: Bassam 'Alian made the headlines in August 2006, after he was injured in Lebanon, shortly after being promoted to Lt. Colonel.)

I will leave it to the military to investigate these alleged tactical deficiencies, but it strikes me that the criticism might not be entirely rational. I cannot help linking this disappointment that Israeli soldiers did not manage to arrest or kill the other attackers with a general sense of frustration about the government's defensive policy. This frustration is most palpable among reservists from Sderot and the south. In a recent article, "An Israeli defeat in Sderot," Ze'ev Schiff argues that despite the organization's military weakness, Hamas has achieved deterrence vis-a-vis Israel, just as Hizbullah has in the north. He calls this a "national failure" more serious than the outcome of the Lebanon war. Schiff concludes by bemoaning

the almost total disappearance of the strategic principle set by David Ben-Gurion, to the effect that upon the outbreak of a military confrontation, Israel must quickly transfer the fighting to enemy territory. At present, it is the enemy who is immediately transferring the fighting to Israeli territory (Ha'aretz).

In recent days, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has also called for an expansion of offensive action in Gaza by the army, though he still rules out a major ground operation comparable to Defensive Shield. Israel's National Security Council, on the other hand, believes that the current policy should be continued (Ha'aretz English).

The government's reluctance to authorize a large-scale operation in Gaza, however, is not based on the acceptance of a draw with Hamas alone. Israel is trying to avoid the inevitable civilian casualties that would accompany a return to the policies of June 2006, which included heavy artillery fire, and bombardment from the sea and air in response to qassam launches. Perhaps the government is hoping for a further deterioration of the Palestinians' diplomatic position, as well as the attrition of its fighting power in internecine conflict.

As we occupy ourselves with the management of this conflict, the future looks bleaker than ever. Because the Palestinian factions cannot guarantee Israelis' security, Israel will not give up the land the parties and the Palestinian people demand as a requirement for the cessation of attacks. To be sure, the armed struggle - at least of the sort carried out since the mid-1990s - especially the suicide bombings have only brought disaster to the Palestinians. Furthermore, the qassams and their more lethal future successors will bestow mere temporary gains upon the Palestinians (a cease fire here, a partial lifting of restrictions), until the next terrorist attack. Then, it will be two steps backward again.

I think the optimism of the "anti-Zionists," that Israel will disappear is misplaced. They believe that the world only has to be convinced of the suffering of the Palestinians. It is true that a great number of people today believe that Israel is the manifestation of evil and wholly responsible for the hardships experienced by Palestinian civilians. They bank on what they see as the inevitable triumph of justice, and the defeat of the wicked. In the words of Angry Arab:

Zionists miscalculated: the deep seated racism that characterized the minds of Zionist pioneers, and the contempt through which they looked at the Arabs, did not prepare them for an unexpected variable: the persistence of Palestinian struggle. That the Palestinians will not succumb to Zionist diktats. And that the Arabs will not let bygone's be bygone's.

I think the inverse of what As'ad AbuKhalil is saying rings just as true. The Arabs, especially the Palestinian Arabs, were not prepared for the persistence of the Jews' belief that they belong there, and that they need their own state. What the anti-Zionists don't understand is that Israeli Jews have nowhere to go. They do not intend to "return" anywhere - certainly not to the precariousness of life without national self-determination. Perhaps it is time to admit that the interests of Israelis and Palestinians are simply irreconcilable. For both sides, national self-determination seems to have requirements that the other side will not accept. But the loser of this kind of "draw" is surely the person without a state.

Getting along is easier in San Francisco (May 2007)

In a very serious interview conducted by Sayed Kashua, best known for his hilarious satirical columns in Ha'aretz [the link happens not to be his funniest piece but it's still good], Hillel Cohen, the author of four fine works on the relationship between the state (or pre-state institutions) and the local Arab population, put it this way:

-"One could also say that the tragedy of the Palestinians from the start is that they found themselves on land that the Jews claim, and say is their historic homeland - rightly so apparently, unlike what some of the Palestinians think. The Jews have roots here and they've managed to stake a claim in this land. This is where the tragedy begins. If the Jews hadn't come here, nothing would have developed the way it has. But they did come here and they are also stronger. This is the root of the tragedy. The question within this equation is what you do about it. The tragedy within this equation is that if you're quiet and don't protest it doesn't help you, and if you protest gently it also doesn't help you, and if you move to an armed struggle, then it also hurts you. Whatever you do, you're screwed."

So what should be done?

-"I don't have a proposal for what the Palestinians should do. But let's say, theoretically, if the Palestinians were to take up a non-violent struggle en masse, maybe something would happen."

Then what? That would bring them back to an Oslo-type process.

-"Perhaps. Listen, I don't know what to say to the Palestinians. If someone were to land here from Mars and ask me which nation is worth joining, I probably wouldn't recommend he join the Palestinian people."

And the Jewish people? The Israeli people?

-"No comment."

Another British Boycott

Israeli universities are under attack
(Photo: Ben Gurion University, June 2006)

UPDATE: I highly recommend Judy's blog, Adloyada, for her coverage of the boycott. She predicted that a boycott motion would be passed, and has some background on the union personalities pro and contra the resolution. She also notes some of the obfuscatory statements by anti-boycott groups, who claim that the motion will be subjected to balloting by all members, hence preventing it from being adopted as policy. On the other hand, she argues that no respectable universities will actually implement such a boycott, and that we should all take a pill. Check out these links - you are unlikely to get this kind of scoop anywhere else.

On Wednesday, delegates at a congress of the University and College Union (UCU) in Britain passed a motion that calls for the circulation, among the trade union's branches, of a Palestinian appeal to impose an academic boycott on Israel. As far as I can tell from the union's rather opaque press release, the branches will eventually have to approve the boycott for it go into effect.

This appears to be the text of the resolution passed at the congress:

In3 Composite: Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (University of Brighton, Grand Parade; University of East London, Docklands)

Congress notes that Israel's 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement.

Congress deplores the denial of educational rights for Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.

Congress condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation, which has provoked a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.

Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic.

Congress instructs the NEC to

• circulate the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches/LAs for information and discussion;
• encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions;
• organise a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academic/educational trade unionists;
• issue guidance to members on appropriate forms of action.

Clearly, something is rotten in the state of British academia for such a motion to have passed once again. I do not intend here to demonstrate why Israel should merit not be boycotted by British academics, as the onus really ought to be on those behind this vile measure to prove their case. Perhaps most galling is the obvious injustice of singling out Israel, among all the nations of the world, as the one target deserving of this kind. But the simplistic, one-sided, and self-exculpatory nature of this resolution is also striking.

The first two paragraphs pin all the blame for the hardships suffered by Palestinian civilians, including the "denial of educational rights," on Israel. This is a willful and immoral distortion of the truth. The shootings, closures, and curfews to which the bill refers do not take place in a vacuum; they are responses to acts of terror against Israeli civilians. One may argue about whether specific measures are justified or not, but this resolution assumes from the start that all of Israel's actions are illegitimate. In other words, according to the framers of this motion, Israel's attempts to protect and defend its citizens from murderous attacks - designed specifically to kill Israeli civilians - are a priori immoral. Surely, this is perverse and itself worthy of moral condemnation.

The third paragraph then goes on to make all of Israeli academia complicit in Israel's alleged crimes. This, of course, is charge on which the call for an academic boycott hangs. Many people have made counter-arguments to the effect that a significant number of Israeli academics actually oppose "the occupation." While this happens to be true, such a counter-argument concedes far too much to a position that ought to be resisted with outrage and moral fortitude, rather than feeble apologetics.

As I have suggested above, blanket condemnation of Israeli actions in the territories is itself morally suspect, as it enjoins the state from protecting its citizens. However, even more dubious is the charge that Israeli universities and colleges as a whole are complicit "in the occupation." Israeli universities do not determine government policy. Even if a professor in the department of molecular biology at Hebrew University reports to reserve duty at a checkpoint in the West Bank, that scholar's research and teaching are not complicit in oppression. I was flabbergasted to read the statements of a certain Michael Cushman from LSE, which were reprinted in the Guardian:

During the debate, which lasted well over an hour, Michael Cushman, from the London School of Economics, said: "Universities are to Israel what the springboks were to South Africa: the symbol of their national identity."

Israel wanted to claim it was a normal democratic state and universities were integral to that, Mr Cushman said. "[But] it is not a normal state. They are not normal universities.

"Senior academics move from universities into ministries and back again," he said.

"Regularly, lecturers take up their commissions in the Israeli Defence Force as reserve officers to go into the West Bank to dominate, control and shoot the population."

By Cushman's logic Israeli hospitals, synagogues, and elementary schools are also "complicit" in the occupation. Indeed, as the allusion to the South African rugby team (the Springboks), banned from competition in the 1980s and until 1995, makes clear, this is the logic of the UCU motion: Israel, just like apartheid South Africa, has no legitimacy. Its entire society is criminal. Hence, all of its institutions are somehow involved in that rather abstract entity of "the occupation." In other words, no citizen of Israel is immune from the collective punishment meted out by the UCU or other unions.

The single-minded ascription of all evil in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Israel - indeed, the projection of this evil onto Israeli citizens, whether civilians or combatants - makes one wonder about the preemptive self-defense clause in the last paragraph of the motion. Is there any other people in the world today that this British union would choose to punish in this manner?

The dream of political Zionism was to turn the Jews into a nation with a state like all other nations, not only in order to provide Jews with a haven from antisemitism, but also to end antisemitism tout court, precisely by "normalizing" the Jews. This project has clearly failed. Israel has become the Jew of the nations - on its punishment (or, preferably, destruction), in the minds of today's redeemers of the world, hangs the restoration of cosmic justice.

Interestingly, the following motion did not make it onto the agenda of the congress, because it was received after a March 21, 2007 deadline:

VV Supporting cooperation between the UCU, Palestine, and Israel (Kingston University)

Congress calls for an end to the 40-year Occupation of Palestinian territory, and supports a free and viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Preferring cooperation and rapprochement to hostility and exclusion, Congress believes that a boycott of Israeli academics would be counter-productive and harm voices for dialogue.

Reaffirming UCU's commitment to academic freedom and equality, Congress opposes punishing an entire academic sector for the actions of its country’s government – whether Israeli, Palestinian or any other nationality.

Congress resolves that that UCU support cooperative projects that bring together Israeli and Palestinian academia to work towards a peaceful settlement, and to work with Palestinian and Israeli Trade Unions to defend the right of Palestinian students and academics to study free from harassment or unfair restrictions.

I have seen no coverage of the boycott vote in the European press - if someone finds German, French, Italian, or Spanish reports on it, please post the links here. The New York Times has a slightly facetious article about the vote.

The American Jewish Committee is spearheading action against the boycott.

Fire at Monsey Synagogue Likely Not Arson

NK members facing their opponents in Monsey in January (photo: theyeshivaworld.com)

An air of suspicion still surrounds reports of a synagogue fire in Monsey, New York on Sunday evening, the eve of Passover, despite initial police reports that appear to rule out arson. The synagogue, Bais Yehuda, is home to members of Neturei Karta, the anti-Zionist hassidic sect now famous for sending a delegation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference on the historicity of the Holocaust. These suspicions were not entirely unfounded given the expressions of rage, the ostracism and harassment that the incident provoked. Just take a look at the comments on Yeshiva World News' post to get a sense of how vitriolic this issue has become in religious communities.

The Twists and Turns of Contemporary Antisemitism and Antisemites

In the past few weeks, I've been reading a blog (Blogging the Middle East) by a fascinating Lebanese thinker (Anarchorev a.k.a. Anarchistian), who also happens to be a self-confessed former racist, antisemite and Holocaust denier (see her remarkable "Confessions of an Ex-Neo-Nazi"). Even though I disagree with almost everything this blogger writes as well as her manner of expressing herself (her contempt for those who disagree with her line is always palpable), I admire this writer's political engagement and energy. The members of her cheering section are a little less interesting. As you can imagine, her blog also attracts its share of hardcore Jew-haters. I'm talking about people with no real connection to the Middle East who are nevertheless filled with pathological hatred of Israel and Jews. Of course, they'll also be the first ones to condemn you for accusing them of antisemitism - before you have even done so. In this post, I try to look a little more closely at some of the rhetoric employed by crypto-antisemites.

Before I begin, however, let me point to a major change in the history of antisemitism. Few antisemites today want to be known as such. Unlike their predecessors, today's antisemites realize that publicly confessing to antisemitism - something which the inventors of the term did proudly - will delegitimize them to the point of no return, at least in the West. Furthermore, although there are still plenty of Holocaust deniers around, including presidents of certain countries, denial of the genocide of European Jewry is a taboo in most of the civilized world. This is an unfortunate situation for those who hate Jews and everything connected to them. Thus, antisemites have had to adjust to the new situation in which they found themselves after WWII.

One of the favorite devices of post-1945 antisemites has been to accuse Jews of conspiring to force the world to act according to the wishes of world Jewry by using the Holocaust as a sort of stick with which to beat non-Jews into submission. Thus, a few years ago, the German author, Martin Walser, referred to Jews as holding the "Auschwitz-Keule" (Auschwitz-club) over the heads of Germans. Thus, Jews are accused of exaggerating the genocide of European Jewry and manipulating the guilt complexes of non-Jews.

A related accusation to the one above is the charge that Jews deliberately minimize the suffering of others, sometimes in order to cover up their own horrendous crimes. This is a permutation of the classic anti-Jewish trope that accuses Jews of an especially heinous form of chauvinism because their religion includes the notion that they are the chosen people. Never mind that many other peoples entertain similar notions about themselves.

Another favorite device of contemporary antisemites is to accuse the Jews of being today's real Nazis. This is employed even by people who actually deny the Holocaust.

Let's look at some passages, which combine all the various devices. Here is an exchange on "Blogging the Middle East" between Anarchorev (formerly Anarchistian) and Chris Swift:

Swift writes:

What I would love to see is a naval and air blockade of Israel! How loud would they all scream and whine then?

(He likes to refer to "them" or "your kind" when speaking about Jews.)

Anarchorev responds:

What I would love to see is a naval and air blockade of Israel!
That would be the peak of anti-Semitism, wouldn’t it? …. :)

This really sets off the "discussion." Swift writes back:

Yes, it certainly must be. I mean, after all, to condemn the policies of Israel means you’re an anti-semite.

The problem with playing the “anti-semite” card (and I appreciate your sarcastic wit, Anarchorev) - the problem with this is that it is now…boring. They have sucked all the sympathy out of me that they’re going to get for the Holocaust. There have been so many tv specials and movies and newspaper articles, that I’ve now reached a saturation point. I am now anesthetized to it. I now officially do not care about the Holocaust. Of all the massacres and barbarian tragedies that have happened over time, it seems we are only allowed to “know” or “care” about the Jewish Holocaust (which affected untold numbers of non-Jews also [but we’re not supposed to know about that, are we?]). I do not care how many Jews died in WWII. It happened. Get over it. And stop using it as a weapon. It’s boring.

And although I’m not quite prepared to make the “Jews are the New Nazis” analogy (at least until George “where are our assassins when we need them” Bush starts selling Israel stocks of Zyclon-B), it is very interesting and curious how many direct comparisons can be made between official statements of Nazi officials and Israeli officials - justifying their actions. Curious, indeed. (I won’t delineate them here; I think we know what they are.)

It's funny that Swift first explains his indifference vis-a-vis the Holocaust as a product of anaesthesis through over-exposure. "They" no longer merit his sympathy, because "they" have been on TV too much already. Then, he shifts gears and suggests that the fact that "they" have received so much exposure is due to a conspiracy on "their" part to monopolize suffering. "They" are not letting him care about non-Jewish victims! Next, he jumps to a different register again - pure callousness. "It happened. Get over it." Or, "It's boring."

The second paragraph is "interesting and curious" in its own right. Well, not really. It's just dumb. He's not really prepared to make the analogy but then does so anyway.

At the risk of boring Kishkushim readers, I want to look at the trajectory that the discussion took from there. Tanya, another reader, expands on Swift's accusation that the Jews monopolize suffering. She accuses Jews, in somewhat veiled terms, of monopolizing the term antisemitism. Her comment is basically a version of a classic argument used by Arab antisemites and their apologists. The argument is that since Arabs "are Semites" (indeed, the claim is that they are the “real Semites,” unlike the fake Ashkenazi Jews), they cannot be antisemites. Here is Tanya's post:

it needs to be clarified where the term ‘ANTI-SEMITISM’ derives from: ‘SAMI’ the people who descended from ‘SAMI’, son of ‘NOAH’ in arabia. this applies to the arabs of the region who are ‘SAMI’ or ‘SEMI’, which includes jewish, muslim and christian arabs. this does not apply to
non-arabs.

the word ‘SEMI’ has been taken out of context and manipulated to apply to only one religion, THIS IS WRONG, however, this has been done deliberately so serve a purpose.

Swift responds:

Tanya,
Yes, indeed. The term covers a wide range of peoples and, for some reason or other, seems to apply only to Jews now!? It’s basically a non-sequitur. What the heck happened there?

The term covers a wide range of peoples? It’s a non-sequitur? Obviously, the best solution to the whole antisemitism problem is to eliminate the term entirely. That way, one no longer has to worry about saying antisemitic things about “them.” The true crime is not antisemitism, but the attempts by Jews to deny the true meaning of the term. Never mind that the term antisemitism was invented by a proud German Jew-hater in the 1870s called Wilhelm Marr for whom Semite meant Jew (he coined the word to give German anti-Jewish prejudice a more “scientific” – i.e., racial – foundation). Never mind, that if one looks at usage of the term by antisemites since then, it has almost always been with reference to Jews and not to Arabs. Never mind that the Nazis’ avowed antisemitism did not prevent the Mufti Haj al Amin from becoming very friendly with them. Given the historical record, Tanya’s claim that “this does not apply to non-Arabs” is of course utter nonsense.

Tanya’s comment is deeply problematic for a host of other reasons. First of all, she really seems to believe that there is such a thing as a “Semitic” race or group of people. Yes, SHEM was one of the sons of Noah, but the terms “Semite” and “Semites” are products of the racist European imagination of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The designation only makes sense in linguistics, where we can speak of Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Amharic. There are no people called “Semites” unless you believe in racial science.

Finally, it is surely the height of chutzpah that Tanya and Swift blame JEWS for monopolizing the term antisemitism. As if Jews are responsible for the fact that antisemites have used the term “Semite” almost exclusively to mean Jews.

"What the heck happened there?"

Largest Canuck Union Backs Israel Boycott

Canadian Union Activists have all the answers...
First it was the British academics union, now the real proletarians have jumped on the bandwagon. Yesterday, Ontario's largest public sector union (CUPE - the Canadian Union of Public Employees) voted to support an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. According to an article published in the Globe and Mail, delegates to a CUPE convention "voted overwhelmingly Saturday to support the campaign until Israel recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination." According to the leader of the campaign, Katherine Nastovski, chairwoman of the CUPE Ontario international solidarity committee,

“Boycott, divestment and sanction worked to end apartheid in South Africa [...] We believe the same strategy will work to enforce the rights of Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties.”

All of this shallow rhetoric really leaves me wondering how many of these people made an honest effort to reflect and to seek out critical voices before they went on the attack. How many Israeli leaders have to stand up and say that they support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ergo, that they support the Palestinian right to self-determination? Did anyone even take note of Ehud Olmert's statements in Washington? Hell, did anyone listen to Sharon's public suppport in favour of a two-state solution? Barak? Peres? Rabin (z"l)? If anything, it is the Palestinian government, led by Hamas, which until now has refused to recognize the existence of the state of Israel and is formally committed to its destruction, that could be accused of refusing to recognize the Jewish right to self-determination. (By the way, although I agree that covenants as such do not always dictate the political decisions of a movement which are shaped by the context in which it operates, I urge anyone to skim the Hamas Covenant to get at least a sense of where these people are coming from.

The implication that Israel is an apartheid state is also fundamentally flawed. Usually, this claim is based by its authors on the fact that Palestinians cannot freely move between the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Israel proper. Dumb people somehow consider the restrictions on Palestinian entry into Israel as analagous to the South African apartheid system which prohibited black citizens of that country from leaving their townships and going to white areas without special passes, etc. Well, Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza Strip are not Israeli citizens and for the most part have no desire to get Israeli citizenship. Under international law, they are no more entitled to working in Israel proper than a Canadian without a work permit looking for work in the United States. Just as the United States or Canada have the right to control the entry of foreign nationals into their sovereign territory, Israel has the right, in principle, to prevent the movement of Palestinians across its borders, especially when you consider the threat of terror. Take issue with the route of the security fence that is being built by Israel to protect itself, fine. But to call this apartheid??

Apartheid was a doomed attempt by South Africa's white minority to preserve its hold on power by denying the country's black citizens equal access to health care, education and social spaces. In the Israeli-Palestinian case, we have a majority Jewish state living next to a (disfunctional) autonomous Palestinian state-in-formation. It is up to the Palestinian state in formation to provide its citizens with a functioning goverment, economic opportunities, health services and education and it has been doing so, albeit not always successfully, since 1993. The apartheid argument has to be recognized for what it is: a bunch of crap. Plenty of South Africans (not those with an axe to grind with Israel because of its unfortunate decision to have relations with the evil apartheid regime) have already written about the problem of equating Israel and Afrikaaner dominated South Africa. If you want to criticize Israel, at least do so with some semblance of integrity and intellectual honesty.

Maybe the argument is that Israel is pursuing "apartheid policies" towards its Arab citizens? If so, then it is even more ludicrous. If Israel were an apartheid state, would it be investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in special preparatory English classes to prepare Arab Bedouin students for university? Would Israeli Arabs be allowed to go to the same hospitals as Jewish Israelis, be it as patients, nurses or doctors? Let me cite an article published in the Guardian by Benjamin Pogrund, a former South African and the founder of Yakar's Centre for Social Concern in Jerusalem:

[...] health is a visible indicator of the differences between apartheid South Africa and Israel. In South Africa, the infant mortality rate (IMR) in 1985 was 78 per 1,000 live births. Among color groups: whites 12, Asians 20, coloreds 60, blacks 94 to 150. In Israel, in the 1950s, the IMR among Muslims was 60.6 and among Jews 38.8. Major improvements occurred in health care during the 1990s and by 2001 the IMR among Arabs was 7.6 (Muslims 8.2, Christians 2.6, Druze 4.7). Among Jews, 4.1. According to the health ministry, the higher Muslim figure was due mainly to genetic defects as a result of marriages between close relatives; poverty is also a factor. Other countries in 2000: Switzerland, 8.2, and 12.3 for Turks living there; United States, whites 8.5, blacks 21.3.

In short, the status of Israel's Arab citizens is in no way analogous to that of South African blacks. These kinds of claims are no more credible than equations between the present-day United States and apartheid South Africa. If some shitty union wants to protest discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens, then they should go ahead and protest discrimination. But at least try to make the appearance of being fair and protest against discrimination around the world. Go defend Indian and Bangladeshi day labourers in the United Arab Emirates who are denied basic worker's rights and who are prevented from organizing into unions! Start punishing companies that are linked to Saudi Arabia where foreign domestic workers are regularly abused!

Related Links:

Globe and Mail Article reporting the CUPE decision

Full-text of the CUPE Resolution

The Concerned Presbyterians - a group of Presbyterians calling on the Presbyterian Church in the US to STOP its divestment from corporations doing business in Israel