(Author: Shelley Glaser, Vol. 69, No. 3, Chanukah 2014)
The State of Israel is a country under ideological siege. Critics of the Jewish state advance their agenda by employing a number of dubious political comparisons. They accuse Israel of being an apartheid, racist, colonial state engaged in acts of genocide against the Palestinian Arabs. Many detractors have no qualms about dubbing Israel a Nazi regime.
The Palestinians are seen as the victims of Israel’s very existence. Israel’s retaliatory attacks against Hamas-run Gaza is viewed as genocide. John Dugard, the former South African professor of law, presents the view that Israel had no reason to attack Gaza at all. Israel, he says, was not acting in self-defence but rather as an occupying power. According to Dugard, Israel acted to enforce its occupation as Nazi Germany did during its occupation of Belgium and France.1
Friends of Israel continually engage and defend Israel against every one of these charges. Yet critics are seemingly unable or unwilling back up their arguments with rational arguments or credible facts. Take, for example, Richard Pithouse, a South African political science lecturer, who describes Israel as a colonial power and a racist and apartheid state. In his article, ‘Gaza & the Long History of liberal brutality’, Pithouse states, “The Israeli state is in the hands of a brutish nationalism that, in many respects, is certainly illiberal even within its own borders and with regard to its own citizens. Yet it seeks to legitimate itself via, among other strategies, a claim to be an encircled outpost of liberal enlightenment on matters pertaining to gender, sexuality and democracy”.22
This statement is not even an observation, just a long-winded rhetorical device in the guise of intelligent argument. Read the essay, and you will see how Pithouse fails to back up his outlandish claims with actual evidence. But this was never his aim. Rather, his intention is to outline his spurious claims and leave it to the reader to decide which version of reality he or she feels most comfortable with. In other words, it is a type of propaganda.
Perhaps we need to focus our attention on the reasons why a particular ideological charge is singled out for use against Israel in a particular context. For example, comparing the Jewish state with Apartheid South Africa is meant to illicit the strongest, most visceral reaction from South Africans and from those who fought for the liberation from Apartheid. It’s a kind of psychological manipulation aimed at maximising public support for the Palestinian cause.
Many of those who were involved in the fight for social justice in South Africa, particularly intellectuals, have defended Israel against the accusation of apartheid. It has been both rationally and logically argued that in Israel, Jews and Arabs are equal before the law and that Israel has none of the apartheid, racist legislation that discriminates and separates people. It has no Group Areas Act, Separate Representation Act, Mixed Marriages and Immorality Act, Population Registration Act, Separate Amenities Act, nor any no-pass laws. All citizens vote on the same voters’ roll in regular, multi-party elections. There are Arab parties and Arab members of other parties in the Knesset. Due to Israel’s proportional representation system, Arab voters, although a minority, have often been partners in various coalition governments. Arab Israelis, like Jewish Israelis, can express themselves and act freely as members of a transparently democratic society, where criticism of the government in an aggressively free press is the norm.
Further, Arabs and Jews live and work together, share all public facilities, including hospitals, schools, buses, trains, cinemas, swimming pools and parks. Israel protects religious freedom and is always very sensitive and respectful in its management of the holy sites.
Israel is also accused of a being a colonial power. This accusation, too, has been methodically denounced by various writers and thinkers. Palestine was a name given to the land by its British colonisers. This land in which Jews are the majority and Arabs the minority, is according to Friedman, 0.2 per cent of the Arab world. It is 20,770 square kilometres in extent. The Jews who came to live there did so to escape the Eastern European pogroms in the late 1800s. It was never about colonisation and subjugation. The fleeing Jews merely wished to establish a safe haven in the land of Israel, a place which has been home to Jews for millennia.
The racism charge against Israel is often linked to Zionism. At its core, Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination, a necessity born of unrelenting antisemitism and its accompanying horrors of inquisitions, pogroms and mass extermination. The Jewish right to statehood was recognised by the United Nations in 1947. The creation of the State of Israel was a realisation of this right. Statements such as “Zionism is racism” and “Palestine is colonised by Israel,” aside from being far from the the truth, are expressed with the intention of denying Israel’s right to statehood. As Eylon Aslan-Levy points out, Zionism is routinely denounced as racist by the very states whose racism against Jews generated the initial demand for the Jewish right of return to their ancient homeland.3
Dumisani Washington, who heads a group called the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, stated in September this year that, “The claim that Israel is a racist/colonial/apartheid state is a blatant, bald-faced lie.” He adds: “Further, those false accusations cheapen the experiences of South Africans, Black Americans and others who experienced those horrors – like my parents and grandparents. Israel is diverse in virtually every facet of society. It is intellectual dishonesty to affix those gross labels on a liberal democracy.” 4
Perhaps most hurtful is the claim that Israel is a Nazi state. It was Nazism and the extermination of six million Jews that finally convinced the world that a Jewish homeland was a moral necessity. When Jews were being transported to Dachau, Bergen Belsen and Auschwitz, public announcements, telephone calls and flyers were not dropped by the Nazis warning them of their impending deaths. They were not afforded the opportunity to flee. To even imply, never mind openly state, that Israel is a Nazi regime, is to spit on the unmarked graves and mass burial grounds of our families who died in the Holocaust.
Despite the fact that the apartheid, colonial, racist and Nazi accusations against Israel are so obviously inappropriate, they continue to be levelled against Israel. The charges are ones of association, and the emotional response which it evokes, rather than intellectual or factual ones. The oft-quoted Palestinian spokesperson, Hanan Ashrawi, echoes this fact. She told Reuters that presenting an alternate version of reality creates awareness and the “perceptions that are presented affect public opinion.” Therefore, even though these charges, when examined rationally, make no logical or political sense, they have been successfully used to sway public opinion against Israel and towards the Palestinian cause. They continue to be used simply because the associations and perceptions they create, are such emotionally charged and thus, extremely effective ones.
We need to understand that antisemitism is the core principle of anti-Zionism. This can hardly be denied after this summer’s upswing in anti-Jewish sentiment. One just has to look at the banners held at protest marches promoting the Palestinian cause. Slogans like “Gas the Jews” and “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas” are increasingly commonplace in Europe. In Belgium, a cafe owner recently put up a sign that read, “Dogs are welcome, but Jews are not.” Not to mention the Nazi insignia painted on walls in Jewish neighbourhoods in Europe and Australia, and at college campuses in the US. In Australia, eight men got on to a bus full of Jewish school children in Sydney, shouting “Kill the Jews” and “Heil Hitler,” while threatening to slit the children’s throats. Many Jews are so afraid of being targeted that they have decided not to wear kippot or their Stars of David in public.It is also notable that there is a growing trend in liberal circles that endorse the Palestinian agenda, to silence its opponents with bullying tactics such as booing and heckling, and telling Jews that they are “baby killers,” “murderers” and “racists.” This is akin to a type of Brown-Shirt fascism that uses intimidation and harassment to crush dissent.
Each of us as individuals, whether we are an Israeli Jew, an Arab-Israeli, a South African, a European or an American, need to promote why we believe in the Jewish right to statehood. We might not be able to completely dismantle the ideological siege on Israel but we may be able to highlight the ongoing problem of antisemitism and why Israel is an absolute necessity.
Shelley Arbiter Glaser studied Law, and also holds an MA degree in Writing from Wits University. She is an attorney and conveyancer at Self Employed in Johannesburg. This article was first published by Jewish Media Agency on 10 October 2014.
NOTES
- Dugard, J, ‘Israel the occupying power instead of the victim’, Business Day, 4/8/2014.
- Pithouse, R, ‘Gaza & the Long History of Liberal Brutality’, South African Civil Society Information Service, 15/7/2014, http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/2073
- http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-trouble-with-anti-zionism/
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2014/08/21/the-media-intifada-bad-math-ugly-truths-about-new-york-times-in-israel-hamas-war/19/
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