Washington Report On Middle East Affairs – October 2018

The five female Birthright participants

who visited Hebron urged their fellow

American Jews to refuse to cooperate with

pro-occupation propaganda enterprises

like Birthright: “It is morally irresponsible to

participate in an institution that is not will-

ing to grapple with reality on the other side

of the wall. That’s why we’re on our way to

Hebron now.”

In his article “Walking Out Was The

Right Thing To Do,” published in the July

3, 2018 issue of The Forward, Avrum

Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset

and chairman of the Jewish Agency who

now supports separation of religion and

state, an end to the occupation, and

equality for all those under Israeli control,

regardless of background, wrote: “These

five brave women seem to have realized

something that I failed to see...Israel does-

n’t have a public relations crisis, it has a

moral crisis. Instead of being drawn into

Sheldon Adelson’s free trip, these women

insisted on acting according to our Jewish

values. As Jewish women, they could

have indulged their privilege and enjoyed

a fun week in Israel. But instead, they

chose to acknowledge their responsibility

for the oppression of the Palestinians liv-

ing under the occupation and heed their

moral obligation to oppose it...These brave

young people are fixing the relationship

my generation has insisted on breaking.

This is a sign of hope for an Israel without

an occupation based on equality and jus-

tice for both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Particularly alienating to large numbers

of American Jews was the passage in July

by the Knesset of the nation-state law,

which moves Israel even further away

from being a democracy, which it has al-

ways claimed to be.

This legislation declares that the right of

self-determination, once envisioned to in-

clude all within its borders, is “unique to

the Jewish people.” Arabic has been elimi-

nated as an official language. Prime Minis-

ter Binyamin Netanyahu, a promoter of the

law, accurately declared, “This is a defin-

ing moment for the State of Israel.”

Claiming that Israel is “the nation-state

of the Jewish people,” rather than a state

of all its citizens, 20 percent of whom are

not Jewish, has a number of problems. Is-

rael, in fact, is not the “nation-state” of

American Jews. According to Zionist phi-

losophy, Israel is the “homeland” of all

Jews, and those living elsewhere are “in

exile.” The Israeli government, with no

mandate to do so, repeatedly speaks in

the name of “the Jewish people,” the ma-

jority of whom are citizens of other coun-

tries. Whether Netanyahu likes it or not,

the “homeland” of American Jews is the

United States. The “homeland” of Jews in

the United Kingdom, France, Italy and

other countries, similarly, is not Israel.

NORMALIZING THE OCCUPATION

In the view of critics in Israel, this law is

another step toward full annexation of the

West Bank. Roni Pelli of the Association

for Civil Rights in Israel says, “This bill is

not about law or justice, it is all about nor-

malizing the Israeli occupation and blur-

ring the difference between Israel and the

occupied territories that are under military

rule. The explicit aim of the bill is to make

things easier for Israeli authorities that

harm Palestinians, and to make it more

difficult for them to achieve justice.”

Israelis used to think that their country

could be both “Jewish” and “democratic.”

Polling by the Israel Democracy Institute

indicates that this is now a minority posi-

tion, with larger subsets saying the country

must be either Jewish first or democratic

first. Those who say Israel should be Jew-

ish first overwhelmingly belong to the politi-

cal right, which pushed through this legisla-

tion. But the majority of all Jews say that

“crucial national decisions” like self-deter-

mination should be left to a Jewish major-

ity.

Israel’s democracy has been declining

for many years, according to the highly re-

garded index V-Dem, which tracks coun-

tries across a host of metrics. In the mid-

1990s, Israel scored alongside South

Korea and Jamaica. Today, it is seen on

par with African democracies such as

Namibia and Senegal, and below Tunisia,

the Middle East’s highest-scored democ-

racy.

Many Jewish voices across the U.S.

have sharply criticized the new law, includ-

ing the American Jewish Committee, the

Union for Reform Judaism and the Jewish

Federations of North America. Even such

stalwart defenders of Israel as the Anti-

Defamation League and Alan Dershowitz

have expressed dismay over the law’s

passage. Rabbi Alissa Wise of Jewish

Voice for Peace declared: “Apartheid in Is-

rael was just made official and it’s devas-

tating. This is a...racist and discriminatory

move to punish and rob Palestinians of

their most basic rights and freedoms. And

as a Jew and a rabbi, this runs counter to

the Judaism that I love. This bill cements

Israel as an apartheid state. Palestinians,

no matter where they live, are controlled

by an Israeli government that robs them of

basic rights and freedoms.”

The respected Israeli conductor Daniel

Barenboim, whose career has taken him to

institutions such as La Scala in Milan, and

led him to create, along with the late Ed-

ward Said, the West-East Divan Orchestra

(WED), which brings together young musi-

cians from throughout the Middle East,

both Arab and Israeli, responded to the

new nation-state bill by saying, “The racist

new law makes me ashamed to be an Is-

raeli.” In articles in Haaretzand The

Guardian, he characterized the law as “a

very clear form of apartheid.” Israel, he

lamented, has rejected the equality called

for in its Declaration of Independence and

“has passed a law that replaces the princi-

ple of equality and universal values with

nationalism and racism.”

If the new nation-state law is, as Prime

Minister Netanyahu declares, a “defining

moment” for Israel, it is, sadly, defining it-

self as something other than a Western-

style democracy which seeks peace with

its neighbors. It is, more and more Ameri-

can Jews are coming to believe, turning its

back on the Jewish moral and ethical tradi-

tion as well. Any thought that Israel shares

the democratic values held by most Ameri-

can Jews is slowly coming to an end. 

16 WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS OCTOBER 2018

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