Israeli policy gives Jews a bad name
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
Most
Jews I know get little pleasure from the existence of Israel; just
the opposite. They feel disgusted by the behavior of their tribal kin
toward Palestinians. This antipathy doesn’t concern Israel’s
right to exist, a phony argument still maintained by hard line
Zionists. Israel exists, period. Most of the world recognizes that.
Anyone wanting to eliminate it belongs in the loony bin or prison.
Israelis
have just elected a right wing majority. The number three
vote-getting party, Yisrael Beytenu led by Avigdor Lieberman, will
occupy a strong place in the new government. Lieberman will become a
Minister in the Netanyahu Cabinet. Last year, Lieberman rammed
through Israel’s Central Election Committee a ban on Arab political
parties. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled the ban unconstitutional
before the recent election. Lieberman also demanded the Knesset expel
Arab Members. He went further. If Arab citizens of Israel don’t
sign oaths of loyalty to Israel, they should have their citizenship
revoked. Disloyalty for Arabs included students wearing keffiyehs
to school; Muslim Israelis collecting medicine and aid for Gaza
relief also falls into the non-trustworthy category.
During
the 2008-9 invasion of Gaza, Lieberman wanted the military operation
to continue until Hamas “loses the will to fight.” In a speech at
Bar-Ilan University, he said Israel’s government had “to come to
a decision that we will break the will of Hamas to keep fighting.”
Lieberman concluded in the January 13 Jerusalem
Post:
“We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did
with the Japanese in World War II. Then, too, the occupation of the
country was unnecessary.” In 1945, U.S. Air Force planes dropped
atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Japan surrendered
unconditionally.
Lieberman
has acquired a powerful defender in the United States. Abraham
Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, backed
Lieberman’s plan to require Israeli Arab citizens to sign an oath
of allegiance to the Jewish state.” (Feb 10, Jewish
Telegraphic Agency)
Foxman
ignored the ADL’s mission, opposing racial discrimination and the
words of the ADL Charter. The Anti-Defamation League aims “to
secure justice and fair treatment to all.” In Israel, it’s
apparently OK with Foxman to strip an Arab wearing the wrong covering
of citizenship. Without citizenship, Arabs can’t vote or
participate in politics; very old Jews from some European countries
may recall similar rules.
My
grandfather taught me, growing up during the Holocaust, that Jewish
tradition teaches each person to strive to become a pillar of ethics,
learn the law and behave so as to answer to God for transgressions —
not to rulers of a so-called Jewish state.
Ironically,
in the name of all Jews, Foxman and colleagues in AIPAC (American
Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other Israeli lobby groups along
with right wing and centrist political parties in Israel invoke the
Holocaust to justify the very behavior embodied by Holocaust
initiators. Israel calls itself a Jewish state. Yet, one fifth of
Israel’s population is non-Jewish. I don’t belong to that state
and despise its policies of constant war and occupation.
Count
Israel’s wars: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, plus civil wars
against two Intifadas in the 1980s and 2000, and finally the
invasions of Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in late 2008, the latter
leaving
in its wake 1,300-plus dead Palestinians, most of them civilians and
less than 20 Israelis, some from “friendly fire.”
Condemned
by the Red Cross, Amnesty International and a host of organizations
for violating human rights of Gaza’s people, Israel’s new
government will almost certainly continue or even harden the
policies. They don’t care what others say.
Dr.
Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, working in Gaza hospitals
during the Israeli invasion described his patients’ wounds. “It
was as if they had stepped on a mine,” he says of certain
Palestinian. “But there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost
their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been
to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries
before.”
The
“focused lethality” weapon, to which Fosse referred, does minimal
damage to buildings, but catastrophic harm to humans. The United
States supplied these to Israel. (Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in
Focus, February 11, 2009)
Israeli
Defense Forces have also used white phosphorus in Beirut in 1982, and
again in Gaza. The intense heat of the metal inflicts appalling
damage. The IDF knows international law prohibits its use near
populated areas. Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International labeled as
“a war crime” the use of phosphorous “in Gaza’s
densely-populated residential neighborhoods.” (Guardian,
January 21, 2009)
Israel
initially denied using the chemical. On January 13, Israeli Chief of
Staff Gabi Ashkenazi solemnly declared: “The IDF acts only in
accordance with what is permitted by international law and does not
use white phosphorus.” Gazans and Israelis, however, saw the
material and the victims of it. On January 20, the IDF admitted using
phosphorus artillery and mortar shells on “Hamas fighters and
rocket launching crews in northern Gaza.”
On
January 15, three shells hit the UN Relief and Works Agency compound.
The resulting fire destroyed tons of humanitarian supplies. A
phosphorus shell also hit Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City. According to
the Guardian,
the Israelis claimed Hamas fighters had hidden near the two targets.
Witnesses denied the charge. (January 21, 2009)
UN
officials cited witnesses who claimed Israel killed 31 family members
whom Israeli troops had led into a house in Zeitun. Twenty four hours
after the IDF warned the Palestinians to remain, the IDF shelled the
dwelling. Half of the dead were children. The UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called it “one of the
gravest incidents since the beginning of operations” by Israeli
forces in Gaza.
(AFP,
December 27, 2008).
Such
facts caused distinguished people like Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers
to question Israeli behavior. Foxman quickly labeled Moyers as
anti-Semitic. Those opposing Israel’s invasion of Gaza, or her
occupying of Palestinian territory (for 40 plus years), or her
mistreatment of all Palestinians receive the anti-Semitic label. Any
criticism of Israel begets that description.
In
discussions with Jewish defenders of the recent invasion of Gaza,
however, I found more defensiveness. During one argument an ardent
pro Israeli changed the subject. “But Israel enjoys free speech and
press!”
Yes,
a small minority vigorously criticize Israeli government policy —
there, not here in the United States, where a Member of Congress
characterized an attack by the Israeli lobby as the equivalent of a
pit bull biting him in the leg. Israeli’s daily Ha’aretz
provides an example of such criticism, including articles damning the
latest invasion as both a failure and immoral (Gideon Levy, February
19, 2009). Similar criticism in a U.S. newspaper would cause Foxman
and company to call major press conferences to “expose
anti-Semitism.” When Jimmy Carter published his 2006 book,
Palestine
Peace Not Apartheid,
critical of Israeli policy, Foxman stopped just short of accusing the
former President. “You
have been feeding into conspiracy theories about excessive Jewish
power and control,” he wrote in a letter. “Considering the
history of anti-Semitism, even in our great country, this is very
dangerous stuff.” (Shmuel Rosner, Ha’artez
Dec.
20, 2006)
When
less powerful Jewish American scholars write books or give lectures
attacking Israeli policy, they get fired or their tenure withheld.
Norman Finkelstein (son of Holocaust survivors) was denied tenure in
2007 by the President of DePaul University, despite favorable
recommendations by faculty and students. In 2000, he published The
Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish
Suffering.
The President of Bard College recently dismissed Joel Kovel, another
internationally applauded scholar. Kovel’s 2007 book, Overcoming
Zionism,
triggered the action.
In
the Finkelstein case, an important Zionist activist, Harvard Law
Professor Alan Dershowitz, demanded the action. He had threatened
Finkelstein with lawsuits after Finkelstein accused him of plagiarism
and lying — charges documented in his 2005 book, Beyond
Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.
(University of California Press) Kovel attacked militant Israeli
supporter Martin Peretz, longtime editor of The
New Republic.
The
ADL supported both dismissals. In past decades, ADL vibrated with
anger over anti-Semitic signs spray painted on subway bathroom walls.
Now, its leader endorses a McCarthyite platform in his beloved
Israel. Anyone who does not conform to ADL’s fiercely pro Zionist
agenda becomes vulnerable to accusations of anti-Semitism.
From
1998-2006, I occasionally invited speakers to campus who criticized
Israeli policy. Inevitably, I would then receive letters, e-mails
(copies to the University President), and phone calls accusing me of
bias or being a “self-hating Jew.”
“How
can you say that?” I asked one caller. “You don’t know me.”
“You’re
all alike, you people who hate Israel,” the man responded.
“You’re
the Jew-hating Jew,” I responded. “You hate me and don’t know
me. I wish you could listen to your own voice.”
“I
know anti-Semites when I talk to them,” he shouted into the phone
and hung up.
“Long
Live Israel,” scream the U.S. fans. “Anyone who doesn’t like
our team is an anti-Semite.” I want to shout: “Go Back to Israel
where you didn’t come from.”
Saul
Landau is Professor Emeritus, California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona.
