At various junctures in the process of peace-processing, Israeli leaders have waxed righteous about the need for the Palestinians to "recognize Israel as a Jewish State." This demand is absurd on many levels, from its implicit requirement that Palestinian leaders give their seal of approval to the maintenance of Palestinian-Israelis' second-class status to its rhetorical slight-of-hand distraction from the fact that Palestinian leaders have already recognized Israel's right to exist as an Israeli State. But there is also an even more basic absurdity to this demand: Israel is not a Jewish state.
Yes: Israel is a state in which people who are Jews are given more rights and privileges than people who are not Jews (let alone the Israeli-controlled West Bank and East Jerusalem, where the majority of non-Jews are barely given rights and privileges at all).
Yes: Israel is a state in which archaic, hyper-masculine and exclusionary readings of Jewish texts are wielded against women and non-Orthodox Jews, as well as against non-Jews.
But Israel is not a Jewish state in any value-based -- or valuable -- way. The Torah, the backbone of the Jewish people and religion, has a wide range of commandments and imperatives, some chauvinistic and some universalistic, some peaceful and some violent, some which contradict others. However, the most repeated commandment in the Torah, appearing in different forms 37 times, is the imperative to "love the stranger," for we were strangers in the land of Egypt.
In addition to this religious dictate, Jews over history and throughout the centuries have learned in the most difficult -- and sometimes horrific -- ways what it means to be a stranger.
The Israeli State -- and to be clear, I am not referring to the State as synonymous to Israeli people, many of whom indeed practice some form of loving strangers -- the Israeli State has not only failed at any sort of "loving the stranger," but it has, especially recently, constructed policies that are hateful and oppressive to "strangers" living in our midst.
The events of the past few weeks have proven this in especially stark terms, specifically those related to Israel's actions against African asylum seekers from South Sudan, many of whom have been recently rounded up in preparation for deportation, and the entire Palestinian village of Susya located in the South Hebron Hills, slated to be entirely destroyed in the near future.
We, Israel, were strangers in the land of Egypt in our collective past. People from South Sudan (and from other parts of Africa, especially the violence-torn Eritrea), seeking refuge from Pharaonic oppression, have walked through Egyptian deserts, many of them facing horrific abuse at the hands of both Egyptian authorities and human traders. When they arrived in Israel, a country built by refugees, they were thrust into ghettos and systematically denied the status of asylum-seekers. There have been recent acts of violence against African refugees in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, including the burning of a Jerusalem apartment inhabited by asylum seekers from Eritrea and a mob attack against refugees and anyone who looked like refugees (read: black folks) in South Tel Aviv.
These events were carried out by independent groups, but they were sparked by members of the government, who have organized the rallies from which the mobs started and speak in language that certainly borders, in today's context, on direct incitement, including calling refugees "a cancer." Moreover, the government's active policy towards asylum seekers is itself startlingly harsh. As Maya Paley wrote in an open letter to the Jewish community:
The government provides no services whatsoever to the African asylum seekers and goes so far as to print visas denying permission to work. Netanyahu's solution to the "problem" is to build a gigantic detention facility isolated in the Negev Desert, where 10,000 "infiltrators," as the government calls the asylum seekers, will be housed.
Over the last week, Israeli authorities have begun "rounding up" South Sudanese in preparation for deportation. The first flight carrying South Sudanse back to Sudan was slated to take off on Sunday.
And after all of this, Prime Minister Netanyahu has assured, according to Ha'aretz, that "the move to expel the migrants would be conducted in keeping with Jewish "humane" tradition."
Forced interment-qua-deportation of African asylum seekers is Israel's leader's version of Jewish "humane" tradition. I refuse to accept such a perversion of my history, religion and culture. Israel is not a Jewish state.
And then let's travel briefly to the other side of the "green line," the internationally recognized border between Israel and maybe-future-Palestine that has lost virtually all meaning as Israel has intensified and entrenched its quasi-annexation of Area C (over 60 percent of the West Bank and home to almost all Israeli settlements). A small village named Susya, located in the area of the South Hebron Hills, has recently received demolition orders. For the entire village.
Again: The whole village is slated to be demolished.
Israel has sought to couch its actions in the façade of legalism. After all, the houses and buildings in Susya, like most houses and buildings in the South Hebron Hills, like most houses and buildings in all of Area C are built "illegally," that is to say, without permits from the Israeli Civil Administration. Not only does this claim distract from the fact that the whole occupation is, itself, illegal, in every meaningful sense of the word "law," but it obscures the fact that on average, according to Israeli planning rights group Bimkom, from 2000-2008, an average of 95 percent of Palestinian requests for building permits in Area C have been rejected.
95 percent.
According to Susya resident Nasser Nawajeh, whose family fled from the territory now within the "green line" in 1948, and ended up in Susya, the people of Susya have already been through numerous demolitions and forced expulsions, from 1986 when Israeli archaeologists discovered the remains of a Jewish synagogue under Susya, and expelled its residents, to the 1990s, when settlers, backed by the IDF, destroyed Susya's wells and caves in a form of collective punishment following the murder of a Jewish man, all the way up to this year:
Four months ago, the Regavim Organization filed a petition to the High Court demanding that our village, Susya, be destroyed. They refer to it as an "illegal outpost" and claim that our village presents a security threat. Last week there was a hearing in the Israeli High Court. They call my village an illegal Palestinian outpost. But these have been our lands since before the establishment of the State of Israel. My father is older than your state and I am not legal on my own land?
Nasser and the people of Susya were informed by the Israel Civil Administration on July 12th that 52 structures, virtually all that is left of Susya, including a kindergarten, houses, wells and a medical clinic, will be demolished in the near future [note: Rabbis for Human Rights (with whom I am active) is preparing a petition to the Israeli High Court appealling against the demolition orders].
Israel is planning to destroy Susya because Israel aims to take over the land on which Susya sits, and to "encourage" Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills and in Area C in general to move to major Palestinian cities. It is as simple as that.
Jewish history has been transformed by Israeli policy from a rich, complex legacy of human suffering and triumph to a stale combination of archeological findings and Biblical quotes, wielded together as weapons against human beings who happen to not be Jews, to expel them from their homes and to strip them of their land and their dignity.
I refuse to accept such a perversion of my history, religion and culture.
Israel is not a Jewish state.
Moriel Rothman is an American-Israeli activist and writer. He is active with Rabbis for Human Rights, and blogs independently at The Leftern Wall.
Follow Moriel Rothman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MorielRothman
Josh Ruebner: 45 Years of Israeli Military Occupation and No End in Sight
MJ Rosenberg: The Middle East and Citizens United
www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/opinion/sunday/the-third-intifada-is-inevitable.html?_r=2
I can't help but wonder how you classify the Palestinians, native to the land as "strangers". This idea is part of the problem, part of the projective denial that got us here. Refering to the Palestinians as "strangers" reinforces the idea that the Palestinians were just squatting the land until Zionists arrived. If anyone is a stranger, its a new arrival from Brooklyn or Moscow.
According to the Talmud, all lives have equal value. Perhaps you should have gone with the question "Is our blood redder than theirs?" or "How did we dare ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people and destroy their towns and villages and homes, steal their property and make them refugees, occupied and oppressed by us daily ?" or "How did we make them strangers in their own homeland?"
Thank you for your thoughtful comment (as contrasted to many of the others posted here...). I certainly agree with you that classifying Palestinians, who are indeed native to Palestine, as "strangers" could be highly problematic. It was certainly not my intent to question whether Palestinians are native here (as I think is apparent from the rest of the article and my pieces in general), but rather to use the Hebrew/Tanakhic word "ger" in its most simple meaning, basically as "those who are other than us." So I guess I'd explain my word choice not as "strangers" in a broad sense, but rather as "strangers" simply in that they are others, just as we are strangers to them (and perhaps strangers in a broader sense as well, although I wouldn't call an Israeli who was born and raised in Israel a stranger in a broad sense, as I think that begins to be problematic). Thoughts?
Europeans driving natives off their land. Simple as that.
The difference being that this enterprise began in the middle of the twentieth century, long after such behaviour had been recognised for what it was, a murderous and utterly unjustifiable race crime.
Could that not also be the case with Colonialism? Scots, Irish, the downtrodden masses?
Zionism has many roots but safety is probably the least of them. Its many attempts to distinguish itself from Colonialism involve taking this or that reason out of its Historical context, ignoring the simple fact that most races and religions have undergone their share of persecution.
There were alternatives such as the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
Post WWII Europe was a tough time for all but it was a great deal safer than Palestine at the time.
One can have some sympathy for the romantic ideals of Zionism but when we examine the History the reality is rather more cynical.
Would love to sit down over a jar and talk this out. Thanks for your article and your reply.
During the famine ( "Gorta Mór " between 1845 and 1852) approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland
In 19th-century Scotland, emigration was the result of both force and persuasion. Until about 1855, a number of the emigrants from the Highlands were actually forced to leave the land because of evictions. The economy had collapsed, the landlords cleared the poorest Highlanders from the land keeping only those crofters who were capable of paying rent.
The newly created Italian constitution, drafted after unification in 1861, heavily favored the North. This caused economic conditions to considerably worsen for many in southern Italy and Sicily. Heavy taxes and other economic measures imposed on the South made the situation impossible for many tenant farmers, and small business and land owners.
These are not the people responsible for Colonialism as such or the direction in which the migration went though the indigenous people were made to pay. Similarly with Zionism. In that case however, there was an alternative in the JAO and other options (Uganda was proposed I think). It was Herzl, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Weizmann etc who insisted on Palestine for reasons of their own. Space does not permit an exploration of that.
"But clarifications provided to the Forward by the companies involved in the move paint a different picture.
Caterpillar, one of the world’s largest heavy machinery manufacturers, has long been a target of BDS groups because of its Pentagon-financed sale of bulldozers used to demolish the Palestinian homes.
TIAA-CREF, according to company sources and to its online publications, chooses the companies for its social responsibility accounts based exclusively on screening done by MSCI, a company that analyses companies and stocks. MSCI, in turn, produces the World ESG index, which rates companies by their performance on environmental, social and governance matters. It was MSCI that downgraded Caterpillar’s rating to a level that expelled it from the ESG index. This downgrading, in turn, led TIAA-CREF to immediately drop the company from its social investment portfolio.
But senior MSCI officials made clear the downgrade was not directly related to Caterpillar sales to Israel.
http://forward.com/articles/158340/a-caterpillar-divestment-victory/#ixzz1yotyhgCU
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/caterpillar-pulled-from-social-indexes-over-companys-use-in-palestinian-territories/2012/06/27/gJQA8ewT6V_story.html
But don't mind that. Don't even get mad. Just get angry if a Jewish person in the West Bank builds a home where an empty hill once stood.
Israel is a pretty good country. The Arab countries near Israel are much worse.
There's an honest summary.
Nice diversion, but off topic.
Fail!
As they have a country and sort of security they are going back - mainly by choice with their clerks here in Israel helping
We also saved the Kurds from Saddam but that another amazing story! And there are many more - some totally untold. Ther Israel bashers cant bash me me - my head is too far up with pride.
Blah blah blah blah blah (insert some pointless stab at Israel) blah blah blah blah blah.
2.) Israel is a signatory to the Geneva Convention that prohibits exactly what Israel is doing in the OPTs.
3.) The fact that 'Arab' neighbours bear animosity is hardly sup rising bearing in mind that the Arab-Israeli conflict is still ongoing. However, the Arab League have extended an olive branch since 2002 with the Arab Peace Initiative. Unfortunately, Israel has chosen to completely ignore this.
This is imply known as Apartheid. the minority of Israeli-Jews settlers get far greater freedoms to build whereas the majority Palestinians are given very stringent conditions for building permits.
Israel is the blight of the nations!
See, I too can talk gibberish.
So, ethnic cleansing in other words. Palestinians get corralled into walled ghettos, whilst Israeli-Jews get to live in freely wherever they choose in the West Bank.
I have no idea about the true title to this particular piece of land but there is no doubt that only 6% of the land upon which Israel is sited is owned by deed of purchase. As the balance was obtained by conquest, which is illegal, it is a fair bet that the State has no clear title to Susya, certainly no more than its traditional residents - nomads or not.
2) "...Israel does the same with Jews..."
No, they don't. And certainly not 30 000 of them, or better, half the Bedouin population, like in the Prawer plan.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/un-panel-urges-israel-to-shelve-racist-bedouin-relocation-plan-1.420692
"A United Nations committee has called on for the withdrawal of an Israeli draft law that would move 30,000 Bedouin living in the Negev to permanent, existing Bedouin communities.
According to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Law for the Regulation of the Bedouin Settlement in the Negev is discriminatory and would legalize racist practices.
The bill is based on the Prawer Report, which was approved by the cabinet in September. It calls for moving 30,000 Negev Bedouin "
So now little tiny Israel exists. One small sliver of land, next to giant massive Arab countries that favor Arabs, Muslim countries that favor Muslims, etc.
To single Israel out as the one place that has no "right" to exist because it's the one place that acts as a homeland for Jews in need, while letting every other country favor their majorities or whoever they want to favor, is discriminatory and antisemitic.
This author is an extreme radical far-leftist who is on the side of the very people who want to wipe Israel out.
Israel: 5,703,700
United States: 5,275,000
France: 483,500
Canada: 375,000
United Kingdom: 292,000
Russia: 205,000 0
Argentina: 182,300
Germany ; 119,000
Australia: 107,500
Brazil: 95,600
Ukraine: 71,500
South Africa: 70,800
Hungary: 60,600
Mexico: 39,400
Belgium: 30,300
Netherlands: 30,000
Poland: 30,500
Italy: 28,400
Chile: 20,500
Switzerland: 17,600
Turkey: 17,600
Uruguay: 17,500
Belarus: 16,500
Sweden: 15,000
Venezuela: 12,000
Spain: 12,000
Iran: 10,400
Romania: 9,700
Latvia: 9,700
Austria: 9,000
Panama: 8,000
New Zealand: 7,500
Azerbaijan: 6,400
Denmark: 6,400
What exactly is your problem?
Oh, they drove out the Jews and destroy their history.Why are people so jealous!!
Not necessarily.
Chaim Weizmann thought that the majority of the exiles in Europe were little more than human dust with no future ahead of them. He had no intention of bringing them to Palestine. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1940v03&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=837