By saying it is‘the voice of the UK Jewish community’ the Board is associating all Jews with Israeli Apartheid – isn’t that anti-Semitic?
The
IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism says
that ‘Holding Jews collectively
responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ is anti-Semitic. It is one
of the few examples of anti-Semitism in the IHRA on which we can all agree. Yet what does the BOD do? It defends Israeli Apartheid in the name of all
British Jews!
The
sheer brass-necked hypocrisy of the Board is staggering. They are deliberately
associating Jews with Israel’s crimes in the knowledge that this can result in an
increase in anti-Semitic attacks. When people learn of Israel’s wanton murder
of Palestinians and the torture of children they naturally become angry. What the
Board is doing is providing people with an easy target, British Jews.
Even
the Mossad front, the Community
Security Trust, which monitors and
fiddles the statistics of anti-Semitism on behalf of Israel, admitted
in respect of the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014 that
Antisemitic reactions to this summer’s conflict between Israel and Hamas resulted in record levels
of antisemitic hate incidents in the UK.
According
to their own IHRA definition, the Board must be classified as an anti-Semitic
organisation!
When
the Labour Party initially refused to adopt the IHRA definition, including its
11 examples, the Board reacted
with ‘fury’. It was proof that Labour
was overrun with anti-Semitism.
None of this is any
surprise. The BOD has support for Israel hardwired into its constitution,
clause 3(d) of which states that the
‘Board shall Take such appropriate action
as lies within its power to advance Israel's security, welfare and standing. ’
[the constitution is no longer on the Board’s website but can be found in
google cache]
In
January Israeli human rights group B’Tselem issued a report
A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to
the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid’. Last week, in a
213 page report
‘A Threshold Crossed’ Human
Rights Watch provided detailed evidence of Israel’s apartheid crimes. It
argued that Israel was ‘Seeking Maximal Land with Minimal Palestinians’. Under ‘Discriminatory Restrictions on Residency and
Nationality’ it showed how 270,000 Palestinians outside the West Bank and
Gaza when the territories were captured in 1967 have been denied residence and
another ¼ million Palestinians who were abroad ‘too long’ have also had their
right of residency revoked. This would not happen if they were Jewish and is
prima facie evidence of an apartheid state.
What does the BOD
statement
say? Does it rebut even one of the numerous examples in the Report? Of course
not. The Board had no time to read the Report let alone rebut it. Instead it
said that:
The
ridiculous ‘apartheid‘ slur in this report is belied by the fact that, as it
stands, Israel’s next Government may well rely on the support of Arab parties,
voted for by the country’s fully-enfranchised Arab citizens. Israel’s Arab
citizens have been appointed as ambassadors, professors, Supreme Court judges,
hospital directors, and other key roles throughout Israel’s socio-economic
landscape.
The
Board doesn’t refute what HRW said because it knows it is true. Instead it
resorts to typical Zionist talking points about a few token Arabs who became
ambassadors or professors.
In
fact Arabs are underrepresented in all sectors of Israeli higher education.
Despite being 20% of Israel’s population Arabs form
12.1% of undergraduates, 8.2% of MA students and just 4.4% of Ph D students.
Arab
students, unlike their Jewish counterparts, don’t receive grants as these are
dependent on army service and Arabs don’t serve in the Zionist army. Contrary to the Board's lies about there being equality between Israeli Palestinians and Jews the former are barred from buying or
leasing 80% of Israeli land. Even Israel’s Prime Minister,
Netanyahu stated
that Israel is a land of its Jewish citizens not all of its citizens.
The
Board’s statement is dishonest since no Arab party has ever been part of an
Israeli government coalition. Although Arabs are allowed to vote in Israel their
representatives are demonised as ‘terrorists’ and excluded from the corridors
of power. Hence its use of the phrase ‘Israel’s
next Government may well rely on the
support of Arab parties.’ The last Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin,
who did rely on Arab support was assassinated.
The
Board’s claim to represent all British Jews is hollow. It barely represents 30%
of British Jews since the Orthodox have their own organisation, the 30,000
strong Union of
Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. Nor does
it represent the secular 50% of Jews.
In
defending Israeli Apartheid on behalf of Britain’s Jews the Board is deliberately
risking an increase in anti-Semitism in order to defend the Israeli state. That
is the measure of their sincerity when accusing Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour
left of anti-Semitism.
In
an article
in Ha'aretz Gideon Levy wrote that
‘There’s no
longer any way to challenge the diagnosis of apartheid. Only lying
propagandists can claim that Israel is a democracy.
The Report
by B’Tselem was largely ignored by the mass media. This time it was
different. Although the New York Times
and other papers sought to discredit HRW’s Report they could hardly ignore it.
Even The Guardian, which led the campaign against Corbyn, despite
Jonathan Freedland's desperate attempts to defend Israel, was forced to carry an article Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, rights
group says.
In
Abusive Israeli Policies Constitute Crimes of
Apartheid Persecution HRW
levelled 3 main charges that together constitute irrefutable proof of apartheid:
1. An intent to maintain domination by one racial
group over another.
2. A context of systematic oppression by the
dominant group over the marginalized group.
3. Inhumane acts.
The statement accused
the Israeli government of an
overarching
policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and
grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory,
including East Jerusalem.
The report, “A Threshold Crossed” goes on to say that
the present-day reality (is) of a
single authority, the Israeli government, ruling primarily over the area
between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of
roughly equal size, and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while
repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.
This analysis is similar to that of
B’Tselem earlier this year:
In
the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli
regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the
supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. A key method in
pursuing this goal is engineering space differently for each group.
For years we have been warned that
Israel is fast approaching the point of no return. That it will become an
apartheid state. For liberal Zionists this time never came. It was always 5
minutes to midnight. The reality is that Israel always been an apartheid state.
It’s just that it has taken groups like HRW a long time to accept this. Kenneth
Roth, HRW’s Executive Director stated that
“This detailed study shows that Israeli
authorities have already turned that corner and today are committing the crimes
against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
HRW say
that
The crime against humanity of
persecution, as defined under the Rome Statute and customary international law,
consists of severe deprivation of fundamental rights of a racial, ethnic, or
other group with discriminatory intent.
In particular,
the elements of the crimes come
together in the occupied territory, as part of a single Israeli government
policy. That policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over
Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. It is coupled in the
occupied territory with systematic oppression and inhumane acts against
Palestinians living there.
This could not be clearer. What is
the response
of the Israeli government? HRW’s Report was “preposterous and false”. It accused them of having a “long-standing
anti-Israeli agenda” and carrying out an ongoing campaign “with no connection to facts or reality on
the ground”.
HRW accused the Israeli state of
seeking to
mitigate what they have openly
described as a “demographic threat”
from Palestinians. In Jerusalem, for example, the government’s plan for the
municipality, including both the west and occupied east parts of the city, sets
the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish
majority in the city” and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to
maintain.
How can this be other than racist?
If in Britain the government declared that it wanted to dilute the number of
Jews in Golders Green, by reserving housing for non-Jews there would be an
uproar. Yet what would be anti-Semitic in Britain is accepted without batting
an eye lid in Israel. That the BOD seeks to defend this demonstrates that it is
a racist organisation. It was the stupidity of Corbyn and McDonnell in not
calling their bluff that led to their defeat.
What is quite remarkable about the HRW
report, just like that of Btselem before it, is that they don’t hesitate to call
out the racism against Israel’s Palestinian citizens which includes:
laws that allow hundreds of small
Jewish towns to effectively exclude Palestinians and budgets that allocate only
a fraction of resources to Palestinian schools as compared to those that serve
Jewish Israeli children.
HRW accuses Israel of committing a
range of abuses against Palestinians. These include:
sweeping movement restrictions in the
form of the Gaza closure and a permit regime, confiscation of more than a third
of the land in the West Bank, harsh conditions in parts of the West Bank that
led to the forcible transfer of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes,
denial of residency rights to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their
relatives, and the suspension of basic civil rights to millions of
Palestinians.
The excuse for all this is ‘security’.
Security means that the Israeli army turns Palestinian (never Jewish) land into
firing zones and then later it hands it over to Jewish settlers. HRW go on to
say that
Even when security forms part of the
motivation, it no more justifies apartheid and persecution than it would
excessive force or torture
Roth goes on to say that.
“These policies, which grant Jewish
Israelis the same rights and privileges wherever they live and discriminate
against Palestinians to varying degrees wherever they live, reflect a policy to
privilege one people at the expense of another.”
HRW goes on to call for countries
to
‘condition arms sales and military and
security assistance to Israel on Israeli authorities taking concrete and
verifiable steps toward ending their commission of these crimes.’
Those who argue for a 2 state
solution are contributing to Israel’s apartheid regime by creating the illusion
that Israel’s presence is temporary. As HRW accept ‘the oppression of Palestinians has reached a threshold and a
permanence that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and
persecution,”
A new Opinion
Poll by B’tselem shows that 45% of the
population of Palestine/Greater Israel, including 25% of Israel’s Jewish
population, accept the fact that Israel is now an apartheid society.
What should we do? PSC has been
describing Israel for years as an Apartheid State but it has met with minimal
impact. Why? Because they deliberately refuse to come out and say that they
oppose the existence of Israel as a Jewish supremacist state.
Today one of the talking points of
the Zionists is that Israel is the ‘only
Jewish state in the world.’ Our answer should be that that is one too many. We should oppose any
religious ethno-nationalist state. Religious states like Pakistan or Ulster
tend, almost by definition, to be racist states because they privilege those of
their inhabitants who are of a particular religion.
Just as American Jews rightly
reject the idea that the United States is a Christian country, valuing the
separation of church and state, so Israel too should become a secular,
democratic not a Jewish state. Pro-Palestinian
organisations need to be crystal clear about this.
Tony Greenstein
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