12 | NOVEMBER 12 • 2020
is ruled by the U.S.-designated
terrorist organization Hamas.
If Palestinians are denied their
“freedom and dignity” and
“civil, political, and economic
rights,
” as the piece claims,
wouldn’
t the bulk of the blame
fall on their own rulers?
In any case, there are multiple
territorial arrangements around
the world in which separate
political entities share a piece
of land; for example, Lesotho
is an entirely independent state
surrounded by South Africa,
as is San Marino within Italy.
While Palestinians exercise
limited self-rule, as opposed to
full statehood, it’
s not “apart-
heid”-esque to separate peoples
based on national citizenship.
Israel’
s security apparatus
within the West Bank and
blockade of the Gaza Strip are
not in place to impose racial
hegemony, but to protect Israeli
citizens against stabbings, rock-
ets, suicide bombings, and other
terrorist assaults. To ignore this
context is dishonest.
The authors then write that
IfNotNow “affirms the right of
Jewish Israelis to live in the land
with freedom and dignity, just
as [they] affirm the same right
for Palestinians.
” They also laud
poll results that indicate increas-
ing support for evacuating
“Jewish-only settlements in the
West Bank” among American
Jews, ostensibly to achieve a
two-state solution.
But if all should be free to live
there with “freedom and dig-
nity,
” why do Jewish-majority
areas in the West Bank need to
be evacuated? Why couldn’
t —
theoretically — Jews live as a
minority in a future Palestinian
state just as Arabs live as a
minority in the Jewish state?
Perhaps it would be possible if
Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas didn’
t insist
that, “In a final resolution, we
would not see the presence of a
single Israeli — civilian or sol-
dier — on our lands.
”
The authors also state that
past Jewish criticism of the
Movement for Black Lives
platform was based on its
supposed “[alignment] with
the Palestinian freedom move-
ment.
” In reality, the Jewish
community objected to the
platform’
s false assertion that
Israel is committing “genocide”
against the Palestinians, and
the equally absurd canard that
Israel practices “apartheid.
”
DIFFERENT ISSUES
America is not the Levant; the
national conflict between the
Israelis and the Palestinians is
an entirely different geopoliti-
cal issue than racial tension in
America. As CAMERA UK’
s
Adam Levick puts it, the con-
flict “isn’
t fueled by race, but
by the failure of two people to
reach a political agreement on
how to share the land.
”
In large part, these two
peoples have failed to reach a
political agreement because of
Palestinian leaders’
unwilling-
ness to accept a Jewish state in
any part of the land between the
river and the sea and repeated
rejections of peace agreements.
VIEWS
ethical imperatives to “Love
your neighbor as yourself” and
“Love the stranger as yourself”
to Palestinians.
HAFRADA
Jews have a direct interest in
defeating the forces which
uphold the discriminatory sys-
tem of separation and oppres-
sion in Israel/Palestine because
these same forces ultimately
threaten us as well.
Police brutality in the United
States is built upon white
supremacy, a racist ideology
that ultimately imperils Black
people as well as Jews, Latinos,
Native Americans, Arabs and
everyone else deemed as “non-
white.
”
Although many American
Jews can pass as white today,
our enemies never saw us as
such. In October 2018, a white
supremacist murdered 11 Jews
in Pittsburgh, motivated by the
belief that Jews were bringing
“invaders” (i.e., refugees) into
the United States to “replace”
whites.
The anti-Jewish racism
behind this conspiracy theory
doesn’
t exist in a vacuum; its
endurance draws strength from
the continued existence of all
racisms. To defeat one, we must
defeat them all.
Police brutality in the United
States cannot be explained by
white supremacy alone. It is
also a function of militarism:
the political system that priv-
ileges the use of armed force
in responding to society’
s ills.
Militarism is how the murderer
in Pittsburgh was able to obtain
such lethal weapons, and why
police consume huge portions
of our municipal budgets to
the exclusion of social services
(including in Huntington
Woods). Militarism also struc-
tures our country’
s violent and
destructive policy in the Middle
East, from the U.S. invasion and
occupation of Iraq to the U.S.-
backed Israeli occupation.
The term “occupation” refers
to the system of violence and
separation by which Israel
denies Palestinians freedom
and dignity through depriving
them of civil, political and eco-
nomic rights. It encompasses a
range of Israeli state practices,
like police brutality, family
separation, home demolitions,
illegal water shutoffs and mass
incarceration. While we whol-
ly condemn the occupation,
IfNotNow affirms the right of
Jewish Israelis to live in the land
with freedom and dignity, just
as we affirm the same right for
Palestinians.
Many anti-occupation Israelis
no longer refer to the situation
as an occupation — which, as
envisaged by international law,
is supposed to be temporary
— but rather as “hafrada,
” a
Hebrew word that translates
literally to “separation.
” It is no
accident that the meaning of
this Hebrew word resembles the
Afrikaans word “apartheid.
”
No matter the name, this
oppressive system needs racism
and militarism to function.
Without the principle that one
nation deserves full civil and
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COMPARISON from page 10
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AHMAD GHARBALI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES AND JTA
Giant posters on buildings in Jerusalem feature photos of Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, beneath slogans supporting
West Bank annexation and opposing a Palestinian state.