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 MATTER from page 10 COMPARISON from page 10 continued on page 14 continued on page 14 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.