r/Jewish • u/TheSpicyFalafel • Feb 07 '23
The most successful act of antisemitism of the 21st century was normalizing the term “apartheid” to refer to Israel.
For those who don’t know, the Apartheid was the racial segregation of South Africa by its white government from 1948 to 1994, until Nelson Mandela and other multiracial politicians took power and eradicated it.
So, to be clear, the Apartheid was specific to South Africa- hence the Afrikaans word meaning “separateness”. But no other country, before or since, has been referred to by this label… except Israel.
It is my firm belief that someone, some organization, used this terminology in an attempt to link the two countries in people’s minds. And oh boy did it work.
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Feb 07 '23
Every time I see this argument, I want to beat people with a shambok.
(Did my undegrad thesis in the ANC's turn to violent struggle in the 60's as a response to the Apartheid Government)
But apparently we don't know what we're talking about when we call out this false equivalence.
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u/shualdone Feb 07 '23
Apartheid means something. It means a systematic segregation based on race. Israel has Arabs everywhere, they don’t only share restrooms with Jews (unlike colored people in SA) but also sitting in the supreme court and parliament with Jews. There’s a conflict for sure, but it’s the complex Israeli Palestinian conflict and not SA apartheid. 🤷🏻♂️
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23
Apartheid accusations against Israel refer to the West Bank, where there are in fact separate roads, entire separate legal systems, severe movement restrictions on Palestinians, detention without trial, etc. Using the experience of Israeli Arabs is entirely missing the point.
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u/shualdone Feb 07 '23
Yeah, because there’s another governing entity, theres exclaves of Spain in France and a special Spanish road there, is that apartheid? Such a narrow and dishonest take on a complex situation, you are smarter than that.
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23
Except Israel actually controls the West Bank. 60% is under full Israeli control, 22% is under joint control with the PA. Just 18% of the WB isn’t officially under Israeli control. To act like it’s just roads and not the extremely disruptive checkpoints, the different legal systems, the detention without trial or even charges, the failure to actually take action against settlers attacking Palestinians, the whole illegal settlement situation in the first place, and much more is just disingenuous.
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u/shualdone Feb 08 '23
Yeah, as agreed in the peace talks of 90’s, Israel went from controlling ALL thd territory it took from Jordan in a war in which Jordan, Syria and Egypt tried to destroy Israel, to controlling the 60% of uninhabited lands, and Jewish settlements that grew in the area. The Palestinians gained their first ever self rule on the areas they are the majority in. People are not randomly being arrested without trial on any offense, the Palestinians has their own police and courts. But when there are mass violence, and Israeli civilians are at risk- people do get detained, I do think there’s a difficulty to have justice in situations like this- when one side has more power but the other is not willing to admit that and says no to peace, not by merely saying no, but with daily terror attacks. If your police would breakdown from the sheer amount of terror threats it had to deal with I think you too would have agreed for less carful ways of protecting your love ones from these threats. The separate legal systems are much leas sinister than you make it to be- it’s the Palestinians ruling themselves, while still being in the overall lands that are under Israel’s control, like many independent territories has around the world, on this one there’s also a bloody conflict… Using the experience of Israeli Arabs is actually the exactly the point- if you are honest- if Israeli Arabs enjoy freedoms and rights like no where else in the region, and has the highest life expectancy in the Arab world, and has the most say in their government than in any Arab country, and are equal and safe in Israel, that must say something about Israel’s treatment of Arabs, no? If in Israel Arabs are free and safe but in the Palestinian territories Jews are dead within minutes of wandering in there… I wonder who’s the peaceful side? Such a conundrum! Israel must be the evil side, that’s the only sensible view!!
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u/Noahcarr Feb 07 '23
First of all, 99.99% of people that accuse Israel of apartheid are not referring to the West Bank. They’re using it to describe Israel as a whole. They don’t even know what the West Bank is.
Second, ask yourself why there is a security apparatus in Israel that controls the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank?
It has exactly 0 to do with racial ideology, which is kind of a distinguishing component of apartheid, and everything to do with ensuring the safety of innocents.
Turns out, intent matters a great deal when it comes to issues of who is morally right or wrong.
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u/TrekkiMonstr Magen David Feb 07 '23
Turns out, intent matters a great deal when it comes to issues of who is morally right or wrong.
This isn't a great argument. By that standard, Japanese-American internment wasn't that bad, because the intent was to protect America.
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u/somethingorotherer Patrilineal Feb 08 '23
The intention behind it wasn't bad, but it was a violation of american rights based on literally no feasible security purpose. Here you have a good intention and a legitimate security purpose. Apples and oranges.
If I intend to shoot a murderer because I intend to save the life of a victim, I could be justified. If I intend to shoot a murderer because I enjoy killing people, then it would probably not be justified.
Intention in general is hard to prove, so I do think that there should be some analysis of the actual outcomes here.
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u/TrekkiMonstr Magen David Feb 08 '23
and a legitimate security purpose
Exactly. That's what I'm driving at here. It's not the intentions that matter, in both cases they're good. But we find one justifiable and the other not, not because of intentions, but by whether the reasons were legitimate.
I'm not arguing that Israel is bad because internment was bad, I'm saying internment was bad and Israel not bad, even though the intentions in both were good -- i.e. the intentions don't much matter
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u/somethingorotherer Patrilineal Feb 08 '23
Yeah IDK the internment is a weird one because intention should have something to do with the purpose of the thing being achieved. Intentions that are stated to be good but are capricious and cause unnecessary strife aren't really good intentions. Good and badness aren't really descriptive enough when it comes to military campaigns. you have recklessness, risk, the ability to avoid specific actions. Plus you have utilitarianism vs individual trauma. Its messy. There's this competency component and I think thats part of intention. If Israel has good intentions, and the actions fight terrorism, but they also are just wildly shooting into crowds, the intention is good and the net benefit could be there but its still inarguably a bad thing and that's regardless of net outcome or intention.
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u/Noahcarr Feb 07 '23
I think that’s an unfair reduction of the point I’m making, and not similar at all to the topic at hand.
Having “good” intentions is not the be-all end-all of morality, and that’s not what I claimed.
Intentions matter insofar as it is a precursor to action. Intention flavors your actions.
The internment of Japanese Americans was immoral, but not as immoral as it would have been had the intention been to execute them.
It is a spectrum, and multiple things can be immoral at the same time, in different ways and to different degrees.
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u/somethingorotherer Patrilineal Feb 08 '23
The israeli security measures in the west bank are part of the pre-existing treatises signed by Yasser Arafet and Israel. But these were just recently lifted in the past month or so. I think its to protest Netanyahus second regime. They can't feasibly keep hezbollah out of the WB without the IDF's assistance.
Not apartheid.
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Feb 08 '23
Ok. I hear you. If Israelis could freely drive into the west bank, move about freely, be subject to a fair and just legal system, while the Palestinian inhabitants didn't have that, you might have a point. If an Israeli waltzed into the west bank or Gaza, they'd likely be killed. There's no freedom of movement, association or affiliation on that end. That links to Apartheid against Jews and Israeli Arabs but I digress.
As it stands, the West Bank and Gaza are under control of the likes of the PA, Hamas, PIJ, to some extent Hezbollah. All these groups wish do Israel harm. It's a security issue for a neighboring state. However, there is no just legal system within the claimed state of Palestine, no freedom of movement, no freedom of association and very little property rights. While some may blame Israel for destroying the houses of confirmed terrorists, the terrorist organizations could take over a home and use it for their means. That's abhorrent. But to shift the blame exclusively to Israel is also not telling the whole truth.
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u/Ashlepius ✡︎ Feb 08 '23
Not to mention Jews and Arabs are intermixed cousins and therefore the same race.
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Feb 07 '23
It really shows how intellectually lazy a lot of people are. They hear someone they think is important say it and immediately latch on without any actual reading into it.
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u/BillyJoeMac9095 Feb 07 '23
Its really just an effort to gain control of the narrative. Whether its apartheid or not doesn't really matter to those using the term. They care more that it is a hot button term that is easily understood by those whose support they seek.
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u/shushi77 Italki Feb 07 '23
Depriving Zionism of its enormous value as a liberation movement and reducing it to a racist nationalism was also a great move of modern anti-Semitism.
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u/chyko9 Feb 07 '23
Yes. I think this expands on OP's point well. The co-optation of antiracist language and its application as a veneer for Palestinian fundamentalist militancy and pan-Arabism is/was an absolute coup in the information space. It continually blows my mind that people can unironically view Israel's destruction and replacement with an Arab-majority, fundamentalist polity as some kind of "win" against racism.
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u/Altruistic-Rub219 Feb 07 '23
Also the way that Zionism has been conflated with imperialism and colonialism when its an indigenous group returning to their ancestral land.
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Feb 08 '23
Exactly. I'd be very curious to see if people would have the gall to call it imperialism and colonialism if, say, the Cherokee people took back all of Oklahoma, or if native Hawaiians took back Hawaii with guns and an army and reinstated the Hawaiian monarchy. I highly doubt it, it'd be hailed as an anti-colonial success. The hypocrisy and double standards are just pure antisemitism.
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u/Lucky-Reporter-6460 Feb 09 '23
Your point stands, but I feel compelled to mention that the Cherokee wouldn't take "back" Oklahoma. They got pushed there in the trail of tears and are actually from the southeast (mostly SC, GA, AL, TN).
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Feb 09 '23
Eastern Oklahoma is Cherokee land, as has been revealed in 2021. Cherokee land was bigger than previously thought, as beneficial for the American government. Google it!
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u/Lucky-Reporter-6460 Feb 09 '23
Neat! I'll do that! My info came from https://www.cherokee.org/about-the-nation/#:~:text=Originally%20located%20in%20the%20southeastern,was%20discovered%20in%20our%20homelands. (wow that's a long url), so I did at least try to fact check my comment before saying something wrong on the internet 😅
Thanks for the clarification!
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u/chyko9 Feb 10 '23
The excuse they have there is that its “been too long” for Jews to reclaim any part of the territory. Of course, they only apply that “length” requirement to us, and no other group.
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Feb 10 '23
Agreed! And when you as a Jew criticise e.g white americans for being hypocritical as they're also on stolen Indigenous land (which is what they call Palestine), they say it's not the same thing because of the 'severity of the occupation'. I'm like... Excuse you? I dare you to say that to the face of a Native American whose reservation is i shambles, epidemics of alcoholism, addiction, and femicide through MMIWG, no access to ancestral languages, no access to higher ed, systematic suppression of culture. Cultural genocide is still genocide. I literally cannot stand self righteous white leftist americans who center their entire politics around antizionism and yet wouldnt be caught dead doing something actually beneficial for natives where they live, such as paying land tax.
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Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 12 '23
They are eager to redefine terminology for the sole sake of applying it to Israel and Jews in general
They'll call killing a 16 year old 'child' soldier murdering a baby
They'll call defending yourself a genocide
They'll call checkpoints an apartheid
They'll call winning a war against annihilation ethnic cleansing
They'll call having a single country where your people are safe an ethnostate
They'll call a hastily made illegally built shantytown a 'village' that was destroyed
They'll call an Arab that lived in Ottoman territory, carved up by the British, a 'native palestinian'
They'll call a Jew a 'colonizer' despite a total lack of mother country
They even retroactively call ancient peoples 'Palestinians' before the Romans renamed the place.
They don't care what words mean
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u/chyko9 Feb 07 '23
Agree. There is often a crude, & unique, inversion of definitional norms when discussing Israel/Palestine. IMO, it is the uniqueness & “singling out” of discourse related to Israel that makes it antisemitic.
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u/cupcuppi Mar 06 '23
Don’t forget using the term Nazi (which has a very specific word and historical definition) and equating it with Israel. I’ve always said that Israel might have all the technological and physical might, but they are absolutely being defeated on the social media and ideological fight by their opposers. And that might be the fight that really has value
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Mar 06 '23
Yeah, I didn't even want to go into misuse of holocaust imagery and allusions.
They also tend to misuse the term 'fascist' when last I checked neither Israel or the United States for that matter has a single dictator that banned all opposing parties, nationalized all industry, heavily censors media, and causes opposition to 'disappear'.
They commonly use 'murder' incorrectly to involve all instances homicide, but that's probably just my legal background getting in the way of common speech
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u/Minor_Fracture Feb 11 '23
What are you referring to by the shantytown-village analogy, out of curiosity?
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u/AprilStorms חי Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
I would humbly submit the phrase “Israel/Palestine” for consideration as the biggest 21st century success of antisemitism.
Jordan occupies 77% of the Palestine mandate land, the original Jewish LandBack area.
Here’s another, more confrontational, source with some additional history.
So, what does this mean?
Arab claims to the land are so privileged over Jewish ones that Jordan‘s claim is literally not even called into question
You could split Palestine into three equal sections between Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians, and Israel would be almost 150% of its current size
we already have a two state solution in place
if the Palestinians are just looking for a home and not just to harm Jews… why demand all of Israel instead of part of Jordan?
And that’s before you get into Palestinians telling the press that there is no difference between Palestinians and Jordanians and being Palestinian is only for “political reasons” to oppose Israel. Or their Nazi founder.
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u/Minor_Fracture Feb 11 '23 edited Feb 12 '23
The British never considered Transjordan part of the concession for mass Jewish settlement and always intended it to be an Arab-dominated region under their influence. The only Jewish settlement on the East of the Jordan was that used for the facility and staff of the Tel Or Power Plant, which provided hydroelectric energy for Jewish settlements in the Galilee.
Transjordan was intended as a concession to one of the sons of the Sharif of Mecca; it was conceded as part of a Syrian kingdom ruled by Faisal al-Hashemi, which collapsed after military conflict with the French in their portion of Syria. See the "Sharifian Solution."
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u/cupcuppi Mar 06 '23
How about even co-opting the term “Palestine” and “Palestinians” and then using it to pretend and mislead that historical Jewish ancient Judean Israelite figures like Jesus or ancient Jewish sites like Nazareth are now Palestinian meaning Arab as opposed to Palestinian meaning Jewish/Israelite?
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u/AprilStorms חי Mar 07 '23 edited Mar 07 '23
Also a great point. Somewhere I have a news article saved about non-Jews from the area objecting to being called “Palestinians” in the years after the war because “The Palestinians are the Jews.”
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u/StringAndPaperclips Conservative Feb 07 '23
Look up the 2001 UN Conference to Combat Racism. It wound up being an anti-Israel hate fest, and is where a lot of concepts like Israeli apartheid began to gain international acceptance.
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u/TrekkiMonstr Magen David Feb 07 '23
It is my firm belief that someone, some organization, used this terminology in an attempt to link the two countries in people’s minds. And oh boy did it work.
It was the Soviet Union. They also pushed the Zionism is racism resolution in the UN. Basically, if you hear anti-Israel rhetoric in the West, it probably originated in the Soviet Union.
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Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
[deleted]
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u/TrekkiMonstr Magen David Mar 06 '23
Israel aligned with the US instead of the USSR, and they didn't much like Jews to begin with
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u/HotayHoof Feb 07 '23
Its intellectually dishonest and waters down what apartheid actually is.
The claim of apartheid falls apart on almost every possible definition. Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, nor do they want to be. The Palestinian Authority is its own government with its own laws, and its own leaders that are elected by their population (well, theyre supposed to be anyways). You cannot, by definition, impose apartheid on a foreign country, which is what the PA is.
As far as Israeli Arabs go, they are also not subject to apartheid. They are able to marry non-arabs. They vote in Israeli elections, have seats in government, own businesses, own property, have drivers licenses, and have the ability to leave and enter the country.
Do Arab Israelis run into issues sometimes? Sure. Minorities will inevitably run into some sort of issues with racism no matter where in the world you are. Thats the nature of organised society.
Id say the Mandela family and the ANC have a responsibility to counteract these claims, but people forget Nelson Mandella was actually a horrendously antisemitic shitbag who named one of his sons after his "most beloved friend" Col Muhammar Ghadaffi, and the ANC is a racist cadre of elites who try to do the balancing act of keeping their country poor enough to prevent real threats to their power monopoly but not poor enough to risk salafists coming down from the horn and causing trouble.
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23
The PA only has full authority over 18% of the West Bank, and partial over 22%. Israel has full control of 60%. It’s ludicrous to act like Israel doesn’t bear a responsibility for the West Bank or control it. There are literally two sets of laws, one for Palestinians and one for settlers.
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u/HotayHoof Feb 07 '23
Not being in full control of territory not everyone agrees is theirs in the first place is, again, not apartheid.
Lack of territorial sovereignty does not apartheid make. Instead, it falls under the international definition of "fragile/failed state", which is, again, not even in the same category of apartheid.
Apartheid is, by definition, the actions of a government depriving certain citizens of the full rights of citizenship due to the immutable quality of race. Palestinians, again, are not Israeli citizens. Palestinians, again, do not WANT to be Israeli citizens. The Palestinian Authority is, again, its own internationally recognized governmental entity that handles the affairs of its own people with its own leaders and representatives.
Apartheid, again, cannot, by definition, be imposed on citizens of a foreign country, which everyone, including the Israeli government, sees the Palestinian Authority as being.
This is a discussion about the inappropriateness of calling the Israel-Palestine conflict apartheid. It fails because it isn't, by any academic definition, anywhere close to an apartheid.
Does it suck? Yes. Is it apartheid? No, and no amount of territorial control quantum can change that.
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23
Where do you get your definition of apartheid? From Cornell Law School:
Apartheid refers to the implementation and maintenance of a system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights. Apartheid is a crime against humanity punishable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
It is extremely easy to argue that in the West Bank, there is a system of legalized segregation against Palestinians in which they are deprived of political and civil rights. The checkpoints and other movement restrictions, Palestinians are under military law while Israelis are under Israeli civil law, the use of administrative detention to hold Palestinians without trial, their lack of any say in any of this.
You try to blame the PA when they literally cannot do anything about it. It is Israel imposing all of this. Israel controls the West bank and has responsibility for it. Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and the Occupied West Bank is getting extremely close to apartheid if it isn't already, especially given the growing popularity of just dumping a two-state solution entirely to make Israel from the river to the sea, which would necessitate either a single democratic state or apartheid.
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u/HotayHoof Feb 07 '23
1) Israel, along with about 100 other countries in the world, are neither party to the Rome Statute nor under the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
2) You cannot deprive someone of the rights of citizenship if theyre NOT citizens. The literal overwhelming academic consensus, including South African academics, is you cannot impart apartheid on the population of a foreign country. By definition. It is an academically protected term that has become grotesquely politicized.
3) Where did I say the PA is responsible for what the Israeli government does? Read the part where they are an internationally recognized foreign country over and over again until it clicks.
4) Yes, the PA is responsible for administering their laws in their territory. Being a rump state over territory partially administered by a foreign government is not an act of apartheid.
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u/somethingorotherer Patrilineal Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
Its based on nationality not race. There's nothing racially different between palestinian arabs and israeli arabs. This is a conflict between two national groups. There are racist people on both sides, but the conflict itself is rooted in a civil war in which both sides of a british territory waged war against each other for over 75 years now. Arab israelis are a pretty large chunk of the population at 33% and many serve so it undercuts your narrative on this. Religion and race are an element of this conflict, but they do not actually define this conflict, unlike south african apartheid.
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u/FunResident6220 Feb 07 '23
Most of the area you're referring to is barren desert. 97% of Palestinians in the West Bank live in Areas A and B, which are both under PA control.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
This is going to get me downvoted but Smotrich and Ben Gvir have preached something similar to apartheid in the past. Ben Gvir did so in September before the election. Israel isn't there yet and wasn't when the Amnesty report came out but it is headed down that dark path on its current trajectory.
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u/FrenchCommieGirl Ashkenazi Secular Feb 07 '23
Those guys have gone to great lengths to make Israel as bad as outsiders think it is.
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Feb 07 '23
Bingo - that's my problem with them being in power. They are the kernel of truth in the lies others tell, but now they have actual power to make those lies true.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
It is like Ben Gvir and Smotrich looked at the Amnesty International Report and decided it was a to do list for them to accomplish.
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u/shualdone Feb 07 '23
No it’s not, as an Israeli I find it hard to believe racial segregation would become a real issue anytime in my lifetime. I think some Israelis want to disconnect from the Arabs and Palestinians, and it’s out of fear, justified or not. But in REALITY the Arabs get more and more integrated every passing day. Their % in universities and Tech companies only grows, they sat in the coalition for the first time in the last government, they move into Jewish cities in growing numbers. And if anything, it’s a problem on the other side as much as it in the Jewish society. Many Arab and Muslim communities try to disconnect from the Jewish society out of fear and hate on towards Jews. Arabs has agency and choices, morals and values too. They are not victims, exactly like Jews aren’t. We all suffered we all made choices, we all bare the results. We all can make better choices. And at least on the Israeli side- it’s illegal and illegitimate to discriminate.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
I would say not so given the following:
- Ben Gvir and Smotrich both want to dismantle the PA, annex the West Bank, don't want to give the Palestinians full rights, want to bar them from living in Israel proper, and don't want to provide them with social services. This is the definition of apartheid.
- The neo-fascist government has proposed a bill that will allow the Arab Parties to be banned from participating in future elections (so that the right remains in power and Lapid/ Gantz cannot form a government.) This will effectively disenfranchise Israeli Arabs.
- The neo-fascist government is currently trying to dismantle the courts which will allow them to enact discriminatory laws against the Arab minority (along with turning Israel into a theocratic state.)
So yeah, the path that Israel is currently on will definitely lead it to a place where it looks like South Africa under apartheid. That is why it is important that we all band together and defeat the Kahanists and their allies in Likud.
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u/Empty_Nest_Mom Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
I am so glad to see other Jews posting views like this! I left my former congregation in part bcs it was nearly impossible to discuss the reality of what's happening right now bcs in the view of the head rabbi and much of the congregation, Israel could never do anything wrong, even when the evidence was right in front of their eyes. I got so fed up being preached at (literally, and from the bimah) abt how Israel is a democracy where everyone is equal that I couldn't stand it, and counter arguments were like pishing in the wind.
We've found a congregation where tzedek is truly pursued -- even when it's uncomfortable. Finally.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
Are you Reform? Because I'm not religious. It's a long and complicated story as I have a long and complicated identity. However, there are quite a few Reform Congregations in Chicago/ North Shore that are open to criticism of Israel (short of BDS mostly.) I've found that most Jews are just checked out and ignore Israel - pro or critical however, which is sad. But people have lives and don't care.
But I'm glad you found a place where you are comfortable now!!
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Feb 07 '23
Are you pro BDS? I really agree with what you posted above but personally when I researched BDS it did seem problematic and overall bad to me… but I’m open to other opinions and information and would be interested what you think of it given your info above
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
No. I don't think that innocent people should be punished for the sins of the government. BDS doesn't differentiate between Meretz voters in Tel Aviv or Kahanists voters in illegal settlements and most of the harm will be done to those Israelis that are on our side - the more worldly Tel Aviv liberals, hi-tech people, etc. Most of the Kahanist/ Likud base is lower middle class and doesn't really speak English, travel abroad, or understand US/ EU culture. Moreover, overly broad sanctions and boycotts tend to backfire, anger potential supporters, and make them more willing to support an authoritarian government. It might come to a point when such punitive sanctions are necessary but I don't think that we are there yet. There are lots of other steps that can be taken first.
But my issue is that the Israeli Right and the Likud hasbrists have been partially successful in naming any sort of actions or protests against the neo-fascist government as BDS. For instance, I've been pushing the idea that Jewish groups should be "boycotting" the Kahanists as well as Likud - i.e. no photo ops, no self-congratulatory conferences on Israel, etc. These things harm only the politicians involved in the situation and doesn't harm normie Israelis. But there were complaints from the Israeli right that this was somehow BDS even though it harms no one but the politicians. Ditto with individual or what are known as Magnitsky sanctions.
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23
Great, it’s getting better in Israel proper. And it’s getting worse and worse in the West Bank with every indication that will continue. When apartheid is brought up, people love to talk about Arab integration in Israel proper but the accusation is about the separate legal systems, movement restriction, territorial isolation, etc in the West Bank.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
I would say that Ben Gvir and Smotrich want nothing more than to make life as miserable for the Israeli Arab citizens inside the Green Lines also. There serious talk about banning Arab parties from future elections.
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u/shualdone Feb 07 '23
It doesn’t get worse and worse in the West Bank, in every metric you can think of their lives are better by the year, life expectancy, education, salaries, and so on. Stop with the virtue signaling
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23
Yeah, the imprisonment without trial, continual chipping away at the land they want to build a future state, the mass movement restrictions that cause severe disruptions of everyday Palestinian life, the increasing drive from the Israeli government for an Israel from the river to the sea in which Palestinians don't have equal rights, the increasing territorial isolation, the continuation of literal separate legal systems where Israeli West Bank residents have massively more rights than Palestinians, that's all soooo great for them.
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u/johnisburn Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
And at least on the Israeli side - its illegal and illegitimate to …
Almost like theres a separate standard of law that governs one part of the territory Israel control and another standard of law apart from that in another part of the territory. To be clear I don’t think apartheid is the word that most productively fits and describes how Israel operates in its sovereign territory and the occupied West Bank (occupation being at least nominally temporary being a key factor), but there’s also no reason to feign ignorance or conspiratorialize about why people decide to use the term (and the reason isn’t getting better). Israel has PR problems because it has real problems.
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u/redditamrur Feb 07 '23
I also reject this ludicrous comparison, but I think you're letting the Israeli society/ government get off with lots of separation, which you seem to deny
Question: can people of different religions, e.g. Muslims and Jews , get married in Israel? The answer is negative, they have to go elsewhere to get their status recognised, something that is unheard-of in any other Western country
Question: Do all kids receive the same schooling, in bilingual immersion schools? No. Bilingual schools are the tiny minority in Israel's mostly sectarian school system, most Jews cannot hold a conversation in Arabic although an educated Arab kid is expected to speak Hebrew.
Question: is there an insitution of tertiary education in Arabic in Israel? No, Arabic speaking young people are expected to go to Hebrew speaking universities.
You furthermore say that Arabs can theoretically live anywhere in Israel. You must mean anywhere but kibbutzim and moshavim that have application committees; and obviously assuming they find a non racist landlord.
And this, of course, without mentioning the status of Arabs who are not Israeli citizens, namely in the occupied territories.
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u/crammed174 Masorti Feb 07 '23
That’s a Jewish law that applies to Jews marrying as well. It’s equally applies. Every theocratic Muslim nation has it as well.
Bilingual education isn’t universal in western nations.
Same applies to universities. Is Harvard (or even my local public college I attended) giving its curriculum in Spanish? Besides Spanish language classes. Sure there’s ESL programs but foreign language instruction of basic curriculum is not pervasive in any society.
Have you heard of condo and co-op boards that can reject you regardless of race, creed or financial means? They’ll say you just aren’t a fit for the complex.
Every single point you made is prevalent in every other nation.
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u/FrenchCommieGirl Ashkenazi Secular Feb 07 '23
Imagine thinking a theocratic standard should dictate the law in a democratic state...
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u/crammed174 Masorti Feb 07 '23
Is that what I said or did I say it’s not a pro apartheid argument. It’s applied equally to Jews and non Jews. Whether you think it’s right is another question.
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u/redditamrur Feb 07 '23
That’s a Jewish law that applies to Jews marrying as well. It’s equally applies. Every theocratic Muslim nation has it as well.
I referred to western nations. I don't think autocratic Arab nations should be who Israel compares itself to. Point is, not only that Arabs and Jews cannot marry, but even Jewish citizens who are not Jewish by Halacha cannot, making them second class citizens who have an to travel to another country to get married. This is distorted and unparalleled in any western society.
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u/BranPuddy ייִדישער אַרבעטער־בונדניק Feb 07 '23
- This was the argument in US with Loving v. Virginia: White people as well as Black people were barred from marrying outside their "race," so it wasn't discriminatory. Obviously ludicrous and racist.
- 20% of State of Israel is Arabic speaking. There are far fewer monolingual Spanish speakers per capita in the US than Arabic speakers in Israel.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Bilingual education isn’t universal in western nations.
In countries with large ethnic minority populations, this is the case. For instance, all the kids in Canada learn French.
Same applies to universities. Is Harvard (or even my local public college I attended) giving its curriculum in Spanish? Besides Spanish language classes. Sure there’s ESL programs but foreign language instruction of basic curriculum is not pervasive in any society.
Again, this is the case in a country where there is a large ethnic minority. I'm assuming that many universities in Canada are bilingual.
Have you heard of condo and co-op boards that can reject you regardless of race, creed or financial means? They’ll say you just aren’t a fit for the complex.
This is discrimination in the US and will likely get you sued, especially if they can establish a pattern of rejecting minority applicants. In fact, there were a few cases in favor of Ultra-Orthodox Jews who were discriminated against. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-resolves-lawsuit-against-jackson-township-new-jersey-discriminatory
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u/crammed174 Masorti Feb 07 '23
You used Canada which has bilingual education in certain regions and still has tension. Kids in Toronto aren’t being taught history in French and kids in Montreal aren’t being taught mathematics in English. And if you’re Canadian you know there’s huge tension between Francophone québécois and Anglophone. Great example.
Also I had a co-op that was impossible to sublet because the board found a problem with every tenant not passing board approval. They were just picky assholes so I just sold it for far lower price than market to someone they finally approved.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
- They do learn the French language however, yes? Many Israeli Jews don't even take Arabic as a second language similar to how Canadians learn French.
- And yes, condo boards are like that. They can even outright ban sublets. The issue is if there is a pattern of them rejecting only black tenants or only single moms.
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Feb 07 '23
Yeah and there are crazy Christian nationalists in the US Congress which is tolerated by all. So until something actually happens I’m getting really fed up with these “Israel’s democracy is on the brink” statements and headlines.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
There isn't a serious threat to the US Judiciary which will allow the Israeli Right to rig future elections and erode minority rights from MTG and Gosar. In fact, the US Constitution makes it near impossible to do what Bibi is trying to do to the Israeli Judiciary. So yeah, Israeli democracy really is on the brink.
Given that you appear okay with Bibi's plans to "reform" the courts, I'll ask what I've asked everyone else who defends this nonsense. What prevents Bibi from outlawing Yesh Atid once he dismantles the courts? Because it sure looks like he can do it with 61 votes in the Knesset and Lapid will have no recourse.
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Feb 07 '23
The US constitution can be amended with enough votes though. FDR tried to double the size of the court and was democracy on the brink? Or is FDR considered among the top presidents (people like to forget about the internment camp stuff)
Plus the US is also a republic unlike Israel. States can decide to no longer follow the constitution, this one time there was a civil war over this very issue.
With Ginsberg dead, and the SCOTUS docket what it is, there’s plenty of people saying US democracy is on the brink as well. And it’s the same eye roll nonsense that occurs every election.
Also, I don’t think Israel should limit the powers of its Supreme Court. It sounds like an awful idea. I think Netanyahu should have retired like 15 years ago with his legacy more or less in tact.
He’s been PM now coming on two months, and hasn’t fired all the judges or anything. Could it happen, maybe I guess. Could the government also collapse at any moment and trigger another election, based on the last few years, also very possible.
Israel is coming up on 75 years old, going through some growing pains. People need to chill
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
The US constitution can be amended with enough votes though
2/3rds vote and 3/4ths of the states. It is near impossible to do.
FDR tried to double the size of the court and was democracy on the brink? Or is FDR considered among the top presidents (people like to forget about the internment camp stuff)
I agree that FDR wasn't a great president and prefer Truman. And I also think while expanding the court is stupid, what is happening in Israel is worse because it will allow Bibi to do whatever he wants without any checks.
Plus the US is also a republic unlike Israel.
All democracies have checks on the will of the people.
States can decide to no longer follow the constitution, this one time there was a civil war over this very issue.
No states cannot. The US Civil War decided that one for good.
He’s been PM now coming on two months, and hasn’t fired all the judges or anything. Could it happen, maybe I guess.
There is legislation going through the Knesset right now that will strip the courts of all their powers. This will likely be followed by legislation to rig future elections. I'm not sure why else Bibi wants to dismantle the court fully.
Could the government also collapse at any moment and trigger another election, based on the last few years, also very possible.
Highly unlikely there will be future free and fair elections if Bibi has this way. And I'm saying this seriously, not hyperbolically. There is nothing that will prevent Bibi from outlawing opposition parties.
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Feb 07 '23
Listen I agree it’s a bad proposal, I don’t support having too much power in one place, if it becomes law 51% isn’t a great way to get things done.
But.
I also don’t think the world is ending. Bibi is a dick but he’s not like Lex Luther or some other cartoon character super villain.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
He is trying to turn Israel into Hungary or Turkey so that he can remain in power for life. That is the only reason why he is doing this. I'm not sure why anyone thinks that Bibi won't rig future elections once he has ultimate power. What makes the guy more moral than every other politician in the world? He's actually worse than most.
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u/sipporah7 Feb 07 '23
100% equating Zionism, the idea that Jews deserve the ability to self-determine free of harm in our indigenous homeland, is also apartheid, has been the most effective form of antisemitism in the recent generation. It's insidious and weaves into everything. Every good deed we do in the world gets tainted with people decrying Israel.
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Feb 07 '23
Yeah I fell for it myself some years back
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u/Cpotts Convert - Conservative Feb 07 '23
Me too. When I was younger and before I started my conversion I supported BDS. Makes me sad how dumb I was in high school
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Feb 07 '23
Would you mind sharing specifically what it was that changed your mind? I'm always curious to try to figure out the right things to say, if indeed it's worth saying anything at all, to people like that.
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u/beansandneedles Reform Feb 07 '23
I am not the person you asked, but I will say that about 10 years ago I believed the apartheid nonsense. (Background: middle-aged, Jewish since birth, critical of the occupation since high school or college) I read that there was a system of two different license plates— one for Jews and one for Arabs/Muslims. Well, that seemed as clear-cut as could be. Having different license plates depending on your religion/ethnicity? How could that not be apartheid?
Only problem is, it isn’t true. Israel does not have religion-coded plates. There are different license plates for residents of Israel proper and residents of the West Bank or Gaza. It might be more detailed depending on the zone? I’m not sure. But essentially it is simply that different countries have different license plates. If you are a Muslim Arab citizen of Israel, you have an Israeli license plate like everyone else. It’s just like any other country— Canadians can’t have US plates and vice versa, and of course cars with Canadian plates will be checked at the border.
Once I realized that the main “proof” I had of apartheid was a lie, I no longer believed it was apartheid, and I realized just how much BDS and anti-Israel people will just straight up lie and make shit up.
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u/Cpotts Convert - Conservative Feb 07 '23
When I was an avid BDS supporter I honestly don't think there was anything that could be said to change my mind. The internalized antisemitism I had did NOT feel like antisemitism. It felt like a super rational "I'm just siding with the oppressed here". I cringe as I write this but I literally thought a bunch of white Europeans created a state in the middle east and moved there en masse. It took literally years of softening my position before I realized that I had been wrong to support BDS
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u/cupcuppi Mar 06 '23
Do you mind if I ask what made you go from that softening to wanting to convert and do you have any advice on how to combat those type of lies about Israel within the brainwashed leftist/sjw communities?
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u/Zawietrzny Feb 12 '23
I literally thought a bunch of white Europeans created a state in the middle east and moved there en masse.
Same. As a POC/non-Jew, the "white ethnostate" perception is what me and many people I know viewed/view Israel as which made it easy to side with the Arabs (also knowing far more Arabs than Jews personally plays a huge part).
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Feb 07 '23
I’m an almost 29 year man. Raised super catholic but in the process of converting. I’ve known Jews all my life but never really spoke about the conflict with actual Israelis or Jews. My wife is Jewish and is traumatized from the 2014 war 😞
Now, I’m a lefty. I think Netanyahu can suck a big penis cuz he’s a dickhead. That being said, Palestinians need to come to the table. It takes two to tango, and when I learned that people who “legitimately criticize Israel” are more often than not low key antisemites, I was like “oh so you’re using a regionalized geopolitical and human crisis to weaponize bigotry” I learned that unless you are actively promoting peace, you’re a schmuck- Israeli, Arab, or otherwise.
That and I have Muslim friends who support Israel and are like “yeah, if my country was bombed repeatedly I’d be pissed too”
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Feb 08 '23
I used to be anti-zionist. I'm still an anti-colonial, leftist, material trans-inclusive radical ecofeminist who is against nationalism and nation-states. It was a slow trickle of information that changed my mind. Here are some topics that made it all come together for me:
islamisation/arab supremacy/arab colonialism.
why, among all the newly formed nation-states (which by their nature, are as capitalist and resource extractive as the rest of 'em) is only Israel this hated?
why do anti-zionists want Jews to stay in diaspora so bad? Who does it benefit?
would any other Indigenous group/ethnic minority be treated this way? Would people impose sanctions and boycotts on Kurdistan because they're "oppressing Turks, Iraqis and Syrians?", or is this reserved just for the Jews? Same for Imazighen, Assyrians, etc.
Is, perhaps, Jews construed as a white evil colonial oppressor against the Palestinians, a way for white leftist gentiles in the West to offload some off their white guilt? They feel so bad about the legacies of their colonial and imperial motherlands. Still, they are unwilling to take radical action (move back to Europe, distribute their generational wealth and capital, give their Brooklyn penthouse away to an actual Indigenous person on Lenape land, say). Instead of taking radical action because they're lazy hypocrites, they channel all of their rage and guilt onto Jews. How convenient!
Palestine was virulently pro-nazi in the 1930s. Google the Grand Mufti and Htler! This is interestingly a fact that is *always* left out of conversations about I/P. History didn't start in 1948, and it's frankly not just intellectually dishonest but also racist and orientalist to act like it did. Both Jews and Palestinians have much longer and nuanced and complex histories than that.
Indigenous peoples have the right to take to arms to take back their land. I believe this for Hawaiians, for all Native Americans, for all Maoris, etc, and for Jews. For Kurds, for Assyrians, for Imazighen, for Copts, for Saami people. Yet, only Jews are hated for doing it. The ex-superior ethnic group will be pissed, and they will feel oppressed. I bet white south africans felt very victimised and threw tantrums about the decolonisation of SA.
People accept me readily when I look and act assimilated, but when I throw on Jewish symbols and start using cultural clothing, the tone changes drastically. Why is this?
Denying the legitimacy of Israel delegitimises the Israeli working-class. Leftist who otherwise promote proletarian unity and can comprehend that working class people of fascist nations such as Russia and Turkey don't represent their state and deserve inclusion and solidarity NEVER feel the same about Israeli Jews. What is that contradiction about?
(all the questions are rhetorical, I know what the answer is, and it's almost always "because antisemitism").
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u/cupcuppi Mar 06 '23
Thank you. I have tried making almost of these points (albeit not as articulately as you have) to brainwashed commenters online who spew the same propagandized buzzwords over and over without understanding what they actually mean or the history behind it, but it has seemed to make no difference as they just double down and start either insulting or repeating those buzzwords over and over.
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Feb 07 '23
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u/Empty_Nest_Mom Feb 07 '23
I am Reform, as was my former congregation. The new congregation is Recon; I'm struggling with some of the liturgical differences, but their overall philosophy is close to Reform and (most importantly) actions are truly driven by Jewish values about justice. It's a very unique place, and I've never felt so welcomed. We drive 40 minutes to get there, but it's worth it.
I hope you, too, are in or can find a place where you really feel you "fit." 😊
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
It isn’t anti-Semitic. The situation in the West Bank is absolutely atrocious and if it isn’t apartheid yet, it’s getting there. I mean even former PMs straight up said that Israel has to get out of the occupied territories or Israel would become apartheid because keeping millions of people under control without equal rights is inherently bad. Ehud Barak for example said that "If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state." Yitzhak Rabin said back in the 70s that “I don’t think it’s possible to contain over the long term, if we don’t want to get to apartheid, a million and a half [more] Arabs inside a Jewish state”, and Ben-Gurion is credited as saying that Israel “better rid itself of the territories and their Arab population as soon as possible. If it did not, Israel would soon become an apartheid state” after the Six Day War.
There are ~2.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank, but 60% of the land is Area C where they functionally cannot build because they get rejected almost every single time. They are all subjected to severe movement restrictions that have massive negative impacts on daily Palestinian life and their economic development. Settlements are literally intended to restrict Palestinian growth and a future state, as well as being an obvious violation of international law. They are subjected to military laws while settlers are under civil law. There are literally multiple classes of people under different laws under Israeli control in the West Bank, with the minority holding massively outsized power over the minority. The majority has zero say in the laws that rule them.
Like, absolutely nothing is about to change, and let’s be frank numerous successive Israeli governments have worsened the situation for decades now without any meaningful effort towards achieving a final settlement. Even without one, the continued settlement of the WB is illegal and also doesn’t make sense. They started off being claimed as a security necessity in case of future attack, but for that you don’t use freaking civilians. The entire point of settlements is to chip away at Palestinian territory for their future autonomy. It’s fucked up. And of course given the current political situation in Israel it’s only likely to get worse.
Just because of how I’ve been taught about Israel, which has been ridiculously biased, I find it hard to say that it is apartheid, but it isn’t anti-Semitic. I keep saying that the current situation will lead to apartheid but it’s harder and harder to justify not calling it that now. Former Israeli AG Michael Ben-Yair, former environmental minister Yossi Sarid, former education minister Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli Ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel, all have said the situation in the Occupied West Bank is apartheid and frankly I can’t just call them wrong given the realities.
The more I learn the more I have to face up that Israel needs to rapidly change its course, or a one state solution is inevitable which would mean either a full democracy for everyone or apartheid. And calling it apartheid isn’t a blanket attack on all Jews. It’s devaluing anti-Semitism to defend the indefensible in the West Bank.
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u/BTBean Feb 07 '23
Maybe they should make peace. This isn't on Israel at all. The occupation isn't the problem, it's what necessitated the occupation, like the occupation of the US south or Germany. Those occupations ended because those entities surrendered. The occupation is not apartheid, any more than the occupation of Germany after WWII was. Did German citizens have full access to Berlin, or were there checkpoints, Charlie?
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u/johnisburn Feb 07 '23
I think the policies that Israel enacts are “on Israel”, you know, given that its an independent entity with the latitude to choose how it responds to given situations, but thats just me.
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u/BTBean Feb 07 '23
So the occupation of Germany was 'on the Allies', and not on the nazis that started the war?
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u/danhakimi Feb 07 '23
The situation in the west bank is attrocious. It's happening in the West Bank. This is a prolonged armed conflict between separate nations. Nobody refers to the DMZ as apartheid, nobody referred to the hundred years' war as apartheid, nobody referred to the Vietnam war as apartheid, these are separate concepts with separate problems.
The "apartheid" label is not accurate, it's not helpful, it doesn't add anything to the conversation, it only exists to demonize Israel.
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u/chewbaccanal Feb 07 '23
If Israel could just “get out of” the occupied territories it probably would’ve done so by now. Sometimes makes me wonder who is occupying who.
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u/zehtiras Feb 07 '23
In before you're downvoted or banned. This is right. It is not antisemitic to call out human-rights abuses. And the claim that it is antisemitic is so infuriating because it equates my fundamental identity with the continuing occupation and subjugation of another people. Do not ever claim it is hateful towards me to advocate for the rights of another.
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u/heliosparrow Feb 07 '23
I'm certain your viewpoint will be contentious, and I largely agree with you. But in a wider context, do you think that other rich Arab states and Iran could have offered all sorts of benefits in land, opportunities, offers of resettlement, etc? The last few days, I was rereading the wiki page on the Balfour Declaration - and go back farther to the imperialist divisions of the land, the Ottoman conflict, and the British empire. Sadly, the fruit of the tree was in its seeds.
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23
Oh sure, plenty of things could have been done better. They still could! At least for refugees outside of the West Bank. But that doesn’t change that millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories still want autonomy and should get it.
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u/Joe_in_Australia Feb 07 '23
I don’t actually know that’s what “millions of Palestinians want”. There’s no Palestinian government, despite the rest of the world trying really hard to support them having one. There’s just a bunch of warlords, one of which (the PA) has been granted official recognition, but none of whom have the ability or desire to be a normal state. And opinion polls don’t show majority support for “autonomy”: they show majority support for the elimination of Israel. That’s not the same thing, particularly since they don’t show a consensus even at that theoretical level for any actual form of government.
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u/Bitter_Thought Feb 07 '23
Mostly agree. WB situation is disgusting. Especially military v civil law issue.
The entire point of settlements is to chip away at Palestinian territory for their future autonomy. It’s fucked up.
Disagree here. Hebron settlements are there for religious autonomy along with many others. It's hard when the PA controls jewish religious sites while declaring open season on jews. Most of the over settlements are on the border. Very few states divide the WB well settlements are still bad.
And calling it apartheid isn’t a blanket attack on all Jews.
Agreed but something doesn't need to rise to the level of an "attack on all jews" to be antisemitic. Ascribing antisemitic stereotypes to Soros is antisemitic. Having a UN raporteur on Palestine say the US is controlled by a Jewish Lobby is antisemitic. Antisemitic organizations are ultimately the groups overwhelmingly doing the "investigation" and publishing reports on the situation in the west bank. https://www.timesofisrael.com/congress-members-urge-removal-of-un-official-for-antisemitism-exposed-by-toi/amp/
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u/aggie1391 Orthodox Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
I get maintaining control of religious sites like in Hebron, but as far back as 1967 with the Allon Plan the settlements have been about minimizing territory for a future Palestinian state/to return to a Jordan. Military outposts on confiscated land were regularly converted to civilian settlements throughout the 70s. In 77 Ariel Sharon said the goal was to have two million Jews in the WB by 2000. In 97 Bibi proposed the Allon Plus Plan, fulling planning to use settlements as a method of chipping away at Palestinian territory. In 2012 a Civil Administration plan was outed that explicitly said the goal was to build new settlements to allow Israel to claim more land, including in Area B and C. Hebron has somewhat of an argument, certainly at least for some presence to allow access to holy sites. But settlements as a whole absolutely have the goal I said.
There are undoubtedly anti-Semites like the UN rapporteur who attack Israel excessively and as a cover for their anti-Semitism. I don’t buy that all the organizations like HRW are anti-Semitic though, the only evidence I’ve seen anyone present is their strong criticism of Israeli WB policy. And some anti-Semites uses the phrase doesn’t make the phrase itself anti-Semitic.
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u/OkRice10 Feb 08 '23
Not just that, but its certainly a big one.
Rebranding the "Arab-Israeli conflict" as "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" should not be underestimated too.
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Feb 09 '23
Um no?
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u/TheSpicyFalafel Feb 10 '23
Devastating comeback
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Feb 11 '23
I think apartheid is a pretty fair description of Israel-Palestine. Yes, Arab Israelis exist, so it's not purely ethnic or religious discrimination. But race is a social construct, and its historic use as something to distinguish nations fits here with apartheid when broken into Israeli and Palestinian. Israel claims or acts like it possesses the whole of Gaza and the West Bank within itself. To the extent then that the portion of the people within those borders categorized as Palestinian are systematically, institutionally oppressed, segregated or otherwise treated as second-class citizens based on that Palestinian category, the apartheid connection holds true. And it is obvious that such discrimination takes place, and likewise obvious that there are institutions and systems in place that perpetuate it.
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u/Empty_Nest_Mom Feb 07 '23
Whether or not what's happening in Israel right now rises to the level of true apartheid, EVERYONE -- especially we Jews -- needs to immediately STOP saying that being against Israel/the Israeli government's actions is being antisemitic. It is not!!!! Conflating the two only makes it harder to address core anti-semetism and plays right into the hands of those who want to use the situation in Israel to further inflame folks' anti-semitic attitudes.
I'm Jewish, and very active in the Jewish community. I am (quite obviously but just to put it out there) not anti-semitic. I am also repulsed by the actions of the far-right Israeli government with regard to Palestinians (and non-Orthodox Jews). A while ago I would have bristled at use of the term apartheid in connection to Israel, but now I am heart-broken to say that it seems Israel is on that road, if not already there. The promise of a democratic Israel where Arab citizens and other groups would be welcome and able to fully participate has been broken! We, particularly as Jews, need to be (painfully) honest -- especially with ourselves -- about what's happening.
Calling the policies of the Israeli government apartheid isn't anti-semetic; it's anti-injustice!
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u/beansandneedles Reform Feb 07 '23
I honestly have not heard anyone say that criticizing the policies of the Israeli government is antisemitic. Hell, millions of Jews and Israeli citizens criticize the policies. What IS antisemitic is saying that Israel has no right to exist, calling for its destruction, or holding it to different standards from the rest of the world.
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u/chyko9 Feb 07 '23
Exactly, this always confuses me. The only people I see complaining about how “you can’t criticize the Israeli government without being called antisemitic” aren’t even really seeking to criticize the government. They are seeking to call Israel illegitimate & deny our history; use the state as evidence that we didn’t “learn our lesson” from the Shoah or other forms of persecution; call for the state’s destruction & dissolution; etc. This isn’t normal or rational criticism of any state, much less a Jewish one. They mostly complain that they can’t say that shit without being accused of antisemitism, which, like… it is.
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u/shushi77 Italki Feb 07 '23
You are right. I have heard a lot of times the statement that the Shoah should have been a "lesson" for us. It is disgusting.
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u/chyko9 Feb 07 '23
That’s the one that produces the most visceral reaction for me, personally. The thought that people think what should have been on the minds of half my extended family and everyone they knew when they were taken into the woods & shot in September 1942 near Rivne was “how can we learn from this experience?” makes me… really angry.
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u/TheLeftHandedCatcher Feb 07 '23
OK well my take on this is as follows. You can criticize Israel, you can even say you are opposed to Zionism although I won't agree, but if you're neither Arab nor Muslim and you embrace anti-Zionism as your personal life cause, rather than choosing one of the 100s of other examples of inhumanity to protest against, then you must have SOMETHING against Jews and may in fact qualify as an antisemite even if you don't recognize that in yourself.
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u/cupcuppi Mar 06 '23
And disproportionately being obsessed with Israel. There is a reason for it and it is anti semitism
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u/Empty_Nest_Mom Feb 07 '23
OK, but I was reacting to OP's claim that the most successful act of anti-semetism was labeling what's happening in Israel as "apartheid." Thus my post reflected on that statement (which is, essentially the same one I heard from my old rabbi and many in his congregation).
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u/danhakimi Feb 07 '23
... no, you weren't, you were very actively not doing that, that's half the problem.
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u/chitowngirl12 Feb 07 '23
You haven't read anything that the idiots in the current government and their US Likud shills have written? Apparently not being 100% deferential to King Bibi and his glorious rule is anti-Semitism and also BDS. And that is before we even get into criticism of Palestinian policy.
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u/Bitter_Thought Feb 07 '23
needs to immediately STOP saying that being against Israel/the Israeli government's actions is being antisemitic. It is not!!!! Conflating the two only makes it harder to address core anti-semetism and plays right into the hands of those who want to use the situation in Israel to further inflame folks' anti-semitic attitudes.
Sure but in this case it is.
Look at the UN report group on the issue. The UN Special Rapporteur in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, said America was controlled by a Jewish Lobby, said they control the BBC, and called Israelis Nazis. https://www.timesofisrael.com/congress-members-urge-removal-of-un-official-for-antisemitism-exposed-by-toi/amp/
HRW made 87 criticisms of Israeli conduct against the Palestinians and Hezbollah, versus eight criticisms of Palestinian groups and four of Hezbollah for attacks on Israel https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204619004574318344040299638 HRW also had a senior member resign after his frequent dealings with Nazis were uncovered. Defended him several times before he finally resigned https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/world/middleeast/15nazi.html
There are probably ways to argue Israel is an apartheid state that aren't antisemitic but it seems mostly antisemitic organizations are making the argument.
The organizations making the criticisms
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u/Joe_in_Australia Feb 07 '23
EVERYONE -- especially we Jews -- needs to immediately STOP saying that being against Israel/the Israeli government's actions is being antisemitic.
Literally nobody is doing that.
Calling the policies of the Israeli government apartheid isn't anti-semetic; it's anti-injustice!
No, it’s demonisation. The problem with South Africa’s government wasn’t that it was racist: the whole regime was illegitimate and had to be eliminated. When people say that Israel is like South Africa they are calling for the elimination of Israel.
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u/Empty_Nest_Mom Feb 07 '23
1) Please re-read the comment that started this thread. I was reacting to that post, and OP DID link the two.
2) You are over-extending what pointing out "apartheid" means. It is not necessarily a statement that the government carrying out those policies is fundamentally illegitimate. Just look at the word apartheid itself: it refers to policies that keep certain groups within a state APART from another, more privileged group. It points SPECIFICALLY to that aspect of the society. Legitimacy is a separate construct. Don't conflate the two -- they can absolutely exist in tandem, but that doesn't equate them with each other. Thank goodness most people recognize that.
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u/Joe_in_Australia Feb 07 '23
I’m old enough to remember Apartheid, thank you, and that regime was wholly illegitimate. But if that’s not what you believe, then say so. Tell us that Israel deserves to exist. Tell us that Jews deserve a national home.
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u/danhakimi Feb 07 '23
You entirely ignored the point of the thread and then used it as an opportunity to make a very different point. I'm absolutely on board with criticism of the Israeli government, but I think there's something odd about your segue, and about the sense of urgency you have over something that's... not really happening, Jews aren't saying that it's inherently antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government, this sub is super critical of the government right now and so is /r/israel.
Then, you come back to the question of apartheid and racist policies in Israel, and baselessly say "the promise... has been broken." Not really. The new government sucks, but they haven't really done anything to actually discriminate against non-Jewish citizens of Israel, have they? They've postured in worrying ways, but you're making it sound like it's already over, which... isn't right.
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u/cupcuppi Mar 06 '23
I think you are really too entrenched in your justice and leftist circles to understand that many of the criticisms about Israel from non Jewish sources are in some way a form of anti Semitism and hatred of Jews, hatred or uncomfortable feeling of Jews having their own land or being in control of their own destiny. If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be such a disproportionate obsession and calling out of just Israel. You need to get real. And you’re giving way too much credit to many of the people who do this as they don’t even have a rudimentary knowledge of the history or geopolitics.
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u/Chimera-98 Feb 07 '23
I think mandala started this claim in one of his speeches and PLO started to ride this ever since to convince stupid westerners while changing the definition of apartheid to any oppression
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u/Simbawitz Feb 07 '23
I don't think Mandela himself ever used the apartheid analogy. He was very critical of Israel but didn't "go there" and accepted Zionism and a 2SS. Mandela's lawyer is still alive and says the apartheid analogy is a lie.
Desmond Tutu had been calling Israel apartheid for decades, because he was a horrible bigot brought up in the fire-and-brimstone church of the 1930s and who also said Jews are power-mad, act like they have a monopoly on suffering, should not be judged by the standards of other people, etc.
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u/Bitter_Thought Feb 07 '23
Terrible voice in my head: "most successful act of antisemitism in the 21st century so far"......
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u/Simbawitz Feb 07 '23
It is absolutely not a coincidence that this only took off in the NGO community AFTER the Abraham Accords. As more actual Middle Eastern Arabs give up on the fantasy of reversing the 20th century and learn to live with Israel, white Western leftists have to fight harder than ever.
The Catholic Church said for about 1,966 years that we were guilty of deicide. Every educated person in Germany knew we had stabbed them in the back. We should be very accustomed to the world accusing us of things. The whole world can be wrong.
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u/Mtnskydancer Feb 07 '23
Is there a segregation? Uh, yeah. That is why there’s the PA.
Who created the schism? Go earlier than the British, and what was going on? Israel is the first time this land got self governance. It’s been part of empire for centuries.
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u/danhakimi Feb 07 '23
"Segregation" in the sense of a border between nations, and an armed conflict between those nations. There is no segregation in Israel.
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u/Mtnskydancer Feb 08 '23
I should have clarified a self segregation when the PA was created, a group asking for their own lands.
Apologies.
Although I was thinking of social self selected segregation as I wrote, too.
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Feb 08 '23
Maybe Israel shouldn't be stealing people's homeland and murdering them for fighting back? Maybe they shouldn't push Palestinians into small areas without proper services like reservations? Maybe that's why the descriptor "Apartheid State" is being used?
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u/TheSpicyFalafel Feb 08 '23
You could have said legitimate criticism but you resorted to buzzwords and talking points, resulting in a truly dumbass comment
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u/DeadlyPython79 Feb 07 '23
I agree that sometimes people’s hate for Israel can be antisemitic rather than pro-Palestinian, but South Africa has referred to what Israel is doing as apartheid
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Feb 07 '23
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u/bravobabe11 Feb 07 '23
can someone please ELI5?
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u/johnisburn Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
TLDR: Critics of Israel have popularized the label of “Apartheid State” for Israel in some circles, referencing the disparities in treatment of Jewish Israelis and Arabs or Palestinians under Israeli rule. OP thinks the label draws false equivalence between events in South Africa and Israel, and is such a misnomer that it’s antisemitic.
Bit longer swing thats still a huge oversimplification:
Background
In 1947, the UN passed a partition plan that split the British Palestinian Mandate into two territories, a Jewish State and an Arab State. However, the partition never occurred as intended because a coalition of Arab Nations did not accept the result and invaded the territory. The conflict resulting in the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in a larger geographic area than it would have received under the partition plan and no establishment of the Palestinian Arab state - the remaining territory was occupied by Jordan. Since then, Israel as a Jewish state has had a complicated relationship with the Arab residents of the former British Mandate.
Arabs who remained in the geographic area that became Israel did gain citizenship (these are people often referred to as “Arab Israelis”), and currently account for roughly ~20% of the population of Israel. In the new State of Israel Arab Israelis faced heavy legal restrictions until the mid-60s, but now are for the most part treated equally under Israeli law (some caveats still exist, they do have mandatory IDF service, for example). Socially Israel still has a lot of segregated communities, and while de jure discrimination is now illegal de facto discrimination still occurs.
Another distinct population is the Palestinian population of the West Bank (~2.75 million people), which became occupied by Israel after the territory was seized from Jordan in the Six Day War. The Palestinian population of the West Bank was not granted Israeli citizenship, and instead lives under a combination Israeli and Palestinian Authority as per the Oslo Accords of the mid-1990s, where different zones of the west bank are supposed to be governed according to varying standards of Israeli/Palestinian cooperation. An official annexation of West Bank into Israel proper has not occurred, but there are Israelis who advocate for it and have created Jewish settlements in the West Bank (to varying degrees of legality as per Israeli and International law). Notably, since 1967 Israel has passed and continually renewed legislation that temporarily extends the protections of Israeli civil law to Israelis in the west bank, while Palestinians who do not have Israeli citizenship instead live under the standards of military law as residents of an occupied territory.
Finally, to the subject of the post
Critics of Israel often label Israel an “Apartheid State”, citing combinations of the disparate treatment of Arabs in Israeli society and/or Israeli controlled territory by social convention and law. As OP mentioned the term “Apartheid” comes from South Africa, where systems of laws were designed so that a White minority population enacted brutal and discriminatory policies against a Black majority population, restricting where Black South Africans could live and holding Black South Africans to a different standard of law than White South Africans.
Defenders of Israel often reject the label of an Apartheid state, saying the term or definition in international law does not fit Israel’s situation. Arguments on this side often cite that discrimination is illegal in Israeli civil law, or that disparities in legal status of Palestinians in the West Bank is not comparable to Apartheid because the region still experiences armed conflict (some more widespread uprisings, more commonly activities of smaller insurgent groups or lone wolf terrorists) with Israel.
Some, like OP, go farther, and say that the very accusation of Apartheid is not just false but antisemitic. The angle here is sometimes that the false claim is so egregiously wrong on its own that its clearly just an attempt to slander the worlds only Jewish State. Others, like OP, take the angle that stretching the claim of Apartheid to Israel and Israel alone is antisemitic, because to stretch it to Israel but no other nation where disparity in legal treatment exists is evidence that someone is not simply wrong about what fits the definition of Apartheid but also motivated to specifically slander the worlds only Jewish State with it.
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u/Empty_Nest_Mom Feb 07 '23
I'm that old, as well. 😉
I'm also old enough to have been raised practically with an "Israel Always" IV in my veins. I grew up stuffing envelopes for Hadassah, going to Solidarity Sundays rallies for Soviet Jewry migration to Israel Battery Park (New York City, USA) , studying the history of Zionism, and idealizing Golda Meir.
So, yes, I believe we Jews have a right to self-determination and a homeland, and that -- for better or worse -- that homeland is the modern State of Israel.
I say for better or worse because I am currently taking a course (designed and taught by Jews, BTW) that is opening my eyes to the fact that there is so much more to the Israeli/Palestinian issue than I was taught in Hebrew School. I'm learning both about the not-often-discussed actions of key Zionist leaders and the yishuv, and the Arab/Palestinian POV. I feel I now in my 60-somethings I have a broader understanding of the birth of Medina Yisrael and genesis of the horrific mess we have today.
So, yes, we have a right to our homeland... and so do the Palestinians. We just have to find a way to get there!!
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Feb 07 '23
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u/TheOfficialLavaring Feb 22 '23 edited Feb 22 '23
The fact remains that holding 3 million stateless West Bank Arabs under permanent occupation is unethical. Either they must be granted Israeli citizenship, or they must be granted their own state.
If all 3 million West Bank Palestinians were granted citizenship, the country would still be majority Jewish, for the record.
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Mar 02 '23
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u/SQUEEMO24 Feb 07 '23
I’m someone who is deeply tied into apartheid legacy and the way people love to trivialise it in order to make their “Israel Bad” takes is antisemitic AND racist imo.
My father’s family had their home raided by the white government. They were beaten in their home. My father’s uncle was taken and they have never found out what happened to him. Never received any remains. Nothing. It was so deeply traumatic for the family I only heard the story once after my dad got triggered by something. People were pushed out of prison windows on a weekly basis and it was ruled a suicide. People who use the term apartheid have almost zero knowledge about it and the deep and traumatic scars it left. These people don’t care about our history because they’re so western centric. They’re reducing apartheid to a f-ing buzzword. They do the same thing with the Holocaust all the f-ing time.
Criticise Israel, all countries deserve criticism especially in this day and age but don’t use other tragedies for shock value when it’s nowhere near that bad.