Misunderstandings Redux

Israeli forces conduct a night raid in Bi'ilin to harass nonviolent protest coordinators. Taken by Habib.

Last week I wrote an article in the University of Rochester’s Campus Times, which inspired quite a bit of dissent (pretty much entirely by the Israel Council, a university organization devoted to spreading Israeli statist propaganda). In particular, Joshua Warhit drew attention to my so-called “intellectually embarrassing” positions:

Mr. Boianov, believe it or not, probably has wonderful intentions. The problem is that as a result of poor/no understanding of the history of this conflict and major concepts in this debate, including simple words such as “colonization,” “Muslim,” and “conquest,” which he commonly mistakes for other terms, good intention has led to him representing a view point that is intellectually offensive. A wider view might have helped him retain a more credible understanding of the situation, but his stance that eye witness [sic] accounts of terrible offenses from one side provide a full portrait of the situation (which, to put it simply, is just not true) has probably erased the possibility of gaining such a view.

 Their response was published today here. The third sentence: “People have freedom of speech, but when the information presented is not factual, others must speak out.” It is exactly with that reasoning that I was forced to write this entry.

The claim is that my article “ignores the reality that Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as all other citizens.”

This is simply false. The legal and political situation of Arabs in particular is dreadful and has been exhaustively documented.  First of all, there is no law that guarantees equal rights to all citizens of Israel. The Israeli government’s own Or Commission declared:

Government handling of the Arab sector has been primarily neglectful and discriminatory. The establishment did not show sufficient sensitivity to the needs of the Arab population, and did not take enough action in order to allocate state resources in an equal manner. The state did not do enough or try hard enough to create equality for its Arab citizens or to uproot discriminatory or unjust phenomenon.

The US State Department notes concerns that Jewish children receive three times more educational funding than Arabs.

The “current Knesset [legislative branch] is the most racist in Israeli history,” civil rights groups declare.

53 percent of Israeli families below the poverty line are Arab, despite the fact that Arabs compromise only 20 percent of the population. Human Rights Watch details the educational conditions available to Arab-Israelis:

often overcrowded and understaffed, poorly built, badly maintained, or simply unavailable…[they] offer fewer facilities and educational opportunities than are offered other Israeli children.

 

The Israeli government oversees two separate school systems: one for Jewish children and the other for Arab children. The US Supreme Court denounced the idiocy of a “separate but equal” doctrine a long time ago, as all of us learned very early on in high school:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group

Now just insert “Jew” instead of “white” and “Arab” instead of “colored.”

            The article goes on to claim that Israel’s loyalty oath (where non-Jews have to swear an oath to Israel as a Jewish state) has not been passed, when in fact the Israeli Cabinet approved the measure on October 10.

            It’s true that the bill is not a law yet, but what is stopping its passage is not a conversation about how the insane practice of forcing non-Jews to swear loyalty to a single ethnicity and religion runs against every tenet of democracy and civil rights. Rather, politicians are screaming that the bill discriminates against Jews immigrating under the Law of Return. No thought is being given to Arabs that face institutionalized discrimination constantly – because at the end of the day it is the Arabs who will be most harmed by this bill, whether everyone has to take the oath or not.

            What’s missing from the shifted discourse is why a loyalty oath is needed in the first place: Joseph Heller minces oaths to a shred in Catch-22, writing that loyalty oaths are only drawn up so that the signees can exclude some other group from signing, and thus stand on a brittle platform of unquestioning nationalism.

            Joshua Warhit also commented last week that publishing my eyewitness account of settlers terrorizing Palestinians serves no purpose other than to obfuscate the complexities of the conflict. What he fails to understand is that there is no comparable treatment of Israelis by Palestinians. If a Palestinian so much as touches a Jew he is thrown in jail and indicted, even if the contact is entirely consensual.

            Equating the homemade rockets that Hamas fires with a brutal military regime that brings an entire population to its knees is an oft-repeated justification for said occupation. Remember Operation Cast Lead? The Israeli army massacred 1417 Palestinians, 926 of them civilians. 13 Israelis were killed (though each of their deaths is a tragedy as well). Palestinians have no recourse to any military action performed. At the top I posted a picture of Israeli forces conducting night raids in Bi’ilin, West Bank. A friend took this photo. The people who are targeted have only committed the crime of organizing nonviolent protests against a separation barrier that was declared illegal by UN International Court. Just consider proportionality.

            The Israel council proceeds to claim, of all things, “Israel is not an expansionist colonial state.” What idiocy is this? As I wrote earlier, settlements are illegal under international law and are not recognized by any nation. In fact, the fourth Geneva Convention specifies that transferring a population from the occupier’s land to the occupied land is illegal. What is not expansionist and colonial about this? There is no justification for settlements other than they are part of a massive land-grab. I cannot believe I even have to point this out.

            Also, please don’t misquote me. The ‘centuries-old identity’ that I mention is the Jewish identity, which is evident to any decent speaker of the English language. Although I may be confused, since, “The author brings up a ‘centuries-old identity’ he is referring to the people known today as Palestinians,” is not a grammatically complete sentence. Who wrote this press release, Netanyahu?

            And finally, the Israel Council is afraid that my articles “jeopardize the readers’ abilites [sic] to retain knowledge.” Yes, I do endanger the student population’s ability to memorize propaganda that was ripped from a Birthright trip. I am not ashamed of this.

            Several weeks ago I was speaking to a student at the University of Rochester: she implored me to recognize the good that Israel has done for the West Bank, like bolstering its economy (apparently evidenced by its recent economic growth). That’s a funny way of putting it. After the grass is mowed down it grows back. But let me ask: do we praise the lawnmower?