Note: I wrote almost all of this piece before the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and the accompanying violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians that erupted in mid-May 2021. This post does not address those events.
Recently the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, released a new report making the argument that the State of Israel is guilty of apartheid. B’Tselem’s claim is different than one made some months ago by a different Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din. Last September, Yesh Din released a report making the argument that apartheid as a legal term should be applied to Israeli rule in the West Bank, but they declined to address the question of whether apartheid should be used to describe “Israel proper,” ie. Israel within the Green Line, where Arabs and Jews both have citizenship and voting rights.
B’Tselem’s report says that Israel is guilty of apartheid throughout all the lands over which it is the ultimate ruling power. Here’s how they explain their view:
Another way of putting this, for those who get their knickers in a twist over the language of “rights” vs “responsibilities,” looks like this: All Americans share the responsibility to maintain a society in which all of their fellow citizens have 1) a job, 2) an adequate wage and decent living, 3) a decent home, 4) medical care, 5) economic protection during sickness, accident, old age or unemployment, 6) a good education. These are basic responsibilities to one another. We have a duty to each other to use all effective and appropriate means, including and sometimes especially, government, to carry out our shared responsibilities to one another. This is what love your neighbor looks like as a social contract in a modern wealthy post-industrial nation.
Extreme individualism is not a Jewish value. We are our brother’s / sister’s / neighbor’s keeper.
This is a new series of posts I’m going to work on, in which I debunk BA’s (bogus arguments) that are often made, on one side or the other, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (or the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, etc.).
Today’s Bogus Argument: “Settlements aren’t really an obstacle to peace,” often claimed by AIPAC supporters and other apologists for the Netanyahu gov’t. Actually, even though the argument often gets stated the way I just phrased it, what those making the argument usually mean when they say this is that Israeli announcements of plans to build new housing units within the large settlement blocs abutting Jerusalem are not really an obstacle to peace.
Let’s consider this argument.
Usually it is supported by two claims: one, that Palestinian complaints are disingenuous because both sides already know that a final status agreement would preserve the major Jerusalem settlement blocs within Israel and there would be compensatory land swaps to the Palestinian state; and two, that the Palestinians had previously engaged in negotiations w/o too much fuss despite periodic new Israeli building in the blocs.
Therefore, the argument goes, these Palestinian complaints (and those made by groups like Peace Now, J Street, and various Knesset members in the opposition) are disingenuous. The Palestinians, according to this theory, only complain over this for strategic and negotiating purposes, not because they are actually upset about new Jewish housing being built in neighborhoods that everyone knows will eventually be part of Israel. No, they press these complaints fully knowing them to be without merit, because they are actually not interested in going back to negotiations with Israel, and because they are not serious about accepting Israel’s right to exist as part of a two-state final status agreement. By insisting that Israel cease and desist from new construction in all the settlements, the Palestinians are, supposedly, making an unreasonable demand they know Israel won’t accept, and by doing so they are deliberately sabotaging peace talks and building up global animosity towards Israel as part of a long-term plan to one day get back all of what was British-ruled Palestine.
This line of reasoning, and its dismissal of Palestinian objections to new settlement construction, is, in my humble opinion, completely bogus. It’s wrong.
This was a d’var I wrote for the organization currently known as T’ruah, but at the time as Rabbis for Human Rights – North America.
There’s an oft-quoted midrash that tells a simple but powerful tale. A group of travelers are in a boat upon the open waters, when one of them suddenly takes out a hand-drill and begins drilling a hole under his seat. Astonished, the others turn to him and say, “What are you doing?” He responds by saying, “What concern is it of yours? I’m drilling under my own seat!” The others then spell out the obvious truth that he is unable to perceive – that his actions affect them all, and that they are all in the same boat.[1]
As I considered the famous story of Noah and the Great Flood in this week’s parashah, I wondered: what if the boat this misguided traveler was aboard had been Noah’s ark? If we transplant the boat midrash to Noah’s ark, then the man drilling a hole under his own seat becomes someone who just might cause the entire living world to perish.
The story of Noah’s ark and the boat midrash both teach about interdependence and shared destiny. The boat midrash particularly reminds us that there are certain destructive actions that imperil all of us even if just one of us is allowed to carry them out. In addition, it teaches that we are all responsible for making sure that everyone in the community (aboard the boat) adheres to certain basic rules so that we don’t all drown. Human rights advocates can draw on both of these stories to illustrate some of our core beliefs: that we human beings are the guarantors of each other’s basic rights, and that our universal human rights only exist when we take them on as universal human responsibilities.
Too often, here in the U.S., our leaders have decided to set human rights aside in this or that case for the sake of some other highly desired political, military, or economic outcome. We live in a moment when some politicians openly brag about their support for casting aside human rights in our treatment of prisoners. And even government leaders who support human rights choose to make exceptions.
In addition, our elected officials frequently turn a blind eye to human rights abuses by other nations so that our industries can continue to do brisk business and our consumers continue to get cheap products. When political leaders do this, their sense of urgency is deeply misplaced. Often they’ll justify these decisions by saying that the consistent application of a commitment to human rights is an ideal to be achieved incrementally, whereas economic or short term political concerns are supposedly urgent. When we permit our elected officials to do this, we as Americans choose to let somebody else drill a hole under their seat in the boat. We usually rationalize that we can’t control what other’s do, or that sometime later we’ll prioritize urging them to stop.
The ancient rabbis taught that a person who has the capacity to object to the harmful actions of others and does not bears some of the responsibility for the harm that’s done.[2] This is not an easy mitzvah to uphold – not in the small worlds of our families and workplaces, nor in the larger world of governments and nations. But it’s an essential mitzvah for humanity to practice if we are ever to rise above the willingness to violate human rights or stand idly by while others do so. For human rights to become deeply rooted worldwide, they need to be upheld in all times and places.
(Note: the video above is of an early ’70s pop song called “Noah,” sung by Matti Caspi. If you want an English translation visit here.)
Another way of putting this, for those who get their knickers in a twist over the language of “rights” vs “responsibilities,” looks like this: All Americans share the responsibility to maintain a society in which all of their fellow citizens have 1) a job, 2) an adequate wage and decent living, 3) a decent home, 4) medical care, 5) economic protection during sickness, accident, old age or unemployment, 6) a good education. These are basic responsibilities to one another. We have a duty to each other to use all effective and appropriate means, including and sometimes especially, government, to carry out our shared responsibilities to one another. This is what love your neighbor looks like as a social contract in a modern wealthy post-industrial nation.
The Accidental Rabbi 