The first time I was called a “self-hating Jew” was almost 15 years ago by someone I considered a close friend. It stung and I felt confused. Why does supporting Palestinian rights make me self-hating? And what does that have to do with my Judaism? Israel/Palestine seemed like a clear-cut situation to me. How could taking a country away from the people who had been there for centuries be right? 15 years later I have never felt stronger in my stance as a self-loving anti-Zionist Jew.
Adam Horowitz speaks to Lana Tatour about the Amnesty International apartheid report and the need to understand Israeli apartheid in the context of settler-colonialism.
The New York Times sets the media agenda inside the United States. If the paper had published at least one single story, or run just one opinion piece, the Amnesty report on Israeli apartheid would not be fading from view.
Amnesty International’s failure to recognize apartheid within the context of settler colonialism is not only an inaccurate description of the situation on the ground, but also disregards the root cause of the denial of Palestinian rights for over a century.
Israel has escaped accountability for apartheid because its friends have wielded the antisemitism charge against critics. But the Amnesty International report is a sharp blow to that strategy. Now global civil society is likely to become the major factor of changing the status of Zionism internationally.
The groundbreaking Amnesty International report on Israeli apartheid would not have been possible without Palestinian resistance, including the BDS campaign and the Great March of Return in Gaza. In attacking Amnesty, the ADL makes no attempt to substantively refute any of its arguments. Thus the Amnesty report contributes to an important shift in public mainstream discussion of Palestine that would have been unthinkable not that long ago. A line has been crossed, and moving forward, Israel’s attempt to whitewash itself as a “Jewish and democratic” state will likely be accepted by no one other than its enablers.
New York Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove says his congregants need to hear not just AIPAC and ADL and J Street opposing the Amnesty report on Israeli apartheid. But from him too, “for Zion’s sake.” “Israel is part and parcel to my Jewish identity, it’s central to my vision of the rabbinate, and as long as I’m the rabbi of Park Avenue [Synagogue], it will remain central to the mission of this synagogue.”
Biden pick Deborah Lipstadt condemned Amnesty International’s report on Israeli apartheid saying it was “part of a larger effort to delegitimize the Jewish state.”
Exposing the true face of the occupation is vital in defeating it, and we might be much closer to achieving that than we think.
The New York Times’s failure to report on the Amnesty International report accusing Israel of apartheid is no oversight — it is a deliberate effort to suppress the news.