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.
The pro-Israel tactic of accusing advocates for Palestinian rights of antisemitism is weakening, as shown by a series of recent attacks. Now labelling Amnesty International an antisemitic organization for stating that Israel practices apartheid can only discredit those tactics further. Palestinians are becoming more relatable to the world, and the antisemitism charge is transparently its own form of bigotry, for it denies Palestinians the right to self-determination.
News that Amnesty International will issue a report tomorrow declaring Israel an apartheid state has caused panic and outrage among Israel lobbyists. Jonathan Greenblatt of ADL says that Amnesty “must accept responsibility” for attacks on Jews that will ensue from the report casting aspersions on Israel. While David Harris of the American Jewish Committee shrills, “Israel has nothing to do with apartheid and apartheid has nothing to do with Israel.”
The growing list of those who say Israel practices “apartheid” in occupied territories and west of the Green Line is joined by Michael Benyair, a former Israeli attorney general. But US advocates maintain a taboo on that word in the U.S. discourse, enforced by Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL and Rep. Ted Deutch.
One year after Chicago Episcopalians knocked down a resolution condemning Israeli apartheid by a sizeable margin, its convention approved a similar resolution by 72 to 28 percent. The turnaround is a measure of the dramatic rise in American awareness of the Israeli system, and reflects the judgments of two leading human rights organizations earlier this year.
For much of this year, Israel’s defenders have waged a successful battle to keep the word “apartheid” from entering the mainstream discourse. Israel just set that process back by smearing Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations.
In Israel’s latest attack on Palestinian civil society organizations, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced a list of six Palestinian human rights organizations which he claimed have links to militant “terror” groups. On the list were prominent institutions like Addameer, Al-Haq, and Defense for Children International – Palestine.
Leading Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard responds to South Africa’s Chief Rabbi Zeev Warren Goldstein, who recently argued that the term “apartheid” should only apply to South Africa.
In the report published on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said that it investigated three Israeli strikes that killed 62 Palestinian civilians “where there were no evident military targets in the vicinity,” in some cases, killing entire families in one airstrike.
More than 1000 academics, artists and intellectuals have signed a “Declaration on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid in Historic Palestine.” There used to be a mainstream prohibition on the word apartheid. In 2021, that logjam has broken. The world’s civil societies have had enough. Across countries and continents, across age groups and ethnicities, the marches, the manifestos, the opeds, the motions passed overwhelmingly have swelled into a torrent.