Magic anti-Israel words: "racist," "colonialist," "occupied Palestinian land"

This success has relied heavily on lying about the history of the conflict and the nature of the Jewish state. The lying has been loud and consistent. The thrust of the lying has been to portray the Arabs, especially the Palestinians, as little David, and Israel as brutal Goliath.

 

This strategy has been particularly seductive for the political Left. Leftists have an unfortunate tendency to favor an underdog without thinking enough about the merits of the dispute. Weirdly, any party that represents itself as the victim can win the sympathy of the Left, without regard for the actual justice of its claims. Many on the Left reject “might makes right,” while irrationally accepting that “weakness makes right.”

 

The strategy has been such a success that the Jewish state’s basic legitimacy remains disputed more than sixty years after its rebirth. This is unique: no other nation on earth, however despotic, aggressive or unjust, has its right to exist questioned. As an example, two Jewish activists recently met with a Los Angeles Times editor to discuss that paper’s coverage of Israel. They reported in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal this remarkable admission:

 

 

Thus, the Times, one of America’s foremost mainstream newspapers, is buying into the delegitimization of Israel.

 

One of the most effective tactics Israel’s enemies use in their strategy of delegitimization is “magic words”: constant repetition of phrases with such negative connotations that they excite visceral revulsion, driving out rational thought. Three favorites are “racist,” “colonialist,” and “occupied Palestinian land.” However, reasoned examination of each reveals that they don’t actually apply to Israel, and may indeed apply more appropriately to some Arab states.

 

“Racist.” The charge of racism is based on Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. Note that this does not mean Israel is governed by the strictures of Judaism; on the whole, it is not. While there are religiously-oriented parties that run rabbis for public office, they are participating in the governance of an essentially secular, liberal democracy. To find a state run by clerics or governed solely by religious law, one looks to Iran or Saudi Arabia.

 

No, the meaning of Israel as the Jewish state is that it is the country where Jews are at home because they are in the majority. Thus, the principal language, Hebrew, is a Jewish language; the holidays are Jewish holidays; the symbols of national life come from Jewish history and culture.

 

The Jewish character of Israel is no more surprising or alarming than the Italian character of Italy, the Chinese character of China, or the Arab character of Morocco. All of those countries, like so many others, have sizable minority populations. And minorities everywhere struggle with issues of difference, assimilation, and integration. (Arab countries mostly don’t have to deal with Jewish minorities, since they looted their Jews and forced them out after Israel’s independence.) If Israel is racist, then so is virtually every other country with minority populations. Now, that would be an intellectually conceivable position; but then the focus on Israeli “racism” to the exclusion of all others would itself have no explanation save racism, i.e., anti-Semitism.

 

“Colonialist.” The accusation of colonialism takes two forms: 1) Jewish towns in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria are colonial enterprises on “Palestinian land;” or more fundamentally, 2) Israel is a colonial intrusion into the Middle East by Great Britain, or the United States, or the West generally.  

 

The conceit of “colonialism” depends on the idea that each bit of earth has “indigenous” people, and anyone else showing up later is an intruder. This is nonsense. If current anthropological theory, holding that eastern Africa is the birthplace of our species, is correct, the only possibly indigenous people might be certain Ethiopians (assuming their ancestors stayed put for the last two million years). Everyone, from “Native Americans” to Australian aborigines, came from somewhere else.

 

In short, the “colonialism” indictment ignores that the borders of every country on earth have been drawn through migrations of peoples, war, and conquest. How did the entire Middle East and North Africa become “Arab”? Through Arab war/jihad and expansion. This properly should be called “imperialism” and “colonialism.” There is no coherent explanation for saying that the Arab conquest of Palestine was beautiful, while the return of the Jews to Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) was a crime.

 

And the Jewish claim on the Land was and is particularly strong. The Jews were a stateless people precisely because they had been forcibly exiled from the Land of Israel. Throughout the centuries they had maintained their allegiance to the Land, and their belief that they would someday return. Their persecution made regaining their homeland imperative. By contrast, the Arabs had, and have, vast amounts of territory, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. As Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky said:

 

 

Critics point to the Balfour Declaration as evidence that the Western imperial powers used the Jews as a tool to devour Palestine. On the contrary: the Balfour Declaration merely shows that a rather weak Zionist movement sought allies wherever it could. The return to Zion would have proceeded, with or without the Western powers.

 

“Occupied Palestinian land.” This is one of the great hoaxes of our time. “Palestinian land” is a falsehood, whether viewed as a political or a demographic assertion. The land has never been “Palestinian.”

 

For the last two thousand years until the creation of modern Israel, the area identified as “Palestine” has been successively part of the Roman empire, the Byzantine empire, the Arab empire, the Turkish empire, and the British empire. There has never been a Palestinian Arab state. Such a state was envisioned by the 1947 U.N. partition plan. But the Arabs rejected the plan—a Palestinian Arab state was unacceptable to them if it meant the simultaneous birth of a Jewish state. In the subsequent war of 1948-49 Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, and Transjordan occupied the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem, thereby becoming Jordan. Thus was the Palestinian Arab state strangled at birth by Arab occupiers.

 

Even after the ancient Jewish state was destroyed by the Romans, Jews lived continuously in the Land of Israel. Between 1948 to 1967, when Israel took the territories in a defensive war, there were no Jews in Gaza, the West Bank/Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. The simple reason for this is that the Egyptians and Jordanians expelled the Jews living there. Aside from that nineteen-year period, there had been Jewish communities there. In some cases, e.g., Gush Etzion, the Jewish communities now in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria are the same ones exiled and destroyed by the Jordanians. The notion that only Palestinian Arabs lived on the “Palestinian land” is false.

 

These “magic words” of “racism,” “colonialism” and “Palestinian land” are intended to put Israel and its supporters on the defensive, through the monotonous drumbeat of supposedly unanswerable charges. But they do have answers, and fair-minded people must think more deeply about those answers, because facts matter. Israel’s defenders need to be clearer in exposing the “magic words” as the libels they are.