Israel's Historic and Legal Right to the Land of Israel

Israel's Historic and Legal Right to the Land of Israel

I begin this talk today with a phrase you know, sad to say, you know too well. This is it. “Illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory”. I repeat. Why am I introducing my talk with these disturbing words? Because each and every part of this statement is false.

What Israel is doing is legal under international law and prior to our modern international legal structure, and I will prove this.

Second; are these rightly called “settlements”. Well, the word itself is not wrong, but its usage in this context is definitely pejorative and purposefully so. These are housing projects on the outlying areas of Jewish communities, very much like the housing project my husband and I purchased in then outlying Toronto in the early 1950’s, induced by government of Canada housing programs and policy. And to underline the wrongful terminology used in the context of Jewish housing projects, you and I have never heard Palestinian housing developments called “settlements”, and yes, the Palestinians build houses and expand their towns and villages.

Next part of the phrase that is false is the term “occupied”. I will prove to you today that the Jewish people as currently undoubtedly represented by Israel, cannot be occupiers of the land of Israel. They cannot be occupiers of their own land. Israeli occupation of Judeah and Sameria is an oxymoron.

Finally, the last part of the phrase, “Palestinian territory”, is false. It never was and is not now Palestinian territory, and I will prove that contention. So, let’s get going.

It has been forgotten the terrible meaning to the word “occupation”. The term occupation is meant to signify larceny, theft of others’ property, abuse of the Other, cheating, immorality, and dreadful deeds. Obviously, this is a very offensive concept. But Jews are not, and cannot be guilty of these crimes, for two reasons. One, Jews are the extant aboriginal people of this land, and two, Jews have international legal rights to this territory. These two concepts, historical and legal, require elucidation.

What defines Jewish aboriginality to the land of Israel is the consistency of modern Jews with their ancestors of thousands of years ago. They live in a country with the same name, Israel, as that which existed in 1312 B.C.E. Today’s Israelis speak the same language that was spoken by Jews in that land more than 3000 years ago. We do not need a Rosetta stone to understand ancient Hebrew scripts because the language and letters are the same as current Hebrew. And Hebrew is the source of everyone’s alphabetic adaptation of language, about the 9^th century, BCE. Israelis chant from the same biblical texts that their ancestors did millennia past. Their Jewish law presently is derived from that found in their Talmud which was originally oral and later written down about twenty-five hundred years ago. Their Temple, which was destroyed by invaders twice, can be archaeologically located in their original site in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem which was founded by their biblical King David, still stands as the centre of Jewish sovereignty, as it did when King David ruled the Jews.

In reality, the Jewish people established a distinct civilization in their ancient homeland approximately 3500 years ago, and the roots of that civilization are still much of the source of Jewish life in Israel right now. And, despite a series of conquests and expulsions over the centuries, (Roman, Muslim, Crusaders), Jews retained and rebuilt communities in Jerusalem, Tiberius, Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa, Caesarea, Safed and elsewhere. Years before the modern Zionist migrations began in the 1870s, Jews lived continuously over time throughout the land of Israel.

Indeed, there’s the work of Allan Hertz which is outstanding scholarship on the subject of Jewish original rights to this land, in which he argues that prior to the Balfour Declaration (etc. that I will be considering with you later), the Jewish People exercised aboriginal rights’ of entry, sojourn and settlement for more than two millennia. (Post 1917~1924, those aboriginal rights are also treaty rights. Here’s where you can find his exceptional work. www.allanzhertz.com.)

On the other hand, there were no Muslims in existence until almost 2000 years after Jews had already settled in Israel, because Islam was the religion that Mohammed founded. Arabs, who are the ethnic peoples out of the Arabian Peninsula, had not come to the region through their conquests until after Mohammed’s death in 632 ACE.  It is important to understand that no independent Arab or Palestinian state has ever existed in this region. Nor were the Arabs of Palestine a self-defined people until 1967 (See Hertz). The name Palaestina , hence Palestine, came into being , after the Romans so renamed it in the second century. The Romans purpose for this alteration was to break the link of the Jews with their past, after they had crushed the Jewish revolt in ACE 135. Thus, when the Arabs did conquer and occupy parts of the land, they did so as occupiers of previously settled territories by Jews.

As for more recent Arab settlers, if one looks at the period when Jews began to immigrate to the region in large numbers in 1882, there were fewer than 250,000 Arabs living in the region, and the majority of these had arrived in recent decades. According to many observers and authorities, the vast majority of the Arab population in the early decades of the twentieth century were comparative newcomers, either late immigrants or descendants of persons who had immigrated into the territory in the previous seventy years.

BDS supporters, who accept the premise that the Palestinians are indigenous and oppressed by white colonialists have it backward according Barbara Kay, columnist for the National Post (Canada). “It is the (non-white) Mizrachi Jews in continuous habitation in Israel from time immemorial who were oppressed under a series of imperial regimes, up to and including the British Mandate.”

This reference to the British Mandate brings me to the second aspect of Jewish rights to the land of Israel, that of validity under international law. Israel’s legal position begins after WW1, when the Allies defeated Germany, Turkey or rather the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria. Up until then the whole Middle East and beyond was under the power of the Ottoman Empire. (The Turks are not Palestinians nor are they Arabs).  With the Empire defeated, there were no nations and no borders that we recognize today in that territory.

The Allies, (Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the US), collectively assumed the title The Supreme Council, which then adopted political and judicial power. This council convened the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. In turn, it created the League of Nations which introduced the Mandate System.

In determining how to assign sovereignty to Middle East territories, which include what is now Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, the League heard from Arab delegates and Zionist Organizations presenting their respective cases. In April 1920, in San Remo, Italy, the decision was made. The Arabs were granted sovereignty over 96% of the territory, while Palestine was granted to the Jewish people worldwide, as per the recommendations of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which then became international law.

The map drawn up by the San Remo Conference on April 25, 1920, resulted in the creation of new exclusively Arab states; Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. It also drew the borders of the geographic region hitherto known as Palestine since Roman times, which was designated for the Jewish National Home to be reconstituted there, in consideration of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

Notice the decisive language here: it is a reconstitution, not a new entity, or the novel creation of a Jewish national home in that territory, which includes both east and west of the Jordan River. One alteration occurred in 1922, when the British acquired permission from the Mandate Authority to carve out a nation from the land of Palestine east of the Jordan River, which was named the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan (later Jordan).

This San Remo Resolution was later confirmed in the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, and approved by the 52 members of the League of Nations. The acquired rights of the Jewish people to the land west of the Jordan river are preserved in the UN Charter of 1945 (article 80) and in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (article 70-lb).

All the countries we know in the Middle East stem from these Mandates. All the borders we know originate from these Mandates.. After WW2, the Mandate system was renamed Trustee Council of the General Assembly, and what they did with the territory of Palestine was divide it up into 6 pieces, some granted to the Arabs, some to the Jews. The Jewish portion was significantly smaller than those granted to the Arabs.  However, the Jews accepted this partition, but the Arabs did not. Had they done so, this partition would probably have become international law

Instead there was the War of Independence in 1948-9, when the new born state of Israel was attacked by 5+ Arab states. This war ended in an armistice which included the green lines, that is, the line around the portion of Judea and Samaria that Jordan captured, the line around Gaza that Egypt captured, and land that Syria captured on the Golan Heights. Those famous lines are treated as legal boundaries by Obama, the European Union, most ideologically leftists, certainly Palestinians and their supporters, and others. However, they have no legal status in international law. They are ceasefire lines. And moreover, they have nothing to do with 1967, except that Israel fought a defensive war then, was attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, defeated those invaders, and took back the lands that they had captured in 1949.

If we call the territories bound by these lines, Palestinian territory, we are retroactively recognizing the Arab conquests by Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. By international law it is forbidden to acquire territory by aggressive war. That’s part of the UN Charter. There’s one exception to that article (52); countries are entitled to acquire territory through the exercise of a defensive war, which undoubtedly the Six-Day war was for Israel.

There is therefore absolutely no doubt on the basis of both law and history that Israel cannot be an occupier of any lands west of the Jordan River to the sea. The importance of asserting Israel’s legal rights is that this alleged “occupation” has become the symbol of justification for the Palestinian claims and violence. It is one of those big lies that have become accepted as truth through repetition and through the authoritative voices using it continuously. It is not only a lie because of what I have argued here, but also because Hamas controls the whole of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority has jurisdiction over the majority of the West Bank, estimated to be as much as 95%.

But “occupation” is a very central signal for the Palestinians’ core cultural and political position, namely the rejection of Israel. Thus, the concept and use of this term is not only a falsehood, it is an inhibiter of any chance of peace with the Palestinians, since it is identified with the Palestinians refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state in any part of the land, land that is legally within the rights of the Jews. Let’s be clear, anyone using the statement “Israeli occupation” as it relates to the land of Israel is uttering an oxymoron.

But more importantly, all those who are championing the idea of Palestinian lands are inhibiting a peaceful solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict which is now 100 years old and ongoing. As long as the Palestinians deny the peoplehood of the Jews and their aboriginal rights to their homeland as a people, there is no possibility of a reasonable solution that has a hope of lasting peace. Because the basis of a deal begins with the acceptance of Jews in the land, which has always been rejected. Then there’s a possibility of respectful negotiations. The Palestinians are a young people, but young or not, they define themselves today as a people. Hence an agreement is between two peoples, one ancient one and one recent one. That’s the basis and without it there’s no prospects for peace.

I Don't Want An Apology

An Apology is not Welcome

By

Sally F. Zerker

Canadian governmental spokespeople have been active lately in apologizing for historical wrongs. One such apology was offered by Justin Trudeau on the 18^th of May, when he apologized for a little known iniquitous act by the Canadian government against a shipload of Indian immigrants 102 years ago. On May 30, the premiere of Ontario, Katherine Wynne, apologized to native peoples from this region for a painful history of exploitation.  Everybody, seemingly, is getting in the act. Toronto’s chief of police has also issued an apology, this time for a raid on gay bathhouses years ago.

Please don’t jump to the conclusion that I’m writing this piece in order to demand yet another apology. I don’t want one, despite the fact that there is no doubt I was enduringly harmed by the government of Canada. Still I want it known that I don’t want an apology for what they did to me 80 years ago.

What malice was inflicted on me personally by the Canadian government? It was responsible for the early deaths of my aunt, uncle, and their children—my cousins. Of course the Canadian authorities didn’t directly murder these members of my family, but nevertheless they were responsible.

How come? My aunt Chaya was my father’s sister, she was married to Alter , and they had five healthy, bright children, who undoubtedly would have been a great asset to Canada.  Chaya and Alter lived in Lodz, Poland. In the  1930’s, they were all set to join their parents and siblings in Canada. By then, my father’s whole extended family, with the exception of Chaya’s, was already settled in Toronto, Canada.

My parents migrated to Canada in 1927, to join both their maternal and paternal parents and siblings. My father’s four brothers and one sister were newcomers to Canada. As you can imagine, these new immigrants were doing everything possible to earn a living. But they were determined to assemble enough money to bring their remaining sibling and her family to Canada. Unfortunately, it took a few years to accumulate the required amount.

By that time, in the thirties, the Canadian policy with regard to Jews wanting to settle here, was in the hostile hands of Prime Minister Mackenzie King and Frederick Blair, head of immigration, who had the support of the Liberal cabinet and the caucus. They didn’t want any Jews to enter Canada. None! The result was that Canada had the worst record for the entry of Jewish refugees of any nation during the Nazi years.

The application of Chaya’s family’s to migrate to Canada was made in the normal way, and to my father’s surprise and disappointment, their visas were denied. An expert on immigration was hired to appeal the decision, but this too failed. A reason given for the rejection was that Alter, the husband and father of the family, had a limp, and was therefore liable to have tuberculosis of the limbs, which could threaten other Canadians. I don’t know how they came up with this excuse because it was a complete falsehood.  I know this for certain, because one cousin who survived the holocaust, and who came to Canada after liberation, is still with us, thank God. She told me that this accusation is utter nonsense. Her father was strong and young, was fully competent to work, walk and run, and with healthy legs.

Why then is it that I don’t want an apology for this cruel act? Because an apology can’t right this wrong.  It will not retrieve my relatives for me nor offer me any solace. Instead, it will whitewash a government and a Liberal Party that continued to do nothing to amend the type of antisemitism that was endemic in Canada until the 1970s.

It was the kind of antisemitism that was so widespread and casual that I was not the least bit surprised when I was turned down for a job for which I was well qualified, when I was told that it was not for me because I wouldn’t be comfortable being the only Jew at that insurance company.  The president of the company who interviewed me was obviously “thinking only of my well-being”. That kind of antisemitism was also responsible for my sister’s rejection when she sought to become a nurse, and was frankly told by hospital authorities that being Jewish made it out of the question.  I’m happy to say that my children and grandchildren never had to face that type of discrimination for their Jewishness.

However, a job still remains for the Liberal Party now in power with regard to antisemitism. Antisemitism is rife on the campuses, on social media, and among Non-government Organizations (NGO), only it hides behind anti-Zionism and anti-Israel hostility. Jewish citizens of Canada should not have to experience hatred for their Jewishness, ever. But they unfortunately do today, in many venues.  It’s too late to correct the past, which is what an apology contrives to do. But it is not too late for Canadian authorities to make certain that antisemitism is never again allowed to thrive, anywhere and at any time, in this great country. 

Israel's Wars, Oil, and the Media

 Nov. 16, 2014, CIJR Colloquium, Sally Zerker paper

 

Those 50 days of the war between Gaza and Israel this past summer were, to say the least, very stressful here, although, of course,  it was nothing compared to that of the Israeli people’s stress, who are in the line of fire and whose sons, daughters, husbands are in mortal danger in Gaza. Nevertheless, we do experience stress when Israel is at war, and it was heightened by our daily exposure to outright lies about Israel’s part in the war, and if not that, intentionally unfair handling of the news. You know what I mean by that; the story’s opening word are “Israel bombed etc. et., and end with “in retaliation to Hama’s missile attack.” You know, first Israel’s “vicious” deed, and only as an afterthought the actual cause of the attack, Hamas unrelenting missiles targeting Jewish civilians and using their own children as shields for their missiles. Of course NYT, or any of the other guilty media, know what they’re doing, what their objective is in distorting the reporting to make Israel the aggressor, when all the time they know exactly who the aggressor really is.

Well, I’m here to tell you that this experience with media distortions, lies, and vilifications against Israel is not new. Like most things, there’s a history of its evolution, and it’s that history that I want to talk about today.

The turning point was the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Some of you have recollections of desperation and fear as we witnessed that war that almost led to disaster for Israel. But in the end the IDF, Israel Defense Forces, under Ariel Sharon, saved the day, rather saved the country, and just about destroyed the Egyptian army that was caught and surrounded by the IDF in the Sinai.

By 1973 the western world was already totally addicted to oil for its energy needs and the US had become a net importer of oil instead of an exporter. Also, by 1973, unfortunately, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries , OPEC the oil cartel, was firmly in the driver’s seat. And OAPEC, the Arab members of OPEC , (there were 8 Arab members out of 13, plus two additional Muslim members, leaving only Venezuela, a very sympathetic ally, Ecuador and Gabon) decided that the Arab defeat in 1973 was a good time to use oil as a political weapon against Israel, and hence also a great opportunity to raise the price drastically, so drastically that it has come to be called the price revolution.

How did they manage that? By a triple whammy decided on at an AOPEC oil ministers’ meeting on October 17, 1973. One, embargo the United States and the Netherlands, both seen by the Arabs as having supported Israel before and during the war. According to the thinking of the Arabs, the US in particular had to have been the cause of the defeat of the Egyptian army; the Arabs could not then, before, or later believe, or want to believe, that the “inferior” Jews alone could have overcome the Muslims.

2. All consuming nations were subjected to supply constraints, as OAPEC members pledged to cut production 10% the first month and 5% per month thereafter until we all altered our policies to support Arab demands in their conflict with Israel; ie., Israel would return all Arab lands it had occupied since the 6-day war, including Jerusalem, and the all the rights of the Palestinians were guaranteed. The announced cuts in production turned out to be more propaganda than truth because such deep cuts never happened, but the psychology worked,  nevertheless.

3. The price of oil was quadrupled in 3 months, from $3.01 a barrel in mid-October  to $11.65 on January1, 1974.

Well, the western world went into shock. Of course the quadrupling of the price of the essential ingredient to their modern way of life was no small matter. But it was more than that.  So-called oil experts were spinning a line that the world was running out of oil, and this was meant to defend the Arab tactics, since the price increase would make us all conserve the finite resource. As you can see, we weren’t then and aren’t now running out of oil, although that talk never dies completely. But it had negative policy effects everywhere, and the media reflected those negative views. I remember when we (CPPME leaders) had a meeting in Ottawa with Alan Gotlieb, amb. to US, who claimed that Canada’s policy re. Israel under the Liberals had to be sensitive to Arab interests because of the dependency of  Canada on supplies from OPEC.  That was pure ignorance on his part.

And all this turmoil and danger to our way of life, whose fault was it? A consensus emerged, at first subdued, but then louder, that it was Israel’s fault. It was the “mighty” Israel, that military victor of the 6-DW, which had now beat up the Egyptian army. So, it’s those troublesome Jews once again.

That is not to say that all was glorious and light before 1973 with regard to media attitudes to Israel. No. But from the establishment of Israel until the six-day war in 1967 this has been analyzed (Neil Lewis) as the “Exodus” period, identified by the book by Leon Uris and the movie starring Paul Newman, where the overall impression was one that the media finds comfortable with regard to Jews, ie, crying over us (Naomi Ragan). It’s about the holocaust survivors, the struggling little country miraculously overcoming the thrust of five or more Arab armies, a pitiable but valiant existence.!!

The Six-Day War was the first step away from this sympathetic view. The press reports depict Israel as a powerful military force.  It’s a fact that journalists like to write sympathetically about the underdog, but after the 6-day War, Israel no longer is the underdog convincingly. It was then also, that the sentiment begins to shift more and more towards the Palestinian refugees, indeed the emergence of the recognition of the Palestinians as a distinct political body, not simply Arab. Furthermore, Palestinian terrorism which was heightened worked, because it focused the media on the supposed peoplehood of the Palestinians.

Which brings me back to the oil price revolution of 1973 and its effect on the media and on us, ie., professors. It was this changed and worrisome environment that was the motivating factor for the founding of the Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East, which was initiated by Irwin Cutler, but was carried forward by Professor Harry Crowe of York University, with the excellent management of the executive director, Dr. Eva Dessen, my late sister. CPPME became necessary and, I must say effective for a time. I’m not here to talk about when or why this influence disintegrated.

What intensified the pattern of negativity to Israel occurred in conjunction with and following outbreak of hostilities. The Lebanese invasion in 1982 was a huge source of condemnation and falsehoods about Israel’s practices in the war, so much so that it was the inspiration for the founding of C.A.M.E.R.A, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, an organization now based in Boston that monitors the media for what it perceives as anti-Israel bias. Since the NYT editors regard CAMERA “as harsh, angry, and usually unreasoning” (Neil Lewis), they must be doing something absolutely necessary and right.

Then we learn a lot from a very interesting study by Marvin Kalb and Carol Saivitz on the media and the 2006 war between Hezbolla and Israel.(Joan Shorenstein Centre for Press, Politics and Public Policy), I can tell you that what they say about that conflict can very rationally applied to the conflicts between Gaza and Israel. This type of war they call “an asymmetrical war, the new prototype of Middle East conflict, between a state (Israel) and a militant, secretive, religiously fundamentalist sect or faction, such as, in the case of Lebanon, Hezbollah, the “Party of God,” often referred to as a “state within a state”.  Applied to Hamas and the Gaza strip, we see this idea of an asymmetrical war, on the one side is Israel, a state,  and on the other the radical wing of the Palestinian movement and associate of the Islamic Brotherhood, also a partial state, one that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

The sub-title of the Kalb/Saivits paper is very telling; “the media as a weapon in an asymmetrical conflict”. And so it was in the recent Gaza war. You will recall how Hamas ordered people to remain in their houses even though Israel had warned that these were targeted. Well, that was the media weapon at work, since they fully expected Israel to be condemned for killing civilians, and they were right, and it was an arm of Hamas.

 

Also this article on Hezbolla-Israel war discloses something very relevant to all asymmetrical wars. They demonstrate that Israel, an open society, is victimized by its own openness because it can’t control the image and the message it wishes to convey to the rest of the world, while the closed society, Hezbolla, Hamas, can and does retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda. In the course of which, it becomes evident that the journalist in the closed society becomes an advocate, not an unbiased observer. And we were able to observe this whenever we saw and heard reporters coming to us from Gaza as the war raged. And notice too that very soon after the start of the fighting, we never heard the truth from commentators that Hamas started the war (Hezbolla the same). From the perspective of media as a weapon, Hamas had the advantage almost from the start.

 

How then do some or rather many complain about Israel’s hasbara. What chance does Israel have when the decks are stacked against it? It’s a constant struggle. And that’s why we here in the diaspora have to help wage this media weapon on behalf of Israel. Israel can’t do it alone. I know some people think that what we’re doing here, today, is merely speaking to the convinced, and that we should be taking our message to churches rather than synagogues. Right! But our task also involves mobilizing the convinced to be responsible and active, making sure our diaspora Jewish community makes the case for Israel on all levels. If you listen to Melanie Philips, and I agree with her, we aren’t doing a good job in that respect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding Deligitimation and its Jewish Component

Understanding Deligitimation and its Jewish Component

By Sally F. Zerker

I can assure you that I have a nice calm academic article and talk planned for today, and Fred will likely get it for the post-conference publication, but this is no time for academic niceties. This is the time for plain, blunt talk.

What we’re seeing today in Israel/Gaza is the most egregious hypocrisy yet, in a world where dishonesty has become the usual, the norm, where Israel is concerned. Here’s what we’re looking at directly, right now. On Israel’s northern border as we speak a war has been going on in Syria for almost two years with approximately 50,000 deaths, I don’t know how many wounded, but we know there’s easily a quarter of a million refugees, and large parts of several cities are today rubble. But this is Arabs killing Arabs. No parade of foreign ministers from the UK, France, the Eu, US, Can. Aust., or heads of state worrying about the Middle East tinder box exploding, no Arab countries condemning Assad as a human rights criminal. Who cares? Arab killing Arab even if it is 50,000 people, civilians notably, young, old, babies, sure. Painful to absorb but true.

But let Jews defend themselves which inevitably involves Jews killing Arabs, the world goes frantic, and all the above takes place, the foreign ministers’ parade to the microphones, the so-called friendly heads of state asking or demanding Israel’s restraint, the unfriendly ones denouncing Israel in vicious language, the Arab countries now wake up to the human rights violation but not for Syria’s, only for supposedly Israel’s, even though the numbers of death and wounded are a tiny fraction in comparison. Why? What reason could there be for this inequity and excess? I’ll tell you. It’s clear to me at least. It is that Jews have no business defending themselves? For two thousand years until 1948 the only roles for Jews were two, victim and scapegoat. The chutzpa! Giving up their expected roles as victims, or/and scapegoats.

Has what I’m saying here anything to do with the deligitimation of Israel? You bet! The Palestinians know they will not destroy Israel with their rockets. This will only do what Hamas says in its leaflet number 65, “Every Jew or settler is a target and must be killed. Their blood and their property is forfeit”. But the advantage to Hamas is precisely this prejudiced world reaction, the deligitimation outcome that is meant to undermine Israel’s “right to exist”. That is the objective of the deligitimation operations.

I must say something about this outrageous question or even when it is a statement of support for “Israel’s right to exist”. How can it be that only one country in the whole world, where there are 195 other nations on Earth, (acc. to US state dept. figures, UN lists 193 countries) that the one Jewish state is challenged as to its legitimacy? Not only is Israel the nation with the most valid national identity historically in this land, it is also by reason of practice, the clearest case for national existence. (re.fraudulent, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia right to exist??) Menachem Begin would have none of this. He bristled even when someone supported Israel’s right to exist. This is what he said ;

“We are granted our right to exist by the God of our fathers at the glimmer of the dawn of human civilization four thousand years ago! And so it is that the Jewish people have an historic , eternal and inalienable right to Eretz Yisrael, the land or our forefathers. And for that right which has been sanctified in Jewish blood from generation to generation, we have paid a price unequalled in the annals of the nations”.

Now back to the issue under consideration today. The facts are that the tactics of deligitimation , such as boycott, Israel as an apartheid state, the Israel/Nazi inversion and others have all been around for a long time. But there’s a difference now with the programs and projects for deligitimating Israel. Today this operation is in all respect an aspect of the war of the Arabs against Israel, a substitute for belligerent war. Two previous techniques of the Arabs to destroy Israel failed to do that. You know them: one, the combined armed forces of Arab neighbouring countries, in 1948, 56, 67, 73, and two, the Palestinian suicide and other dreadful terrorist attacks. Both have failed to destroy Israel and they know it now. The objective of the deligitimation of Israel is the same, the destruction of the Jewish state, but there’s a difference. What we are dealing with today is globalization in the deligitimation of Israel, in an era where communications technology offers unprecedented opportunities for organization and co-ordination. You and I are today involved whether we like it or not. If we care about Israel’s security and wellbeing then we too have work to do to combat the evils of those who hate the Jewish state and the Jewish people. For those who don’t care, by their indifference they are willy-nilly part of the equation.

That brings me to the most distressing aspect of this campaign. For me, it is the fact that we have a sector of the deligitimation operation that is composed of Jews. They matter more than their numbers or organization. They give a hechsher to the church groups, the pro-Palestinian political activists in the universities, the Islamists, and others who want to harm Israel. Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor calls what they do, Jew-washing. That aroused a storm of angry diatribes by some of these types, but I think he’s dead right. Moreover, I’ve come across statements by any number of our Jewish Israel-haters and so has Steinberg that confirms that they know they are indeed adding license to gentile anti-Israel activists and organizations.

Let me give you some idea of whom and what I’m talking about in this regard. There’s an institution called the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN that is made up of Jewish affiliates from all over the Western world, (Argentina, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, United States, South Africa, Australia, and United Kingdom). This organization is indeed a network on a global scale. These organizations separately and together use all the tactics of deligitimation. They are in agreement that Israel should indeed be destroyed, by a widespread, preferably universal attack that leads to its isolation and economic destruction. They have an active campaign in support of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against what they call the apartheid and colonialist state of Israel. Also the network endorses academic and cultural boycotts. They also demand the right of return of all so-called Palestinian refugees to Israel, which of course is a prescription for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, decidedly in this network’s positive agenda. There’s no doubt that IJAN is a product of the internet.

I also think that because deligitimation has gone global there’s a new and profitable industry that is composed of Jews both in Israel and in the diaspora who hate Israel and either want to see its existence as a Jewish state abolished, ended.  And there is a ready-made infrastructure available for this industry. So, let’s look at the composition of that industry and its infrastructure.

The industry is pretty well universally composed of Jews committed to a leftist ideology. I am familiar with gentile right wing anti-Israel activists, but I know of no right wing Jews so motivated. The left, in its hostility towards Jews goes back to the father of modern leftist thinking, Karl Marx, who was a virulent antisemite as we learn from his own words. But interestingly and specifically, many contributors to the school of socialist thought and activities who in one way or another expressed their hostility to Jews, were themselves Jews ( to name a few,  Bernard Hesse,  Bernard Lazare, Moses Hess, Ferdinand LaSalle, Karl Kautsky, Victor Adler, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Bruno Kreisky, Isaac Deutscher and others[1] )and they laid the intellectual or rather anti-intellectual groundwork for today’s Jewish anti-Zionists.

So, what is the nature of this industry I have suggested to you? It is an opportunity for fierce Jewish critics of Israel to acquire enormous benefits and fame directly as a result of their defamation of Israel. Their books get published and translated to sell in foreign parts, these often become best sellers, articles are written about them in the mainstream press, they are invited to present their views all around the continent, Europe and elsewhere, and receive lucrative payments for such appearances, and so on. And while receiving unusual and exceptional exposure they always complain that they are being shut up and shut down, which is the height of their hypocrisy. 

Now, every industry needs an infrastructure. The ready-made one in this globalized world of communications is the mainstream press which has a consistent bias in favour of negative views on Israel, the publishing industry that  profits more from books by Jews critical of Israel than the opposite, and universities that are obliging hosts for voices of disapproval of Israel, and the social media

I am going to list a few names with whom we have become familiar because of their fame as beneficiaries of this industry: Noam Chomsky,[2] Uri Avnery, the late Israel Shahak[3] Norman Finkelstein,[4] Jaqueline Rose , Ilan Pappe, Yigal Tumarkin, Neve Gordon,  Avraham Burg, the late (unlamented) Tony Judt, George Steiner, John Mearshimer and Stephen Walt and in Canada Michael Neumann[5] of Trent University.

Too often these academics are touted as great scholars who therefore bring to their condemnation of Israel special authority. But I contend that there is no way they would have articles written about them in the New York Times, the Guardian or the Atlantic magazine based on their academic scholarship. Even Noam Chomsky, who we are told is a fine scholar of linguistics at MIT, of all places for this subject, would I believe have merited attention only as far as academic conferences, and unless we had a special interest in linguistics, I doubt the non-academic world would have had exposure to Chomsky. Finkelstein was denied tenure at St. Paul University because he’s done nothing worthwhile in his field, nevertheless his books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were best sellers in the US and in translation in Germany, and he is a popular speaker on the hate-Israel circuit. What would Finkelstein have been without Israel to bash? Another obscure failed academic.   Remember, there are thousands upon thousands of professors in each country, 8000 in Israel alone. Basically, they are not famous and their books are rarely money-makers, and are known perhaps only in their narrow specialty. So, I think there’s a great return to be had from telling lies about Israel.

I think in a way, you and I are caught in an insurmountable trap. We probably aid and abet the lucrative results for these Israel haters because we pay attention to their intolerable lies in order to refute them. But in doing so we create more of an audience for them and add to their proceeds. However, I’m afraid we cannot avoid this conundrum because all of us, each and every one of us, who are committed to the Jewish state and the Jewish people bears a responsibility to fight this latest, dreadful stage of the Arab war against Israel.

---

[1] Wistrich,  “From Ambivalence to Betrayal, The Left, the Jews and Israel”

 

[2] Chomsky may sound rational but I think he goes so far that there is madness there.  For Chomsky Israeli apartheid is far worse than South Africa’s, Islamic terrorism is at most a minor irritant, Palestinians are bastions of moderation, sees similarities in planning, policies and thinking between Hitler’s actions and those of Israel and the United States, and that he was personally “agnostic” about the Nazi massacres. There’s more but that’s another subject

 

[3] Said the contemporary Israel was a terrorist state far more racist than Nazi Germany, was admired by Edward Said for his courage as a dissident.

 

[4] Finkelstein, says Wistrich , is the go-to Jewish icon for Islamists , neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and deluded leftists that is determined to believe that demonic Israel is the source of all their woes. Pg. . 674

 

 

[5]  For Neumann Israel and Jews in general are complicit in crimes against humanity, more so than Nazi Germany.

 

Home-Grown Deligitimators: Jewish Anti-Zionists

Delivered on April 22, 2012, at conference on the security of Israel

Sally F. Zerker



I’m here today to talk about a subject that I wish weren’t true. I wish that the Jewish people were one, that there was a universal consciousness that we have an obligation to each other, to our heritage, to our survival, hence to the state of Israel. But sadly that’s not the case. I’m here to tell you about Jews who are anti-Zionists, some of whom literally despise Israel, and who aren’t quiet about it. They’re objective is to use every means at their disposal to harm Israel. They are undoubtedly important contributors to the current form of war against the Jewish state, an international effort by all sorts of groups to define Israel as a rogue and illegitimate state, which must be abolished. Jewish contributors to this hateful message and goal come from a variety of sources and perspectives, so in the 15 minutes at my disposal I will try to touch on as many aspects of this subject as possible.



First, let’s understand why these anti-Israel Jews obviously feel a need to announce their Jewish connection along with their hate-filled message, and often I find that these same Jews have no other connection to Judaism. Not always, but often. I offer three reasons. One reason they openly associate themselves with their Jewish being/birth is that they think that their message is more persuasive to their audience that as Jews they must have a sensitive outlook on Israel, and so what they have to say has got to be an unbiased opinion. Secondly, if he or she is Jewish, they can’t be accused of being anti-semites, so they argue, because Jews can’t be anti-semites. Alan Hart, for eg., a British journalist, in his book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews , writes. “all of the most perceptive and most devastating Zionist critics were and are Jews.” and these accusations can never be anti-semitic because Jews themselves have voiced it. This absolution of Jews as anti-semites is a cover for theirs and non-Jewish critiques’ false attacks on Israel. Of course, as I will demonstrate later on, Jews can and are anti-semites. Unlike Leon Trotsky who recognized the anti-semitic aspects of harassment of him, who said he can smell anti-semitism, (and which of us can’t?) contemporary Jewish anti-Zionists have lost the sense for it.

A third reason for their self-identification as Jews was offered by an organization called the International Jewish Anti-Zionist network. I’ll get to that reason in a moment. First let me tell you about that that alliance of Jewish anti-Zionists. It is a network that has Jewish affiliates from all over the Western world, (Argentina, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, United States, South Africa, Australia, and United Kingdom). This network of Jews against Israel are in agreement that Israel has no right to exist, should indeed be destroyed, preferably by a widespread, universal attack that leads to its isolation and economic destruction They have an active campaign in support of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against what they call the Apartheid and colonialist state of Israel. Also the network endorses academic and cultural boycotts. They also demand the right of return of all so-called Palestinian refugees to Israel, which of course is a prescription for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, decidedly in this network’s positive agenda. And stated in one of their publications is their motive for Jewish activism against Israel, and I quote; “these anti-Zionist Jewish activists and organizations put the blame for ‘crimes against humanity’ on Israel …in order to prevent blaming all Jews for the actions of Israel.” What we have here is a familiar defense, historically, where Jews damn other Jews and thereby pose as the “good Jews” for the gentile world. So this motivation applies not only to the signators of the IJAN, but I believe has broad motivation among anti-Israel Jews.

As we can see this network is openly hostile to Israel. But there is another and subtler ploy as practiced by some others like J Street, (New Israel Fund) which calls itself Jewish and pro-Israel. But let’s see what this so-called pro-Israel body has advocated. When Israel launched its defensive war in Gaza after thousands of missiles have been rained on southern Israel from Gaza, J Street called for superpower intervention to restrain the IDF. More recently, all published evidence to the contrary, J Street released a statement on the recent rocket attacks against Israel's southern communities and the IDF response. In this statement, J Street says… "Israel Defense Forces… have killed over a dozen Palestinian civilians." This is an utter lie, one they actually had to back down from because the evidence that these were not civilians but Hamas fighters. Another lie is their claim that the majority of Palestinians recognize that a two-state solution is the only means to achieve true peace and security. No such popular opinion exists among Palestinians. The vast majority simply want nothing less than all of the land between the Jordan and the sea. J Street is perfect tool for Obama, and Obama is a perfect tool for J Street.

There is yet another set of Jewish anti-Zionists who are disturbing to say the least, but by and large are not openly involved in the international war to deligitimate Israel. That is ultra-orthodox anti-Zionists, many of whom live in Israel, but won’t celebrate Yom Ha’atzma’ut, yet are very happy to drain the coffers of the State of Israel and contribute nothing. That’s the biggest concern about these religious orders, and they are more like order than organizations. Naturei Karta is the exception with regard to public condemnation of Israel—early on they allied themselves with the PLO—but there are actually 19 groups listed on the internet as “well-known Jewish orthodox anti-Zionist groups”, and we’ve not had the external impact we find with other Jewish anti-Israel groups and individuals.

Anti-Israel Jewish academics are altogether another matter. They have access to press because they write articles and books, they also have access to young people’s minds. Not only have academics the opportunity to influence students by persuasion, but they also have the power of intimidation, and can and often do make it a matter of scholarly success that the students follow their anti-Israel bias.

This is particularly worrisome coming from the professors in Israeli universities. I know it is surprising that this is a real problem, that there is overt hostility emanating from some Israeli universities, but it is a distressing fact Israeli professors don’t have to identify themselves as Jews to have the advantage of “believability’. After all, they are Israelis. Who would know the situation better than Israeli Professors. Right? Wrong!

Martin Sherman of the Jerusalem Post writes the following about this element of Israel’s academe; “One of the gravest challenges facing Israel today is the international assault on its legitimacy. Much of the assault is being precipitated—certainly facilitated and exacerbated—by prominent figures within the Israeli academe.” The source of the malaise, as he calls it, is mainly the faculties of social sciences and humanities, including law, although there are six mathematicians and a couple from chemistry and physics in the roster. According to Shlomo Sharan, writing under the auspices of the Ariel Policy for Scholarly Research, of approximately 8000 faculty in all the Israeli universities, about 500 are activists against Zionism and the Israeli state. That is about 6%, but if take the proportion of the concentration of such opinion and activity in the more relevant faculties, the proportion is about 25%. Not all Israeli universities, and hardly any colleges are inundated with these anti-Israel pro-Palestinian professors; included however are Hebrew U., Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion and Haifa universities. Ofira Seliktar has examined and documented the intellectual debt of Israel’s anti-Zionists to a long tradition in the social sciences of neo-Marxist, post modernist “critical” thought. That’s a scholarly way of saying the simple truth, that they are leftists.



And that’s exactly what I want to talk about now. Is there a common factor among all the Jewish anti-Zionists, and here I exclude the ultra-orthodox. These have their own ideology, that Israel is a false state because the moshiach hasn’t yet appeared. But for the others is there a driving principle a common characteristic? There is! Scratch any one of these haters of Israel and underneath you’ll find that they have a leftist origin. We have some Jewish academics here in Canada who write and speak against Israel and support the IAW, and without exception they are committed leftist ideologues. In the United States the same is true.



It’s also true that Jewish leftists and the left generally have a history of bias not only against Israel but against Jews generally. The god of all modern leftist thought, Karl Marx, was a virulent anti-Semite. His hateful diatribe against Jews is found in his essay “On the Jewish Question”. In which her pretty well argues that the trouble with the world is the existence of Jews; Let the world be rid of the Jews and all will be well. How far is that from Mein Kampf? Not far at all.



Early pioneers, many socialist Kibbutz founders, though Zionists, were devoted to Stalin, whose record on anti-semitism is no secret. Some even hung his picture in their kibbutzim dining rooms.

There was one time when the left, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, had glowing things to say about Israel. That occurred when Stalin was in favour of the establishment of Israel, believing as he did that those early socialist leanings of the kibbutzim founders would create a vassal state for the Soviet Union in the Middle East. He had reason to hope because as we know, the left in Israel at that time were indeed devoted to Stalin. The revealing work of Amnon Lord (1988) leaves little room for doubt that in pre-State Palestine and in Israel’s early years, the far-left wing of the Zionist movement (Mapam, Hashomer Hatzair) was singularly concentrated on its loyalty to the Soviet Union and to communism, and viewed the Jewish State as a potential tool for the cultivation and spread of communist doctrine. But Israel did not follow the Stalin plan, and so that was the end of pro-Israel sentiment by leftists. As Stalin went so went his followers, and so the left generally reverted to its traditional hostility to Israel and to Judaism.



I have yet to be able to prove that Israeli anti-Zionists, some of whom call themselves post-Zionists, are the descendents of these radically leftist kibbutznicks, (who were actually not even raised by parents but by the ideological grouping family structures that were the nature of child-rearing in those days.) It would be an interesting research project, one that maybe is a good graduate thesis. But I do suspect that from original Mapam and Shomer Hazair kibbutzim is be found a fundamental source to leftist passionate hatred that one finds among Israeli anti-Zionist .But such fanatic loathing is not restricted to Israeli anti-Zionists. Here’s some arguments I find among both types, not in any specific order.

1. Zionist ideology is racist; Israeli conduct towards the Palestinians in 1948 was racist; Israel's laws, especially as reflected in its treatment of the Arab citizens of Israel and its status as an occupier of Palestinian territories, are racist. Hence, this justifies the term "apartheid."

2. Arab aggression is justified . A disturbing example: Amos Oz , a very prominent Israeli author, who though leftist, would never previously demonize Israel abroad in the past. Recently, he visited with Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian terrorist condemned for five life sentences for the murder of five Israelis plus other orchestrated attacks on Israeli civilians and who only recently called for a third intifada and global boycott of Israel. Oz morally identified himself with Barghouti, insisting that they both share the same national objectives, and expressed the fervent hope that the ruthless killer would soon be released.

3. It’s Israel’s fault that anti-semitism is on the rise everywhere. Israel is bad for Jews. It’s true that Muslims attack Jews in Europe but they’re only getting back at Jews for Israel. Anti-semitism is Israel’s fault. “Tony Judt”

4 Israel / Nazi analogy is not uncommon. If we want to save this world, if we want to live in a humane planet, we must focus on the gravest enemy of peace, those who are wicked for the sake of evilness: the Israeli State and world Zionism. We all have to de-Zionise ourselves before it is too late. We have to admit that Israel is the ultimate evil rather than Nazi Germany

5. . In the Israeli, they see nothing of the legitimate state-building pioneer, they see only the predatory land-grabber and people-expeller; in the Palestinian, they see nothing of the defeated aggressor, they see only the victim. Indeed, the Palestinians are mostly represented as somewhat spectral vessels of pure suffering. Jews should remain victims, that’s an ok. role for Jews not Arabs.

6. the good news; despite all this, anti-Zionism remains a minority position in the Jewish community., thank God.

The last thing I want to talk about today is this widely-spread use of the term and the idea that those Jews who are against Israel and willing to do it harm are self-hating Jews. I don’t think Noam Chomsky hates himself, nor does Naomi Klein or her husband Avi Lewis who appropriately works for El Jaziera. No they don’t hate themselves at all, because they are convinced that they, as followers of their leftist ideals, have the answer to all human problems. The actual failure of every leftist experiment to date makes no impression on them at all. They believe in themselves, they know what’s best. So they don’t hate themselves.



But they do hate. They hate me, and Fred and Hal and you. They hate us because we are Jews who love the Jewish people and love Israel. They hate us for being Jews throughout out beings. In other words, they are not self-hating Jews , they are Jews who are anti-semites, no different than non-Jewish anti-Semites we unfortunately encounter as the universal illness that doesn’t go away.



Anti-Semites can’t bear that Jews are always “in your face”, always up front, always creating, always writing books, songwriting, inventing science, in fact, changing the world. Anti-Semites can’t abide it. As for Jewish anti-Semites specifically, Israel is always “in your face”, every day on the front pages, leading stories on the news, and it simply won’t lie down and be quiet. Someone I know quite well, a Jew, not an ignorant man, shocked me one day when he angrily spewed out , “I wish there had never been an Israel”. That’s what the Jewish anti-Semites, anti-Zionists want, that Israeli disappear. I thank God that Israel is here, that Israel will not disappear, but instead will go on from strength to strength.

Jewish Contributors to Deligitimation of Israel

Jewish Contributors to Deligitimation




The speech that Canada’s Foreign Minister, John Baird, made at the United Nations was clearly that of a friend and supporter of Israel Yet included in that excellent defense of Israel was the following statement; “we uphold Israel’s right to exist”. What does it mean when Israel’s best friend—and Canada is so publicly declared by a number of Israeli leaders—finds it necessary to assert Israel’s right to exist? Is that a signal that the deligitimation of Israel has filtered through the thought processes of all, including friends of Israel?



Of course that’s what we’re here to consider. For my part in this discussion I’m specifically interested in Jewish contributors to that process of deligitimation. In order to do that I first focus on the reason, the seeming need, for Jews who demonstrate against Israel to openly and publicly start with a declaration of their Jewish origin.



I’m reminded of a very early instance of such a declaration. A colleague at York University, who had never previously shown any inclination towards Jewish identity or practice, suddenly announced his Jewishness in conjunction with a statement to the press that was distinctly hostile to Israel. I wanted then to contact him to ask why he needed to suddenly expose his birth record, which as far as I could see was the extent of his Jewish connection up to that point? I didn’t do that at the time, I’ll tell you why not later. But the question remains. Why do Jewish groups and individuals who want to express opposition to, or even hatred of Israel, first make sure that in doing so everyone knows that their odious opinions (to me at least) comes from Jews?



Since we see this practice not once but again and again there has to be a motivation, even if that motivation is hidden. It has to be perceived as an advantage to their objectives. And I believe it is this; that their advantage stems from the fact that by first letting the world know that they are Jews they are announcing that first and foremost they are friends of Israel. Their arguments are supposedly strengthened because as friends they must have the best interest of Israel at heart. As Jews they have the advantage of being able to claim that they’ve looked at both sides and therefore have a better and worthier understanding of the conflict.



But there is an additional motivation, specifically expressed by the alliance of Jewish anti-Zionists under the banner of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN).

This organization is indeed a network on an international scale. This year, 2011, IJAN has Jewish affiliates from all over the Western world, (Argentina, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, United States, South Africa, Australia, and United Kingdom). This network of Jews against Israel are in agreement that Israel should indeed be destroyed, by a widespread, preferably universal attack that leads to its isolation and economic destruction They have an active campaign in support of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against what they call the Apartheid and colonialist state of Israel. Also the network endorses academic and cultural boycotts. They also demand the right of return of all so-called Palestinian refugees to Israel, which of course is a prescription for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, decidedly in this network’s positive agenda. And stated in one of their publications is their motive for Jewish activism against Israel, and I quote; “these anti-Zionist Jewish activists and organizations put the blame for ‘crimes against humanity’ on Israel …in order to prevent blaming all Jews for the actions of Israel.” What we have here is a familiar defense, historically, where Jews damn other Jews and thereby pose as the “good Jews” for the gentile world.



Those groups and individuals who have signed up with the IJAN have to be recognized as part and parcel of the harshest Jewish opponents of Israel. However, there are Jewish organizations that seemingly have the best interests of Israel at heart, yet may well be contributing to the deligitimation of Israel. I’m thinking of J Street, which calls itself the political home for pro-Israel and pro-peace Americans. It operates as a federal political action committee that primarily helps members elect candidates who reflect their values, through a variety of activities aimed at influencing the outcome of elections. Their values currently, is expressed in a petition to press Congress not to cut funding for the Palestinians regardless of their actions at the United Nations. Also their values include their condemnation of the proposed construction of Givat Hamatos in Jerusalem as “not only bad faith, but bad policy.” Alan Dershowitz argues that J Street calling itself pro-Israel is dishonest. “ It is a fraud in advertising to call J Street pro-Israel.” he said. “An organization that calls for the US to censure Israel at the UN is not pro-Israel…. An organization that calls for taking any military measure against Iran off the table is not pro-Israel.” A Jewish organization that poses as pro-Israel yet regularly condemns Israel has an unfortunate negative influence against Israel.



There’s much that can be said about specific Jewish organizations and individuals who are active in anti-Israel measures. They each have their separate profile and activity. (For example, Dr. Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in a Nazi death camp, took up a 10-day tour to the UK and Ireland, accusing Israel of abusing the Holocaust to justify crimes against the Palestinians.) However, such detail, telling as it may be, is beyond the scope of this paper.

Instead I stick with my topic and address those claims of balance by Jewish anti-Israel propaganda voices. The real problem is that there’s every reason to believe that that claim is false. Why? Because to an utmost extent these Jewish groups and individuals are subject to a leftist ideology that dominates and leaves no or little room for objective thinking. And it’s easy to demonstrate that Jewish leftist ideology carries with it essential bias not only now against Israel but historically against Jews. Says Dennis Prager of the left’s capacity for objective reasoning, “After a lifetime of studying the left, I have concluded that leftism is a form of moral poison. It causes otherwise decent and kind people who take it into their systems to say and/or do cruel and sometimes evil things.”



The god of all modern leftist thought, Karl Marx, was a virulent anti-Semite. His hateful diatribe against Jews is found in his essay “On the Jewish Question”. Marxist apologists try to defend him by the spurious argument that it is not Jews as such that he hates, but rather the bourgeois values that are exemplified in some Jewish practices. Not true! Listen to the real Marx, and I quote from his essay; “What is the profane basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money. Very well: then in emancipating itself from huckstering and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself…..the emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. (italics Marx’s).” Let the world be rid of the Jews and all will be well. How far is that from Mein Kampf? Not far at all.



I said I would get back to my Jewish anti-Israel colleague and why I didn’t pursue his sudden self-identification as a Jew. It was because another colleague and a friend, who knew him, informed me that this political scientist did have a Jewish identity, it was that from a family of committed UJPO members, the United Jewish People’s Order, or the Jewish branch of the Communist Party.. There was no place for Jews in the general Communist Party which was as anti-semitic as any other part of Canadian society of the time or maybe more so. Jewish communists found an alternative in their own Jewish sub-grouping. Therefore, it was doubly important that those “good and desirable” communists know that the UJPO communists are not to be confused with those Jewish sorts who were still devoted to Judaism and Zionism.



There was one time when the left, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, had glowing things to say about Israel. That occurred when Stalin was in favour of the establishment of Israel, believing as he did that those early socialist leanings of the kibbutzim founders would create a vassal state for the Soviet Union in the Middle East. He had reason to hope because the left in Israel at that time were indeed devoted to Stalin, when some even hung his picture in their kibbutzim dining rooms. The revealing work of Amnon Lord (1988) leaves little room for doubt that in pre-State Palestine and in Israel’s early years, the far-left wing of the Zionist movement (Mapam-Hashomer Hatzair) was singularly concentrated on its loyalty to the Soviet Union and to communism, and viewed the Jewish State as a potential tool for the cultivation and spread of communist doctrine. But Israel did not follow the Stalin plan, and so that was the end of pro-Israel sentiment by leftists. As Stalin went so went his followers, and thus the move was on for their reversal to their traditional anti-Israel, anti-Jewish facade.



That was then, what about the left as it relates to Jewish anti-Israel activists now? For that we should look to the campuses where it is quite evident that those with leftist leanings are in the forefront of the opposition. I want to concentrate on Israeli campuses for this issue because it is a very substantial aspect of the Jewish anti-Zionist picture. Israeli academics don’t have to even identify themselves as Jews to have the advantage of “believability”. After all, they are Israelis. Who would know the situation better than Israeli professors? Right? Wrong!



Martin Sherman of the Jerusalem Post writes the following about this element of Israel’s academe; “One of the gravest challenges facing Israel today is the international assault on its legitimacy. Much of the assault is being precipitated—certainly facilitated and exacerbated—by prominent figures within the Israeli academe.” The source of the malaise, as he calls it, is mainly the faculties of social sciences and humanities, including law, although there are six mathematicians and a couple from chemistry and physics in the roster. According to Shlomo Sharan, writing under the auspices of the Ariel Policy for Scholarly Research, of approximately 8000 faculty in all the Israeli universities, about 500 are activists against Zionism and the Israeli state. That is about 6%, but if take the proportion of the concentration of such opinion and activity in the more relevant faculties, the proportion is about 25%. Not all Israeli universities, and hardly any colleges are inundated with these anti-Israel pro-Palestinian professors; included are Hebrew , Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion and Haifa universities. Ofira Seliktar has examined and documented the intellectual debt of Israel’s anti-Zionists to a long tradition in the social sciences of neo-Marxist, post modernist “critical” thought. That’s a scholarly way of saying the simple truth, that they are leftists.



From the point of view of our interest today on deligitimation of Israel, scholars from the social sciences and humanities are precisely the ones who are adept at publicizing their views through media and English publications. As Sharan noted, “many of the anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic academics to whom we refer here published books and articles presenting their views on Jews, Zionism and Israel that have received wide circulation in the English speaking world and among readers of English in other countries.” The spread of their hostile views is enhanced by the large number who travel abroad and lecture in many countries to academic and non-academic audiences. Sharan again, “the lectures of Israel’s anti-Zionists infect listeners with the anti-Semitic poison that appears in their books and articles.” Lastly, but certainly not least, these academics have special access to the minds of young Israelis, who are their students and who are likely to go on to leadership roles in Israeli society, perhaps even political policy makers.



Let me summarize as briefly as possible some of the concepts that are consistently argued and promoted by these anti-Zionist, anti-Israel academics.

1. Israel has not shed its connection to Judaism. It therefore has not become a liberal, secular, open society instead of a Jewish state. Israel should not be a Jewish state.

2. .Israel provokes the Arab-Muslim nations not the other way around. To stop this provocation Israel should give up the West Bank and the Golan Heights, ie. dismantle all settlements and leave..

3 Israel causes more damage to the Palestinians than they have caused Israel.

4 The courts in Israel cover up the claims of violence toward Arabs and of damage caused to their property.

5 The media in Israel are denounced for not objecting to Israel’s retaliation against the shooting of rockets on Sderot and nearby parts of the Negev.

6 Israeli Jews will not accept the responsibility for the naqba , the catastrophe, as the Palestinians see it, caused by the establishment of Israel in 1948. The naqba for the Arabs is similar to the Holocaust. for Jews.

7 Hence, Arab refugees must be allowed to return to Israel. For those who maintain this would end Israel as a Jewish state, so be it. There can be no two state solution only a one state solution.

8 Israel discriminates against Arabs. Israel practices apartheid in a manner worse that South Africa did before black liberation.

9 The world should impose a boycott of Israel in every possible sphere, in military and financial support, and in academic and professional areas. (except for themselves).

10 Israel is an evil racist, oppressive colonialist movement.



There’s more, but I have had enough, so I expect you have too. What comes out of this is an orthodoxy with regard to the validity of the Palestinian narrative and also to an unshakeable commitment to Palestinian statehood, but not the two state solution that the US and the Quartet have in mind. Any challenge to these orthodoxies is denigrated as inadmissibly flawed.



How about Jewish anti-Israel academics in Canada? There is much to be said about anti-Israel activities on Canadian university campuses, as we all know who have been living through these years especially from the beginning of this century (2000). Israel supporters continue to find themselves on the defensive across campuses in North America (and Europe) against powerful anti-Israel agitation. But for me, in consideration of the role of Jewish academics as either instigators or participants in this hostile agitation, I’ve concluded from all my research that although there are certainly Jewish academics involved, first, it’s clear that they are defined by their leftist ideology. In every case I’ve researched I find that those Jewish academics are of the Marxist, Trotskyite, or Anarchist (like Chomsky) variety. Secondly, while they uphold and support BDS programs against Israel and Israel Apartheid Week, or pro-Palestinian groups in various ugly anti-Israel demonstrations, on the whole (with perhaps a rare exception) these movements were not mobilized through the efforts specifically of Jewish professors. Israel Apartheid week which began its obnoxious life at the University of Toronto, resulted from the efforts of supposed unhappy, frustrated students, who were acting against abuses within the state in Israel that were being ignored Faculty was in fact kept at a distance at first. This was a sophisticated Palestinian project that originated in and was advanced from the Durban program. In the main, BDS is an outgrowth of the strategy from the UN’s Durban Conference of 2001. From that foundation where false claims against Israel of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid, were expanded the following year by pro-Palestinian groups to promote economic and cultural boycott of Israel.

.

In my view the DBS movement is not essentially a Jewish project. There’s no doubt that many Jewish groups and individuals support it. The IJAN has put out a list of Jewish groups and individuals who support DBS, which includes from Canada the usual professional leftists such as Naomi Klein and Judy Rebbick, as well as a Canadian organization called Not in My Name, Jews Opposing Zionism. But there’s no doubt that it was Palestinian groups that launched the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel in July 2005. The work of the DBS and Israel Apartheid movement, which are essentially one movement, originates in Canada through the efforts of Palestinian refugees, whose objective was and is to make the Palestine narrative the accepted vision for non-Palestinians. But of course the BDS/Apartheid operation has an international dimension, limited to Western countries not only for dissemination of its objectives but also for enormous source of funds—hundreds of millions of dollars—as documented by NGO Monitor (July 14, 2011). In the words of the Palestinian organizations that are the forces behind the movement, “Israel must be boycotted until it ends its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantles the Wall, recognizes the fundamental rights of its Arab-Palestinian citizens to full equality, and respects, protects, and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194”



Before I look at the effects of the work of Jewish activists on Israel’s image I must bring into the picture the existence of Jewish anti-Zionist religious groups. We’re all familiar with the Naturei Karta and its alliance with the PLO, that’s an old story. Perhaps too you know about the Satmar Chasidim anti-Zionism. But if you go on the internet you will find, to your surprise, at least it was to mine, that “a partial list of well known Jewish Orthodox anti-Zionist groups” counts19 such groups. There is a common theme among these orthodox anti-Zionists, that the unadulterated Torah reveals that any form of Zionism is heresy and that the existence of the state of Israel is illegitimate and contrary to Jewish law. Now, we are learning from Daniel Gordis that among the reform and reconstruction rabbinical students there is an anti-Israel component, not theologically as in the case of the Orthodox, but rather out of American liberal pro-Palestinian positions. Moreover, there are reform and reconstruction rabbis, already leading congregations, who take strong critical positions against Israel, which Barbara Kay has written about, noting that some 27 Rabbis are allied with Jewish Voices for Peace, among the most vociferous demonizers of Israel. Additionally, Elliot Jager writes about Conservative rabbinical students who are not even sure about that Israel should be a Jewish state. (Oct. 30/11)

Now I’ve reached the point in my talk where I want to figure out with you what this all means. As you would expect, I concentrate on the effect of Jewish participants in the movement to deligitimate Israel.



First, having said that Jews are active in the boycott programs, even if not the primary force, I looked at the question as to what extent the boycotts have hurt the economy of Israel? I see no evidence that the BDS movement has impacted Israel economically in a negative way. Israel is way ahead of its neighbours and some European countries in its S and P credit ratings, recently awarded a plus to its A standing, and described as stable by the rating system, which puts it in very good company on the world scene. GDP in 2010 was 4.6%, much higher than Canada, the United States, and Europe (as a whole). So, the economic goals of the DBS do not seem to have had a negative impact. Thus far, that is. When boycotters target stores or products here and in the US, through vigilant efforts on the part of Jewish communities in North America, this method has backfired. Will the vigilance continue? That’s a germane question.



As for BDS programs on North American campuses, the results are unclear. There’s a recent study by the Forward that indicates that since 2005, there have been 17 serious instances of BDS activity on 14 college campuses, in which boycott or divestment effort was significant and well-organized enough to draw an official response from a student government or campus administration. On the other hand, the Forward counters that in no instance has BDS action led to a university in the US or Canada divesting from any company or permanently ceasing the sale of any product. (Unlike North America, however, since the 2005 call, BDS activists have had some success in convincing European universities to adopt boycott measures.)



An encouraging sign recently was the misdemeanour convictions of 10 California college students for disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the US. There has been no similar outcome in Canada where protests against speakers have a dramatic and unfortunate record, starting at Concordia University in 2002 with the riot that ensued following the invitation to Benjamin Natanyahu. We can say too that at the time at Concordia at least two Jewish professors did in fact, not only support those who were shutting down the university by their intended silencing of Natanyahu, but seemingly played a leading role. But we have had no legal punishment either at Concordia or York Unversity for those who have inhibited free speech for invited guests who are noted for their concern for Israel, without real consequences for those responsible.



But this uncertain economic result does not take any account of the indirect influence of pro-Palestinian organized measures either on the campuses or in the communities at large. The real significance of this campaign is not so much to be found in the economic pressures but in the opportunity it provides to educate the unschooled public on the idea of “Israel apartheid” and “oppression of Palestinians”. Israel apartheid is meant to be an addition to the deceptive narrative that the Jews have stolen the Palestinian lands and now they oppress the rightful owners, similarly as the whites had oppressed the blacks in South Africa. This Arab (not exclusively Palestinian) narrative spread throughout the Western world is the foundation for the deligitimation of Israel.



It’s my belief that Jewish anti-Israel tactics has a double whammy effect because the public hears the hostile message from a voice they have difficulty denying as to its authenticity. Those who know that these Jews are almost exclusively following a leftist agenda can be more discerning. But it takes exposure of their real belief system and objective and that’s a task all in itself, a subtle intellectual argument that is not always readily accepted. Steven Plaut, writing about the leftist Jewish professors in Israel calls this phenomenon “a domestic academic fifth column”, a description with which I agree. The problem of a fifth column in any conflict is discernible when it is not identified and attacked. In Israel it is only recently that those academics who seemingly work to undermine the existence of Israel have come under attack. A group of students who call themselves ‘Im Tirtzu”, if you will it, from the Herzl statement ‘that if you will it , it is no dream’, founded in 2006 in Tel Aviv, launched a campaign to purge top universities of their anti-Zionist bias. Of course, their objects of condemnation, those leftist professors, cry foul, that the students’ program is nothing but McCarthyism.



Alan Dershowitz defends the right of free speech for the professors up to a point, but also the same right for the students. What point, according to Steven Plaut: Dershowitz confronted the all-too-common refrain sounded by these scholars that they are only engaging in legitimate criticism of Israel. To the contrary, Dershowitz contended, these people were actually often engaged in delegitimizing Israel itself, calling for world boycotts against the Jewish state, and at times calling for its annihilation. They go so far, he stated, as to organize boycott campaigns by recruiting and leading teams of anti-Israel radicals.



Let me conclude by getting very personal. When Palestinians and their Arab allies distort the Israeli case, deny the Jews’ historical rights to the land of Israel, and mount false campaigns connecting Israel to the apartheid regime of South Africa, I’m angry, and I know I have my work cut out for me (and for all of us) to correct the falsehoods and to tell the true narrative about Israel. But when Jews do exactly the same as their Arab soul mates, I’m not just angry, I’m white with rage. To explain, let me tell you an analogous story. During WWII, for those who weren’t around or haven’t read about it, there was a British man we called Lord Haw Haw, who broadcast from Germany telling lies, enticing British citizens to undermine or even betray their leaders, all in order to weaken the resolve of the British people in the Battle of Britain and after. Millions of people would gladly have strung him up because he was a traitor. As well, when I said I agreed with Steven Plaut as to the fifth column character of those anti-Israel professors, it is because they are traitors and in war we fear them for the harm traitors may do, because their goal is to assist the enemy. Let me make it clear, Israel is at war, and if Israel is at war then the Jewish people is at war. The deligitimation of Israel is war, designed to destroy Israel. I don’t know how else you can characterize it. So, for me, the Jews in their anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic (often) words and deeds represent the fifth column of the Jewish people. Hence, my white rage. And, like any fifth column in war we must seek them out and expose them. We certainly have no power to stop them, and in our free speech society we actually don’t want that power. But, I can only speak now for me, I have a duty to counter them and tell the true narrative of Israel, but also I must expose who they are and what are .their true intentions. I hope that my presentation can persuade others that “we” have this common duty and work cut out for ourselves.