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by Peter A. Belmont / 2012-10-19
© 2012 Peter Belmont
I take it as a well and widely understood—if far from universally acknowledged—”given” that Israel is a criminal enterprise in the sense that, historically and until today, it has used the force of arms to defeat the rights of others, chiefly the human rights, civil rights, property rights, and national rights of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian people, for those who don’t know, are the indigenous people of Palestine, the country in which some Jews chose to create the modern state of Israel and from which modern state they chose to expel 75% of the Palestinian population in 1948.
What are some of the crimes? [1] The ordinary non-state terrorism it used in 1945-1948 to expel the British from Mandatory Palestine (and later, first by non-state terrorism and later by state-terrorism and warfare to expel 75% of the Palestinian people from the land that Israel seized in the 1948 war). [2] The acts of war and state-terrorism by which it continued that project until today. [3] The illegal occupation (which might have been legal in 1967 when it began, but has clearly become a violation of the UN Charter’s declaration of the illegitimacy of the acquisition of territory by use or threat of warfare). [4] The settlement project which has settled 720,000 Israeli citizens in occupied territory in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, of which Israel is a signatory. [5] The siege of Gaza and Israel’s war-crimes in the “Cast Lead” attack on Gaza 2008-2009. And [6] Israel’s many wars of aggression in Lebanon. To name the most obvious ones.
What can we say about Jews who support Israel’s lawlessness, either actively or passively? What does it mean, in face of these crimes, to support Israel without also condemning the crimes?
If all Jews were active promoters of Israel’s lawlessness — as they are not — it might make sense to say that anti-Zionism (by which I mean opposition to Israel’s crimes) is also anti-Semitism. Because, on that false assumption, all Jews are Zionists and all are responsible, all are in effect criminals (at least aiders and abettors). To hate Zionism is to hate all these people. OK, OK,, but the assumption is false.
But what if 99% of Jews were active promoters of Israel’s lawlessness (and not merely passive or uninvolved or unknowing), then what? And what of the charming claim that various people have been “unwitting dupes” of an “ism” (McCarthy and the “unwitting dupes of international communism”)? Might uninvolved Jews be unwitting dupes of Zionism? But, then, what about the vast number of uninvolved non-Jews?
Is one “allowed” (especially by the strict laws against anti-Semitism) to be vocally upset by a huge number of unwitting-dupe fellow-traveler uninvolved Jews who daily squander their lives in inactivity when they might somehow act ethically to oppose Israel’s occupation, etc.?
I get so ticked off, sometimes by the (as it seems to me) un-ethical uninvolvement of most American Jews in this matter that I slide towards blaming them. They have no right, the message in my head says, not to be involved and, indeed, not to be involved in the service of the rule of International Law and Human Rights, in short, BDS and other pro-Palestinian efforts.
Although the Jewish religion seems to impose a duty on every Jew to repair the world (Tikkun Olam) — “repairing the world” (or “healing and restoring the world”) which suggests humanity’s shared responsibility (with the Creator) “to heal, repair and transform the world” [wiki] – most “Jews” are (like me) not religious, don’t know about any such supposed duty, and don’t in any case feel it as a duty.
And then I cool off and realize that most people, including most Jews, are just watching TV, watching their homes go “under water”, waiting to see how “global warming” will manifest itself (if at all, in their view) during their own lives, voting for repeatedly-advertised slick talkers at election time (if they bother to vote at all), and generally doing what ordinary people do — and being Jewish implies no greater duty to act ethically in the world than does being Christian (for example) or than merely being alive.
And then I notice I’ve been holding my breath. And then I breathe out.
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