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SUPPRESSING U.N. REPORT ON ISRAEL'S MOVE TOWARD APARTHEID IS DANGEROUS FOR U.S. POLICY----AND FOR
ISRAEL ITSELF
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
------------------------------
In
mid-March, a U.N. commission said in a report that Israel practices
apartheid against Palestinians. The report was published by the
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCUA). One of the
authors of the report was Richard Falk, an American professor at
Princeton University. Dr. Falk, who is Jewish, is the former U.N. Human
rights investigator.
The
term apartheid, the institutionalized oppression once practiced against
the black majority in South Africa, has been used increasingly by
critics of the Israeli government, both within Israel and abroad, to
describe its policies toward the Palestijians in territories occupied or
controlled by Israel for 50 years.
An
executive summary of the report was placed on the U.N. commission's
website. It called it a study to examine, "based on key instruments of
international law, whether Israel has established an apartheid regime
that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole." It
concludes that it did, based on what it called the fragmentation of the
Palestinian population, Israel's restrictions on Palestinians' movements
and other limits placed on Palestinians, but not Israelis.
The
report was denounced by the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danin
who called it "despicable" and "a blatant lie." He was joined by the
U.S. Ambassador, Nikki Haley, who called upon the U.N. to immediately
withdraw the report. Two days after the report appeared, it was no
longer on the U.N. commission's website.
Richard
Falk, one of the report's authors, notes that, "Almost within hours of
its release on March 15 our report was greeted by what can only be
described as hysteria. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley
denounced it and demanded that the U.N. repudiate it. the newly elected
Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, quickly and publicly called for
ESCUA to withdraw the report from its website, and when Rima Khalef, the
head of the commission, resisted, Guterres insisted. Rather than
comply, Khalef resigned. Soon thereafter the report was withdrawn from
the commission's website, despite its having been published with a
disclaimer, noting that it represents the views of its authors and not
necessarily that of ESCWA or the U.N."
In
Falk's view, "What is striking about the response...is the degree to
which Israel's supporters, in response to criticism, have sought to
discredit the messenger rather than address the message. During my
tenure as the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied
Palestinian Territories (2008-2014), I saw the defenders of Israel
attempt to discredit critics...I never received substantive pushback
regarding my allegations....Among my harshest critics were not only the
usual ultra-Zionist NGOs but also Barack Obama's diplomats at the U.N.,
including Susan Rice and Samantha Power...It falls into a longstanding
pattern of rebuttal that prefers to smear rather than engage in reasoned
debate about important issues of law and justice....It remains our
central hope...that the widespread availability of the report will lead
to a clearer understanding of the Palestinian plight and encourage more
effective responses by the U.N., by governments and by civil society.
Beyond this, it is our continuing hope that people of good will
throughout the world, especially within Israel, will work toward a
political solution that will finally allow Jews and Palestinians to live
together in peace with justice."
The
U.N.report argues that Israel has veiled apartheid as "democracy." In
the chapter titled "Demographic Engineering," it states that, "The first
general policy of Israel has been one of demographic engineering , in
order to establish and maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority in
Israel. As in any racial democracy, such a majority allows the trappings
of democracy---democratic elections, a strong legislature---without
threatening any loss of hegemony by the dominant racial group. In
Israeli discourse. This mission is expressed in terms of the so-called
'demographic threat,' an openly racist reference to Palestinian
population growth or the return of Palestinian refugees."
The
report's section on "Israel Jewish-National Institutions," declares
that, "Israel has designed its domestic governance in such a way as to
ensure that the state upholds and promotes Jewish nationalism. The term
'Jewish people' in political Zionist thought is used to claim the right
of self-determination . The quest of an ethnic or racial group for its
own state amounts to a national project, and so Israel's institutions
designed to preserve Israel as a Jewish state are referred to in this
report as 'Jewish-national' institutions....An interplay of laws
consolidates Jewish-national supremacy. For example, regarding the
central question of land use. Basic Laws: Israel Lands provides that
real property held by the State of Israel, the Development Authority or
the Keren Kayemet Le-Israel (Jewish National Fund ) must serve
'national' (that is Jewish-national) interests and cannot be transferred
to other hands."
The
U.N. report's goal was to investigate "whether Israel has established
an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people
as a whole." It declares: "The analysis in this report rests on the
same body of international human rights law and principles that reject
anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies, including
the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the Universal Declaratiin of
Human Rights (1948), and the International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965). The report relies for
its definition of apartheid primarily on Article II of the International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment Of the Crime of Apartheid
(1973)."
Riyad
Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., said that, "Rather
than attacking the report, it would be better to reflect on the
realities that the report addresses and how they can be remedied." This
is hardly the first time that Israeli practices have been compared to
apartheid. In 2007, John Dugard, a South African law professor who was a
U.N. Human rights investigator, said Israeli laws and practices in the
occupied territories "certainly resemble aspects of apartheid." Saeb
Erekat, a lead negotiator for the Palestinians in negotiations with
Israel, has used the term apartheid in referring to the government of
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When Israel approved new funding for
settlements in June, Mr. Erekat said: "It is time for the international
community to assume its responsibility toward the extremist government
that openly supports apartheid and stands against the two-state
solution."
When
he visited Israel on March 8, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
told The Jerusalem Post: "What we are saying is that you have to have a
two-state solution or else you have a kind of apartheid system." In
Israel itself, critics of the occupation regularly use the term
apartheid. Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history,
warns: "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is
only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either
non-Jewish or non-democratic. If the bloc of millions of Palestinians
cannot vote, this will be an apartheid state." Some Israelis have even
used the term"fascism" to describe current policy. Prof. Zeev Sternhell,
former head of the political science department at Hebrew University,
and a specialist on the history of fascism was recently asked if Israel
is now on the verge of fascism. He replied: "It's a gradual process.
we have yet to cross the red line, but we are dangerously close. We are
at the height of an erosion process of the liberal values on which our
society is based. Those who regard liberal values as a danger to the
nation...are the ones currently in power. They are striving to
delegitimize the left and anyone who does not hold the view that
conquering the land and settling it through the use of force are the
fundamental foundations of Zionism. That's why universal values and
universal rights are enemies of the state, in their view."
Around
the world, Jewish voices are being heard decrying what they see as
Israel's retreat from Judaism's humane moral and ethical tradition.
Speaking at J Street's annual conference in Washington in February, Tony
Klug, a special adviser on the Middle East at the Oxford Research
Group, said that support for Israel's "never-ending" occupation is
changing the nature of what it means to be Jewish. "We used to be people
devoted to justice," he declared. "Now we have become enablers of
Israel's injustices."
Klug
told his audience: "...Time honored Jewish ideals ---Justice, freedom,
equality, peace, mutual respect---have made an extraordinary
contribution to human civilization. They lie at the very core of Jewish
identity...We now face the major reality of a state that describes
itself loudly and often to be Jewish as...withholding fundamental human
rights from millions of people indefinitely...A standpoint that is in
total defiance of quintessential Jewish principles...When all is said
and done, the bottom line is that the conflict with the Palestinians has
dominated and distorted the Jewish world for too long. It is time to
bring it to an end and stop the infamy of a half century of military
occupation of another people and allow us to get back to the business of
being ourselves."
Rabbi
Henry Siegman, a former director of the American Jewish Congress, says
that Israel's settlements have created an "irreversible colonial
project" and involved having Israel "cross the threshold from 'the only
democracy in the Middle Esst' to the only apartheid regime in the
Western world. Denial of self-determination and Israeli citizenship to
Palestinians amounts to 'double disenfranchisement,' which, when based
on ethnicity, amounts to racism." Reserving democracy for privileged
citizens and keeping others "behind checkpoints and barbed wire fences,"
he states, is the opposite of democracy.
By
helping to suppress the U.N. report about Israel's inhumane policy
toward the Palestinians and the manner in which this policy is
approaching----or has reached---the level of apartheid, we are doing
Israel no favor and are harming our own interests in the Middle East as
well. Such action only fuels the very kind of antagonism toward America
which leads to the growth of terrorist groups such as ISIS. It
encourages extremists in Israel to pursue their goal of annexing the
occupied territories. Some even call for the expulsion of the
indigenous Palestinian population. This is a recipe for continuing
conflict. Killing the messenger, as we have done by suppressing this
report, is not being a good friend to Israel's long-term best
interests. Friends, after all, don't let friends drive drunk which, it
seems, Israel is now doing.
------------
Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally
syndicated columnist and is editor
of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of
the American Council for Judaism.
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