As more and more attention is being given to the American Studies Association decision to boycott Israel, I want to share with you NIF’s approach to the issue.
We oppose the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. They see Israel as hopelessly flawed. We see Israel as, pardon the syntax, hopefully flawed. As an organization supporting thousands of Israelis on the ground working on the country’s most difficult social problems, we’re always aware that Israel is not a myth or a dream, but a real place with complicated issues.
We are also perhaps more aware than any other Israel organization of both the importance of Israeli democracy and the threats to its well-being, and of the passionate and caring Israelis dedicated to making it a more just and decent society.
These Israeli activists and their substantive work are important. They are one reason to believe in a just and democratic Israel, and they help give the lie to the vision of Israel as a hopeless pariah. Israel’s progressive civil society does not, of course, exist to provide window-dressing to protect Israel from criticism and boycott. Their task (and ours) is to advance justice and defeat the ultra-nationalism and extremism that diminish Israel, even in the face of strong opposition.
We sent an email out to our supporters on Sunday that touched on this issue. The responses were interesting. Some criticized us for not taking a harder line on the ASA boycott. We certainly should have reiterated NIF’s ironclad policy against funding organizations that participate in the global BDS movement. We have written before, and will again, that we think the BDS movement is at best misguided and at worst an attempt to eradicate Israel as the Jewish homeland.
We also heard from those who think that a progressive organization like NIF should not criticize radical organizations that seek to hold Israel accountable for the occupation and its abuses, or that we should at least continue to publicize why boycott sentiment is growing. (Even Ben Caspit, one of Israel’s foremost political commentators and a centrist, wrote something similar today, understanding the boycott impetus while opposing it.)
And we heard from supporters who liked the email, knowing we oppose the ASA boycott and are still concerned about damage to Israel’s status as a liberal democracy. Basically they, and we, agree with our International Council member Professor David Myers, head of the UCLA history department, who supports the boycotters’ right to say what they like and disagrees profoundly with the substance of their argument.
So let’s be clear. NIF opposes the ASA’s decision and urges them to rescind it. We will always oppose efforts to shut down debate anywhere, not just for academics but for activists, community leaders, rabbis — everyone. As a big-tent organization representing a spectrum of views on Israel’s most difficult issues, we will continue to ask for support for front-line activists advancing human rights, social justice and religious tolerance.
NIF exists to support Israeli activists working to help Israel be a free and open society and to defeat the inequality, injustice, and extremism that diminish Israel. Thank you for being a partner in this struggle.
It is also important to clarify that NIF’s policy also includes this statement, “NIF will not exclude support for organizations that discourage the purchase of goods or use of services from settlements.”
I hope that NIF will remain an organization committed to free speech where those of us who do support BDS to varying degrees will feel comfortable engaging in dialogue on this important issue.
“We have written before, and will again, that we think the BDS movement is at best misguided and at worst an attempt to eradicate Israel as the Jewish homeland.”
What’s wrong with the attempt to eradicate Israel as the Jewish homeland? It is just as reasonable as the eventually successful attempt to eradicate South Africa as the Afrikaner homeland through sanctions in the 80s.
Israel should be the Israeli homeland. Trying to keep it a Jewish homeland gives legitimacy to the lawmaker who hosted a hearing in the Knesset on how to prevent intermarriage between Jews and Arabs; or to the housing minister who stated that Jews and Arabs are “populations that should not mix;” or to the myriad restrictions Arabs face in all walks of Israeli life.
We want to eradicate Israel as a Jewish state so that the Bedouin will not be eradicated from the Negev. “Jewish and democratic” is a fantasy that dwells only in your brain. In the real world it’s an either/or. Faced with this choice, we prefer Israel to be democratic, not Jewish.
Jewish-and-democratic is no more a fantasy than German-and-democratic or Canadian-and-democratic. Other countries have found ways to acknowledge the majority’s history, rights for ethnic compatriots outside the country and the right of self-determination while still protecting minority rights and democratic processes. Israel can, too.
The creative tension between Jewish and democratic is where NIF works, because we frankly refuse to give up on either one. How some of the most difficult issues are resolved is beyond our scope. Our job is to ensure that a climate increasingly hostile to democracy, peace and positive social change is reversed and does not poison the chances of a successful resolution. And, of course, our job is to ensure that ordinary Israelis — all ordinary Israelis — maintain their civil rights and can participate in a free and open society in the process.
Unfortunately your analogy doesn’t hold water. Israeli Arabs are Israeli citizens but they are not part of the Jewish people, unlike Turkish Germans who are German citizens and also part of the German people with no legal difference whatsoever. Keeping the Jewish character of the State requires keeping the peoples separate (and according more rights to one than to the other), which is not the case in Germany or Canada.
However hard you try to square the circle, it’s a matter of plain common sense that having one and the same citizenship for all is the only way a democracy can function. Any other arrangement is based on classifying people, which is not democratic at all. I have always been puzzled by people who were outraged that the Soviet Union put the word “Jew” on its Jewish citizens’ passports, but are very happy that Israel does exactly the same (be it in the printed text or in the barcode).
This is not to say your work is worthless. I’m sure you’re influencing your society in a positive way. But you’re “at best misguided,” to borrow your words, to think that a country that puts its citizens into different categories (and treats them differently) can be compatible with the concept of a full democracy.
Neither the Turkish Germans nor the Quebecois (nor the Catalans et al) would agree that there are not important points of separation with the majorities in their nations. Each nation attempts to resolve the problem differently but none has gotten it right, at least not yet, according to the minorities themselves. And yet, the American model that completely ignores ethnicity and religion as legal definitions within the constitutional structure is still not adapted, because for one reason or another those nations think it will not work for them. Similarly, Israel.
Palestinian Israeli citizens are de facto second-class, given the discrimination the Israeli government itself admitted in the Or Commission report. But our work involves building a truly shared society, which is much more complex than changing or adapting the legal framework. See http://english.shatil.org.i… for more information.
Hopefully flawed sums up my opinion of the situation pretty much exactly. Humans are prone to bouts of irrationality but it’s not permenant.
The region will sort itself out, ,likely sooner if not for various international influences, but regardless, there is hope.
Ps:- boycott of Israel would be bigoted and I agree it’s not something to support. But a boycott of settlement products is fine. International law, annexation Etc etc. and iirc the Torah doesn’t have any edicts about reclaiming that land, it’s just something that somebody thought would be good and now it’s become a rallying issue…
And yet still no one supports stoning of men who lay with their wife when she has her period.(which is a biblical edict)… We’ve lost our way.
I’m well-acquainted with the Catalan case since I’m a Catalan speaker myself. Here’s some good news for you: the Catalans have MASSIVELY intermarried with other Spaniards and their culture hasn’t disappeared. Not the language, not the customs, not the cuisine, not the music, not the traditional games and sports, not the festivals. They are an example of how to keep a collective sense of unity without resorting to separateness.
But since you keep bringing up the analogy between the Turkish Germans and the Israeli Arabs, I deem it necessary to examine for you (I know this sounds somehow petulant, and ask for your forgiveness) the key differences between these superficially similar cases.
Germany discriminates between a German-speaking Volga Russian and a Turk., i.e., between non-citizens, favoring the first over the second. Israel discriminates between a NY Jew and a Jenin Arab, who are also not citizens, favoring the first over the second. And here arises the first big difference: while Germany favors those who at some time lived in Germany over those who never inhabited the country, Israel does exactly the contrary.
But what happens with people who are citizens? Here lies the second and fundamental difference. Native-born Germans don’t have the Right of Return that Russian Germans enjoy. If native Germans emigrate by their own will and form close-knit communities (such as exist in certain zones of the United States, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Argentina), eventually they lose any right to German citizenship. This is not the case in Israel. An Israeli Jew enjoys the Right of Return even if he was already born in Israel and even if he leaves the country to adopt a foreign citizenship. And this right is passed on to his descendants if they marry other Israeli Jewish expats. Israeli Arabs, or their offspring, don’t enjoy this right.
This distinction between “valuable” citizens, whom the country desperately wants to keep, and “non-valuable” ones, whom the country would wish to emigrate or somehow vanish, is an insult to human dignity, of course compounded by the unabashed racism expressed by mainstream politicians. This outrage doesn’t exist in Germany, where neither the native-born ethnic German nor the native-born Turkish German enjoy any hereditary right of return at all and are fully equal not only before the law, but also in the public discourse.
Whether you oppose the BDS movement or not, those who are loyal to the Likud and Netanyahu will oppose the NIF just the same. I was wondering if there has been any official response to the latest book by Edwin Black attacking your fine organization?
The problem with this debate is that we use the same terminology mistakenly believing that we mean it the same way.
The Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua was a spokesperson for a group called the Coalition for a Democratic Zionism. which asserted that Israel should be the homeland of the Jewish people and the state of all its citizens, Jewish and Gentile. A democratic state, not a Jewish state on the one hand; but a ‘Jewish State’ in the poetic sense, on the other. The unfortunate fusing of Judaism into the state apparatus, combined with no Constitution, has been a leading cause of Israel’s problems since 1948. Other than the Law of Return, all laws favoring Jews inside Israel should be abolished.
I strongly support the Bedouin campaign against the Prawer Plan – I even coined a slogan for them: “No Nakba on the Nakab!” and hope the shelving announced by Benny Begin will be permanent.
These “ziomists” who worked for the creation and support of the state of Israel are at the very least misguided. They have antagonized all people in the Middle East and hurt them, including the jews from arab countries who by an large lived in good neighborly terms with all their co-nationals. The jews from those arab countries have paid a very heavy price for the selfishness or perhaps even stupidity ot those western zionists who should have come in peace in the middle east if they wanted to live there with their neighbors and not in cohort with the west/americans to serve their self-interest. Yes, those israelis/zionist are the whores for the West/USA.