Dear Chief Rabbi, Israel has its own form of apartheid
In this posting, the article from Ephraim Mirvis in the New Statesman, the response from Diana Neslen in the same publication, with parts cut, and a response from Naomi Wayne on behalf of the JfJfP Executive Commitee, not published.
These South Africans think Israel is an ‘apartheid state’. They gathered outside the Department of International Relations in Pretoria, July 2014.
I grew up in South Africa, so believe me when I say: Israel is not an apartheid state
This week on university campuses across the UK, activists are preparing for “Israel Apartheid Week”. This term is not only misleading, but a grave insult to those who were subjugated in South Africa.
By Ephraim Mirvis, New Statesman,
February 24, 2016
Words make a world of difference. Over time, they become charged with inference and allusion and, deployed effectively, they have the power to change the very fabric of our civilisation. For example, the phrase “civil rights” could reasonably be applied to any right of any citizen the world over, yet we instinctively associate it with the movement that for ever altered the political and social landscape of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
The word “apartheid” has similar historical resonance. Growing up in South Africa, I became aware of the different status conferred upon the black majority. I found myself confronted every day by a society that would routinely degrade and demean black South Africans, not just culturally or socially, but also in the eyes of the law. All societies wrestle with the scourge of prejudice, but validating that prejudice in statute makes a virtue of oppression.
I am eternally grateful that I grew up in a home in Cape Town where the existential immorality of apartheid never affected the way in which we understood the world. My father, who is a rabbi, preached against apartheid and visited political prisoners on Robben Island. My late mother was the principal of the Athlone teacher training college, which at the time was the only college for black pre-school teachers in the country. As with other similar institutions, it would later become known as a hotbed of activism. The students’ struggle was her struggle and my siblings and I would hear stories at the end of each day about the challenges they faced and the harsh reality of their lives. Those experiences remain among the most important of my early years.
This week on university campuses across the UK, activists are preparing for “Israel Apartheid Week”. Note: not Palestinian “nationalism” or “awareness” week, which might focus on the well-being of the Palestinian people, but a week dedicated to attacking Israel – its government, its people, its very existence. The implied message here is simple: Israel today is where South Africa was in the latter part of the 20th century. It is a comparison that is entirely false; a grave insult to those who suffered under apartheid; and a tragic obstacle to peace.
The difference between the two countries could scarcely be more stark. Under apartheid, a legal structure of racial hierarchy governed all aspects of life. Black South Africans were denied the vote. They were required by law to live, work, study, travel, enjoy leisure activities, receive medical treatment and even go to the lavatory separately from those with a different colour of skin. Interracial relationships and marriages were illegal. It was subjugation in its rawest form.
Contrast that with Israel, a country whose Arab, Druze, Bedouin, Ethiopian, Russian, Baha’i, Armenian and other citizens have equal status under the law. Anyone who truly understands what apartheid was cannot possibly look around Israel today and honestly claim there is any kind of parity. They would need only to visit Hand in Hand, an organisation that runs schools where Jewish and Arab pupils learn together, or meet the Israeli-Arab judge Salim Joubran of the Supreme Court of Israel. They might note the appointment last month of Mariam Kabaha as the national commissioner for equal employment opportunities in the economy ministry, or hear that just this month, Jamal Hakrush became the first Muslim Arab to be appointed a deputy commissioner of the Israel Police.
Indeed, the difference is so stark that one might argue there is a good case for ignoring the apartheid slur altogether. Yet the tragic reality is that every time the word is used in the context of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the two sides become polarised yet further and peace becomes ever more distant. As the word “apartheid” is an icon for malevolence, it can only be received by Israel with resentment and suspicion. In turn, extremist forces in Palestinian society can only benefit from a reinforcement of the notion that the very existence of Israel is illegitimate. In short, the apartheid slur provides fuel for those who seek to polarise and it obstructs those who seek peace.
Billboards put up across South Africa. No doubt Mr de Klerk glimpsed one or two. Photo from drivebyplanet, 2012
This week I will be meeting F W de Klerk, the man who freed Nelson Mandela and worked so hard to end apartheid in South Africa, to discuss this and other issues. Later in the week he will join me at an event to raise money for a charity that provides education for poverty-stricken children in Israel. He has made clear his view that those who advocate BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel are misguided and will not help to promote a peaceful solution. There can be nobody better placed to make such a judgement.
I personally draw a great deal of inspiration from the state of Israel and am proud of her achievements. The state was born against all odds and, despite having to fight every day for survival, has become a world leader in medicine, technology, science, agriculture and beyond. But of course, as even the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has said, Israel is not perfect – no country is. The challenges she faces, both external and internal, are urgent and severe. And yet, the beauty of Israel’s democracy, unique in the Middle East, is that there is no social or political problem that is not given abundant consideration within Israel’s own parliament, free press and civil society.
Join that constructive debate by all means, but reject language that stigmatises and polarises. Pursue instead a tone of open dialogue, respectful disagreement and ultimately a common desire for peaceful reconciliation. Say that the conflict in the Middle East is an intractable struggle over nationalism, heritage and territory, if that is what you believe, but please, do not say that it is about race. Say that you are concerned, that you object and that you feel an obligation to speak out but please, do not denigrate or delegitimise. Say that there is social inequality, under-representation and disadvantage but please, never say that there is apartheid.
Ephraim Mirvis is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
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Partially published letter to New Statesman
From Diana Neslen, letter not online
(The sections in italics were not published)
Like Chief Rabbi Mirvish, I too grew up in apartheid South Africa. I could not tolerate being a privileged white person in a land where the majority were oppressed. I was enthused by the idea that Israel, through the ingathering of exiles from all over the world, could be a beacon of tolerance and one the world could imitate. I visited Israel and discovered that the same privilege bestowed on me as a white person in South Africa was bestowed on me as a Jew in Israel
Rabbi Mirvish rails against the ‘slur’ of apartheid. I would refer him to the Rome Statute of 2002 which recognises that the system of apartheid can appear in different guises.
The crime of Apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”
It seems to me that Israel fits that description even as it defines Palestinians as a national group. There are 50 laws discriminating against Palestinians within the 1967 borders and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are completely under the suzerainty of Israel’s belligerent occupation which denies them the fundamental human rights that Jews demand in the countries in which we reside. That in my book is Apartheid
* * * * *
Unpublished letter to New Statesman
The Chief Rabbi doesn’t want us to talk about Israel and Apartheid in the same breath. Why ever not?
On the West Bank, ruled by Israel for nearly half a century but never mentioned by the Chief Rabbi, ethnicity is all. Half a million illegal Israeli settlers have untrammelled freedom of movement; Palestinians are hemmed in by checkpoints and barriers. In a place where water is precious, the settlers get nearly five times per head that allowed to Palestinians. Settlers drive on roads built solely for their use. Their house-building knows no bounds while Palestinians homes are regularly destroyed. Settler children can throw stones at Palestinians with impunity. Both adult and child Palestinians in their thousands end up before the military courts, which miraculously have a 99.74% conviction rate. When, rarely, the law is applied to settlers, they are subject to an evidence-based civil system.
In Israel itself, we find little integration: Jews and Palestinians live in separate towns and villages, or separate areas in ‘mixed’ locations. Jewish schools are far better funded than Palestinian schools. Jewish areas are policed, while Palestinian areas are often left to the predations of local ‘mafia’. Jewish areas have adequate rubbish disposal, Palestinian areas don’t. Jewish residents can get building permits, Palestinian permit applications fail nearly every time.
How Israel treats suspected ‘terrorists’ tells us more. Palestinians are generally arrested – or killed – in less than no time. Those wretched and desperate Palestinian youngsters – nearly all under twenty years old – with their pathetic and mostly unsuccessful attempts to kill Jews with knives and scissors, are generally shot dead on the spot. Jews who actually commit acts of ferocious ‘terrorist’ violence always survive: contrast the (now dead) Palestinians who kidnapped and killed three settler schoolboys, with the (now jailed) Jews who kidnapped and tortured a Jerusalem teenager to death in revenge. Ponder on the religious Jewish extremists who firebombed a sleeping Palestinian family last July and were identified almost immediately as the culprits; they were only charged in January this year, when the claim that this would ‘compromise Israeli intelligence sources’ became utterly morally unsustainable. And afterwards? Families of Palestinian ‘terrorists’ (and of Palestinians who will only ever be ‘suspected terrorists’, being already dead) routinely have their homes torn down – while the last time this happened to a Jewish ‘terrorist’s’ family is never.
Is this apartheid? Does it matter? Arguing over what Israel’s behaviour is called feels like a distraction: what the Israeli state does to Palestinians is abominable whatever designation we use. But we do know that one of the Chief Rabbi’s countrymen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu – who, surely, we agree, is also an expert on what constitutes apartheid – has no qualms using the word when describing the society in which Palestinians are forced to live.
Yours sincerely
Naomi Wayne
for Jews for Justice for Palestinians