In response to the recent escalation of violence in Israel-Palestine, three groups hosted a “Day of Coexistence” at Wonderful Wednesday on Oct. 14. While the idea of coexistence appears to be an admirable concept at first glance, when abstracted from history and the present-day conditions in Israel-Palestine, it can mask the ways in which the structure of the State of Israel currently makes equal coexistence impossible.
While one might expect that a “Day of Coexistence” would attempt to bring together students from all sides of the issue, the three groups sponsoring the “Day of Coexistence” — Emory-Israel Public Affairs Committee (EIPAC), Emory Students for Israel (ESI) and Emory Hillel — are all explicitly pro-Israel. For Hillel this is one aspect of their organization. For ESI and EIPAC it is their primary purpose. They did not include Emory Students for Justice in Palestine (ESJP) or — to the best of my knowledge — any other group that is not specifically pro-Israel in the planning of the event.
The execution of the event suggested that its organizers were concerned with supporting the idea of coexistence in the abstract and were less concerned about the nature of that coexistence or how we might be able to move toward it. During Wonderful Wednesday, I asked one of the people at EIPAC’s table what they understood coexistence to mean. They replied that it basically meant peace and an end to the violence, but they didn’t want to go into specifics since people would disagree and didn’t think it was their job to look at the details. They repeated this line, almost verbatim, when I tried to have a conversation about what coexistence would look like and about the specific forms of violence that we both agreed need to end.
Excluding voices critical of Israel from the event planning and refusing to discuss the “details” that have caused the recent violence eliminates the possibility of moving forward. We cannot improve the situation without acknowledging the situation and looking at it critically.
So let me provide some of these “details.”
Since the beginning of October, there has been an escalation in violence between Palestinians and Israelis. So far, eight Israelis, 44 Palestinians and one Eritrean asylum seeker have been killed. Eighty three Israelis and more than 2,000 Palestinians have been injured. All these deaths and injuries are tragic, and the greater loss of Palestinian life does not diminish the value of Israeli life.
In order to understand this violence and work to end it, I believe it is essential that we address the historical and present-day context of Israel-Palestine. This is complicated, but I will highlight some points that I think are central to understanding the situation.
When the State of Israel was founded in 1948 (on what had until then been Palestinian land), it expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians who had been living there.While the United Nations recognized the right of these Palestinians to return to their land in 1948, Israel has not, however, and has generally barred them from the country, so their descendants and them (whose total number is now estimated to be between 4.6 million and 7.6 million) are excluded from the State of Israel. Do these Palestinians have a right to “coexist” with Israelis?
In contrast, since 1950, Jews from anywhere in the world are automatically considered eligible for citizenship, even if they cannot show that they or their family have any historical ties to the land of Israel-Palestine. Both of these processes were necessary to artificially create a Jewish demographic majority on Palestinian land so that Israel could be a “Jewish state,” one of the defining features proclaimed in its Declaration of Independence and its basic law.
More recently, many Israeli politicians who embrace the idea of Israel as a “Jewish State” have discussed Palestinians and Israeli Arabs as a “demographic problem,” because as these populations grow, they “threaten” this Jewish demographic majority. In 2003, Benjamin Netanyahu, now prime minister of Israel, stated, “If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens,” arguing that Israeli Arab population growth could threaten the Jewish nature of Israel. This is clearly racist. What does coexistence mean in a political context where Palestinians are only permitted to exist in Israel so long as they do not grow large enough to challenge the demographic majority of Jews? When Arab lives are viewed as a potential problem?
In addition, Israel has maintained a military occupation of the West Bank since 1967 and has appropriated large portions of its land and its resources for Israelis. The West Bank is recognized by the UN as Palestinian land, yet Israel maintains and expands illegal settlements (that is, Israeli-only cities) in the West Bank with a 2011 population of approximately 500,000 (including East Jerusalem). Forty three percent of the West Bank is reserved for these settlements and their expansion and is off-limits to Palestinians. While settlers often commit violence against Palestinians (in 2011 they killed five Palestinians and injured more than 1,000), over 90 percent of Israeli police investigations into reports of this violence are closed without indictment. Israeli settlers and the Israeli government have seized Palestinian water resources and allocated them unevenly to Israelis, resulting in Israelis receiving on average 300 liters per capita per day (l/c/d) while Palestinians have access to only 70 l/c/d. For reference, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends 100 l/c/d. The State of Israel has also refused to grant building permits to Palestinians seeking to build water collection structures and has demolished such structures if Palestinians built them anyway. Simultaneously, Israel has ignored settlers who not only build without permits, but also build on Palestinian privately owned land.
The claim that Israel can be a Jewish state, the insistence on a Jewish majority, the framing of Arab and Palestinian lives as a problem, the theft of Palestinian water and land and Israel’s refusal to hold Israelis and Palestinians to the same legal standards constitute a system of ethnic supremacy. Each stems from a belief that Jewish lives are more valuable than Palestinian lives or that Jews have a greater right to safety and to the land of Israel-Palestine than Palestinians.
I am fully supportive of a path forward involving coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, as equals, that ensures all people’s human rights are respected, but I am strongly opposed to any path that involves Jewish lives being treated as more valuable than Palestinian lives. And the difference — it’s in the details.
Anaïs Hussung is a College junior from Jefferson City, Tennessee.
Criticism of Israeli government policy is not in and of itself
necessarily anti-Semitic. But what else can we call criticism that selectively
condemns only the Jewish state and effectively denies its right to exist, to
defend itself while systematically ignoring or excusing the violence and
oppression all around it?
Nobody is excusing the violence and oppression around it. However, all these concerns are valid. The truth is Israel has violated and continue to violate international laws. Everybody recognizes this but the US and Israel. Israel has also continued to exert violence against Israeli Arabs and mistreat Palestinians in its occupied areas. To condemn the violence against Palestinians and Israel’s blatant disregard for the law is not to deny its right to exist. When we condemn the Chinese, are we being anti-Chinese or denying their rights to exist? Why then should we have some separate treatment when it comes to Israel? The Israeli government is not ordained by some divine authority. It has done much wrongs and if we keep blindly supporting it, the government will continue to do more wrong.
While millions of people worldwide are suffering real and extreme
persecution at the hands of Islamists, it is Israel, the Middle East’s only
democracy — where no one is above the law, where citizens all have equal
rights and no one is murdered for expressing his political views — that is
targeted and bullied by these so-called “human rights activists” and
academics. Deaf and blind to the real sufferers all around the world, these
Jew-haters seem in reality just brainwashed, misinformed neo-anti-Semites.
Dear Author,
You say, “In order to understand this violence and work to end it, I believe it is essential that we address the historical and present-day context of Israel-Palestine. This is complicated, but I will highlight some points that I think are central to understanding the situation,” but was the aim of this article really to “understand this violence and work to end it?” You are right–the issue is complicated, but I do not believe you understand the situation.
The UN issued Resolution 181 (partition plan) in 1948 that offered states to the Jews (before they became Israel) and the Arabs and made Jerusalem an international city. The Jewish leadership took its granted land, but the Arab leadership rejected it–a missed opportunity for a peaceful, two-state solution.
Not once have you mentioned the Palestinian Authority. How can this be called a two-sided article, when the only talk is around the wrongdoings of the Israeli government? Ironically, you call for inclusion when you have failed to include the other side. Have you any idea of how the PLO treats its own constituency?
When you say, “I am strongly opposed to any path that involves Jewish lives being treated as more valuable than Palestinian lives,” who are you saying values Jewish lives more? The Israeli government values the lives of people who identify as Israeli more than those who live on its land and do not identify with Israel (which, to be fair, some of the land they took/take unjustly). This is also called nationalism. Unfortunately, Hamas/Palestinian Leadership does not value the lives of its people in the same way. It continues to use its often displaced peoples as human shields. The innocent and even perpetrating Palestinians who are injured are almost always treated at Israeli hospitals–ironically a place where Hamas has set bombs without a care as to which side gets hurt.
If this is a religious conflict (though you’ve only mentioned Jews), then how can you say you “understand the violence” when you’ve completely disregarded crimes of religious passion on both sides? How can you “work to end” the violence when you do not see the two?
Lastly, you fail to mention what incited this Wonderful Wednesday event initially–terrorism–crimes committed on people by people, not governments. It was an event meant to continue the hope that PEOPLE can peacefully live in the same space, not to take sides with a particular government. Perhaps this is why people did not want to speak to you about “details,” because they were there to simply support this humanistic hope.
Hussung try harder for your 15 minutes of fame. You have not achieved it
It’s discouraging to notice how many Americans are unaware that Christians who live in the Holy Land are Palestinians. And that Christians and Muslims suffer together under Israel’s occupation. All sides must comply with International Law. Jerusalem must be shared.
It is encouraging that Christians (and Jews, Moslems, Druze, and
others) who live in Israel are Israelis. They are all citizens with full rights
to vote and participate in the government. And, they all do (see the large
number of Christians and Moslems elected to the Israeli parliament).
They all suffer under rocket attacks from gaza or by terrorists blowing up busses and pizzerias full of children.
Jerusalem must be shared, which it wasn’t under Jordanian rule before it was liberated by Israel in 1967. Only under Israeli laws have all religions had the right to pray the way they choose.
Mideast Peace = Peace of Jerusalem = World Peace.
I fear you are using a wrong term, “occupation”; israel occupies no man’s land but her own! Indeed it is the Arabs who occupy the Jewish People ancestral homeland under international law. Read here:
Israel and the Myth of Occupation
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/12/israel_and_the_myth_of_occupation.html