Fourth of four parts.
Re: “BDS III: None of Makdisi’s Charges Adds up to Apartheid”
So what is left of the list compiled by Prof. Saree Makdisi of the University of California at Los Angeles that he claims makes Israel an apartheid land?
Only that Israel is a Jewish state and identifies as such (of course, that’s what many Arabs object to as well.) That’s why there is a Law of Return favoring Jewish immigration. That explains the existence of the Jewish National Fund, whose policies have favored Jewish access to land. Even with respect to the latter, however, Prof. Makdisi cannot resist prejudicial oversimplification. He criticizes the JNF’s policies but fails to note that JNF existed long before the State of Israel, is funded by private donations, and owns only about 10 percent of Israel’s land. The remainder is owned almost entirely by the government (some 80 percent), is administered by the Israel Land Administration (ILA), and is accessible to both Israeli Arabs and Jews. The ILA also administers JNF land. The Attorney General has instructed the ILA to lease JNF land to Arabs and Jews alike.
While Mr. Makdisi and many other advocates of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) find especially objectionable that Israel is a Jewish state, neither he nor most of his compatriots have urged a boycott of the many Arab countries that have established Islam, or a specific form of it, as a state religion, some of which even bar proselytism on behalf of other religions. Nor does he condemn the many countries, including nations in Europe, that recognize some form of Christianity as their state or official religion, and give it special privileges. While he doesn’t like the Jewish symbol, the Star of David, on the Israeli flag, he doesn’t complain of the crescent on many Muslim-majority state flags, the reference to Mohammed as God’s messenger on the Saudi flag, or the dozens of flags around the world bearing the Christian cross. Perhaps most significantly, it does not bother him that the Palestinian leadership has repeatedly stated that Jews would not be allowed on any land ruled by Palestinians; that the Palestinian Authority bars, on pain of death, the sale of land to Jews; and that Palestinian leaders often speak of the elimination of the Jews of Israel while Hamas’s covenant calls for the killing of Jews everywhere. None of this is labeled “apartheid.”
Israel, like every other nation and every other society, is not and will not be perfect. But as Confuscius said 2500 years ago, “If names not be correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success…. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.”
It is one thing to constructively criticize Israel’s perceived shortcomings with a view to correcting them, and another to use an intentionally emotive word, like “apartheid,” to brush rational argument aside and strike at the very legitimacy of the Jewish state.
Such dishonest and demagogic argumentation – meant not to elucidate through reason but to blind by knee-jerk emotion – is simply the current example of the “big-lie,” intended, similar to the Blood Libel of old, to create and legitimize antipathy and hatred.
Mr. Smith, an attorney in Los Angeles, may be contacted at gsmith@irell.com
