Jew World Order

I wrote the piece below in response to — and offering a different perspective from — opinion pieces that have appeared in South Florida’s Jewish newspaper. I am always anxious to engage with Florida’s Jewish communities about these issues and how we can most meaningfully participate in seeking and pursuing justice. The Jewish press has not published pieces with this or similar perspectives despite the fact that there are certainly lots of Jews in Florida (as elsewhere) who share these opinions. I published this article on Medium (links at that site), on Dec. 11. 

Accusations of antisemitism hurled at supporters of Palestinian human rights is an attempt to derail the message of justice for a people who have been denied their rights for far too long. There is nothing discriminatory, or antisemitic, in holding a nation-state accountable for its human rights abuses and for violations of international law. Some history and context are necessary.

Seventy-three years ago this week, on December 11, 1948, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 made clear that Palestinians had the right to return to their homes and lands from which they had been expelled. Resolution 194 stated that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”

While Israel has consistently thwarted the implementation of Resolution 194, Palestinians have continued to rightly demand their right to return home. The right of return is one of the three demands of the global call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), a call from Palestinian civil society to hold Israel accountable to basic principles of human rights and international law and to achieve freedom, equality, and justice.

The BDS call came after decades of the Palestinian people being denied self-determination and sovereignty. Before and during Israel’s creation in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land and homes, known as the Nakba (catastrophe in Arabic). The Nakba didn’t end but continues to this very day as massive land theft, violence, and institutionalized discrimination have intensified at the hands of the Israeli government, military, and settler organizations.

Initiated in 2005, the Palestinian call for BDS was inspired by the boycott movement against South African apartheid. Boycotts have a long history as a strategy for overcoming injustice. Think of the Montgomery bus boycott in the US as well as the grape boycott. Once the injustice has been overcome, the boycott ends.

The call for BDS includes three demands: ending the occupation and dismantling the wall; implementing full equality for Palestinians who live inside Israel; and promoting the right of return for Palestinian refugees.The third demand, promoting the right of return for Palestinian refugees, is at the heart of the call for justice and the demand that is, not coincidentally, most opposed by Israel’s defenders. To fully appreciate this demand requires a bit of Israeli history.

One cannot speak about Zionism and Israel’s creation without speaking about the Nakba. In fact, the Nakba, the catastrophe for Palestinians, is the direct consequence of Zionism. Zionism, which began in the late 1800’s, refers to the political movement to create a Jewish homeland, a Jewish state, resulting in Israel’s creation in historic Palestine in May, 1948. While a commonly-held refrain within the Zionist movement was a land without people for a people without land, in fact, there were several hundred thriving, and culturally rich, Palestinian cities and villages prior to the Nakba, and Palestinians were the overwhelming majority of the land’s inhabitants.

Despite propaganda claiming that Palestinians left on their own accord or were instructed to do so by their leaders, the evidence points elsewhere. A Jewish-majority state was created in Palestine because the Zionist movement purposefully reduced the numbers of the Palestinians living there. Vibrant Palestinian villages were destroyed and replaced with Jewish ones. Businesses and villas were seized, and books, photographs, and personal belongings were confiscated and outright looted.

Evidence of this intention is in Plan Dalet, a plan launched by the Haganah, the Zionist para-military, in March 1948. According to Plan Dalet, which laid out a blueprint for the destruction and forcible depopulation of Palestinian population centers: “In the conquest of villages in your area, you will determine — whether to cleanse or destroy them.”

The question also arose of what to do with the refugees. Should they be allowed to return when the war was over, or not? Israel’s founders left little doubt about the answer. The Israeli government, on June 16, 1948, said about the refugees “they’re not returning.”

Palestinians have the right to return to the land from which they had been expelled and where they had been living as an indigenous people. Israel was accepted as a member of the United Nations in May, 1949, only after it promised to fulfill Resolution 194. The right of inhabitants to return to the homes from which they have been expelled by an occupying power is one of the fixed principles of international law.

BDS is a call affirmatively for equal rights, freedom, and dignity; it’s about building an equitable society that is not rooted in a relationship of occupier and occupied. That is why BDS is garnering so much support across the globe, including among thousands upon thousands of Jews such as myself.

The demand for Palestinian self-determination and the right to return home, as stated in Resolution 194, are essential to justice being achieved.

Source