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PALESTINE PAPERS
Racism and Israel
by Michael Poulin
Issue: October, 1987
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DISCRIMINATION ON THE BASIS OF RACE, CREED OR COLOR is such an abhorence to Western democratic principles that we codify it as a crime on its face. We don't tolerate it in the United States, and we pretend not to tolerate it in those nations we favor with our business and our security interests. After a long struggle, South Africa, for example, is now in the official United States dog house because of it. So many of us have been victims of racial and/or religious discrimination for so long, moreover, that we are normally quick to recognize or at least suspect the practice the instant it rears its ugly head.
In the case of Israel, however, we not only laud and reward acts of racial and religious discrimination, we fail or refuse to recognize it altogether.
Most of us understand Israel as the "homeland of the Jews." Most of us understand Israel to be a state administered by and for the benefit of Jews. But what constitutes a Jew? Is it race, religion, or both? Must one be born a Jew? Can one convert to Judasim? Can conversion make one a Jew? Whatever the answers to these questions, the fact remains that Israel is administered by and for the benefit of Jews, whoever they may be and wherever they may have been born.
Most of the people born in the land now known as the state of Israel call themselves Palestinians. As a rule, Palestinians are at least as Semitic as the most "genetically pure" Jew—whatever that is. Many Palestinians and Jews pysically resemble one another. Most Palestinians are Moslem. Many are Christian. Very few Palestinians are Jews. For a Jew in Israel, even a Palestinian Jew, is entitled to Israeli citizenship; and life as an Israeli citizen in Israel is ever so much more pleasant than life for a Palestinian non-citizen in the land of his or her birth.
There is an exception for approximately 120,000 Palestinians living with Israeli citizenship within what is known as the 1948 Israeli borders. They have all the theoretical rights of an Israeli Jew with one exception: they may not own land in most (98%) of the state. Also, their identity cards mark them as non-Jews (but not as "Palestinian," for mention of that word is literally a crime in Israel)and, as a practical matter, they suffer all the discrimination common to minorities anywhere else in the world. For all of this, however, life for an Israeli citizen, even a second class Palestinian Israeli citizen, is relatively secure and democratic.
For the approximately 800,000 Palestinians living in the Israeli "Occupied Territories" (the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights), life is a daily struggle for survival. These people have no citizenship, no rights, no security, and nowhere to turn. Many of them have been Israeli prisoners, and all of them have relatives currently in Israeli prisons where torture is commonplace. They may labor for Israeli employers but may not enjoy the benefits of Israeli citizen workers. They may work within the 1948 borders but must sleep within their own Israeli-imposed ghettos. At any time, without any judicial recourse, they may be expelled from the land of their birth as hundreds of thousands before them have been; they may be denied the shelter of their homes or the use of their waterwells, fruitstands or fields - all because they are not Jews.
Race and religion is one aspect of this nightmare. Land is another. Since 1967, more than half of the best Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories has been expropriated for the benefit of a shrinking Israeli-Jewish population. Daily these expropriations continue without any judicial recourse whatsoever, while a burgeoning Palestin-ian population must survive with less land and fewer resources.
Demographics is another element. More Jews leave Israel than are replaced by immigration or births. At the same time, despite the daily expulsions and high infant mortality, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have the highest birthrate in the world. Demographers project Palestinians within the Occupied Territories to out-number Israeli Jews by the year 2010 - a projection of considerable concern to administrators of the exclusivist theocratic state.
Military occupation of a population nearly as large as one's own is an expensive proposition - in this case well over one billion dollars per year. Here comes the reward for racial and religious discrimination, from our own pockets. United States taxpayers provide Israel in direct grants, forgiven loans, trade, manufacturing and patent arrangements, more than five billion dollars per year. To date, that aid amounts to more than $38 billion, and much of it has gone to fund the occupation of Palestinians for more than the past twenty years.
The United States Congress - with the quisling consent of the Black Caucus - has even rewarded Israel with exemptions from sanctions against trading with apartheid South Africa.
Why all this for Israel? Israel does a good job of caretaking multi-national/American corporate interests in the Middle East. It does a good job of arming and advising fascist and apartheid regimes throughout the world, particularly when it is embarrassing or in-convenient for Americans to do so. It does a good job of opposing liberation struggles throughout the world. But it does an even better job of directing funding and propaganda for key American political races in this country. Every key American Congressperson, Senator and President owes his or her incumbency to the influence and/or funding of very well organized American Zionists, sometimes known as "the Israeli lobby." That is why even black members of Congress have voted to allow Israel to trade with South Africa unimpeded by sanctions imposed upon other such trading nations—they are the best Congresspeople Zionist money can buy.
For the committed Zionist (one who supports an exclusivist Jewish state) the security of Israel is paramount—no matter what it costs, no matter at whose expense. The committed Zionist may be intimately familiar with hundreds of thousands of atrocities suffered by Palestinian at the hands of Israelis. The committed Zionist (who is often "liberal" and progressive on most other issues) may be geninuely aggrieved by those atrocities and genuinely yearn for justice for the Palestinians. The committed Zionist may even foresee World War III arising from the actions of the Israeli state. But it makes no difference. To the committed Zionist, no resolution is acceptable that may conceivably lessen the security of the state of Israel. Thus committed Zionists support politicians who are opposed to them on every issue save this.
But the typical committed Zionist will not see the atrocities, will not feel concern for those oppressed, will not yearn for justice, will not see any dire consequences arising from blind support for Israel. The committed Zionist will not see beyond "need" for a "homeland" in which he or she never expects to reside. And to the committed Zionist, every critic of Israel is necessarily anti-Semitic—that explains it all!
The rest of us Americans must ask ourselves hard questions about the "forbidden topic." Does Israel really serve the interests of American citizens, American corporations, or even its own? Does Israel use our aid—amounting to more than $1,900 per Israeli citizen per year—for defense or for aggression and oppression? Is that aid, regardless its purpose, not more needed in our own deteriorating communities? Is Israeli influence on our body politic so tenacious that not even the Black Caucus dare impose sanctions against Israel for trading with South Africa?
Aid to Israel means aid to racism and religious discrimination.
It means aid to virtually every facist element on the globe. It means
denial of life, liberty and homeland to five million Palestinians in
diaspora. It means Armageddon is preferable to justice.
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