The Campaign Against Israel Legitimacy AJC

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AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE

OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

October 2010

The Campaign Against Israels LegitimacyAnswers to Israels Critics

By Aaron Jacob

Background

Definition: The campaign against Israels legitimacy is the calling into question of the Jewish

peoples right to self-determination and the Jewish state's right to exist and defend itself as wellas repeated and prejudicial condemnations of Israel's policies and conduct that have the effect of

delegitimizing not only those policies and conduct but also delegitimizing Israel itself.

Historical Background: The campaign operates primarily in the international arena, although ithas disturbing American domestic manifestations as well, especially on university campuses and

among certain religious groups. It started before the State of Israel was born, when a Jewish state

was just an idea. In 1937, the Arab parties rejected the first partition plan proposed by the PeelCommission (set up by the British to propose changes to the British Mandate of Palestine

following the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936), insisting that all of Palestine belonged to the

Arabs and that Jews had no legitimate claims over the land. In December 1945, two and a half

years before the establishment of Israel, the newly-formed Arab League declared a formal boy-cott against the Jewish community in Palestine. In November 1947, the Palestinian Arab leader-

ship and the neighboring Arab states rejected the UN partition plan and waged a war of aggres-

sion against the newborn State of Israel.

Anti-Zionism Campaign: The campaign of delegitimization, which continued after the estab-

lishment of Israel, reached a pinnacle in 1975, when the UN adopted the infamous resolution3379 equating Zionism with racism. The revocation of that resolution by the UN General As-

sembly in 1991 implied, dialectically, that Zionism is notracism, but Israels detractors contin-

ued to pursue that allegation. The 2001 World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, ex-

pressed solidarity with the Palestinians living under occupation, implying that their plight was

due to Israel's racist policies. On the sidelines of the official conference, the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum adopted a much harsher document, calling into question

Israels right to exist.Today, Israels adversaries use the Zionism=racism lie to identify Israel as

an apartheid state. But the campaign against Israel is not limited to UN-sponsored conferencesor to the issue of racism. In the past few years Israel has been subjected to increasingly harsh

criticism over a myriad of issues, resulting in an erosion of its international image.This trend

recently peaked in connection with the Goldstone Report and, after that, the Flotilla incident. In
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THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISRAELS LEGITIMACY PAGE 2

many instances, criticism has stretched beyond legitimate discourse regarding Israeli policy to a

fundamental challenge to Israels right to exist.

The UN: There are two reasons why the UN has been at the center of the campaign to delegitim-

ize Israel. First, it is the principal provider

and hence denier

of international legitimacy.Second, the membership at the UN provides Israels adversaries with an overwhelming numeri-cal advantage, which they use to wage a relentless political campaign against the Jewish state.

Israel is the only UN member not fully included in the regional grouping system; it is subjected

each year to a series of anti-Israel resolutions by the UN General Assembly and to relentless

scrutiny by entities within the UN system whose specific mandate is to promote the Palestiniancause against Israel; and it has been repeatedly singled out and censured by the Human Rights

Council. The Arab group and its allies at the UN consider Middle East-related resolutions as in-

dicators ofinternational legitimacy, meaning that these resolutions are tools to delegitimize thepolicies of the targeted partyIsrael. Repeated condemnations delegitimize not only Israels pol-

icies, but ultimately Israel itself.

One-State Solution: In recent years, some Palestinian and non-Palestinian intellectuals havebegun talking openly about a one-state solution for the area between the Jordan River and the

Mediterranean. NYU historian Tony Judt has been a leading figure in this group. In an article

published in TheNew York Review of Books in 2003, he argued that The very idea of a Jewish

statea state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-

Jewish citizens are forever excludedis rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an

anachronism.The conventional consensus, he wrote, favors a two-state solution, but it is now

too late forthisbecause there are too many settlements, [and] too many Jewish settlers whowill not agree to live in a Palestinian Arab state, and no Israeli leader will have the courage, or

the political power, to uproot them. Therefore, he concluded, the solution lies in a single, inte-

grated, binational state ofJews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians.1

Michael Walzer, a politicalscientist at Princeton, responded that the problem with Judts proposal is that it did not point the

way to a binational state, but rather to the replacement of one nation-state with another, for

within a decade Arabs would outnumber Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

The result ofJudts binational polity, then, would be another Arab nation-state. Leon Wieseltierargued that Judt had crossed the line from criticism of Israel policy to the criticism of Israelsexistence.

2

BDS:Israels detractors are not satisfied with verbal and written attacks. Some of them, claiming

that Israel is guilty of major human rights violations, engage in activities designed to inflict real

harm upon the Jewish state. The best-known example is BDSBoycott, Divestment and Sanc-

tion for Palestinean international coalition that seeks to boycott Israeli academicians and art-ists, remove Israeli films from international festivals, prevent or cancel the participation of inter-

national stars in concerts in Israel; and divest from Israeli companies. So far, the movement has

not done Israel any serious overt damage, but it is clear that the goal is to undermine its legitima-cy.

1Tony Judt, Israel: The Alternative, The New York Review of Books, October 23, 2003.

2See Benny Morris, One State, Two States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 6-13.


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Direct Assaults on Israels Legitimacy: Much of the campaign against Israels legitimacy takes

the shape of direct assaults on the Jewish states right to exist. Some of the main themes are: (1)

The Zionist claim about historical ties between the Jewish people and Land of Israel is just amyth; (2) Zionism is a colonialist-imperialist movement; (3) Israel created the Palestinian refu-

gee problem; (4) The Israeli occupation of Arab and Palestinian lands is illegal and illegitimate;(5) The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the core of all other Middle East conflicts; (6) Israel is not apeace-loving nation; (7) Israel is guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other major

human rights abuses; (8) Israel practices state terrorism; (9) Jewish settlements on the West

Bank are a major obstacle to peace; (10) Israel is not a true democracy; and, (11) Israel is an

apartheid state.

Answers to Israels Critics

The Relationship of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel: The first two paragraphs of

Israels Declaration of Independence eloquently express the ties between the Jewish people and

their ancient homeland:

ERETZ-ISRAEL, the Land of Israel, was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here theirspiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood,

created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the

eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their

Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration

in it of their political freedom.

The yearning for Zion was expressed in the poems of Yehuda Halevi and other writers of theJewish Golden Age in Medieval Spain, and in the teaching of generations of Jewish thinkers.

Yehuda Halevi wrote:

My heart in the EastBut the rest of me far in the West

How can I savor this life, even taste what I eat?How in the chains of the Moor,

Zion bound to the Cross,

Can I do what Ive vowed to and must?Gladly Id leave

All the best of grand SpainFor the glimpse of Jerusalems dust.3

In exile, Jews around the world turned to Jerusalem in prayer, and they continue to do today. The

physical bonds between the Jews and their ancient homeland have never been severed. Through-

out the Middle Ages Jews residing in the Land of Israel formed communities in historic cities,

3Hillel Halkin, Yehuda Halevi (New York: Schoken Books, 2010), p. 115.


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most notably Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberius. During the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-

turies, great popular messianic movements involving entire Jewish communities in Europe sent

substantial numbers of Jews to the land of their ancestors. Individual immigration of Jews totheir ancient homeland never stopped, reaching a peak in the 19th century: by 1870, at the latest,

Jews made up the majority of the population of Jerusalem.

Zionism: Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. It has sought to ap-

ply the universal right of self-determination to the Jews, to set them free as individuals and a na-

tion in their historic homeland. Abba Eban, Israels former foreign minister and ambassador to

the UN, observed: Zionism is nothing morebut also nothing lessthan the Jewish people'ssense of origin and destination in the land linked eternally with its name. It is also the instrument

whereby the Jewish nation seeks an authentic fulfillment of itself.4

The first waves of Jewish

immigration to Palestine in the late-19th and the beginning of the 20th century were not only in-spired by the Zionist ideology, but also driven by longstanding discrimination, depredation and

persecution in their countries of origin. These immigrants certainly had the inherent right to seek

refuge in other countries, foremost among them the land of their ancestors. From the outset,

Zionist leaders sought to reach a compromise that would allow coexistence between the Jews andthe local Arabs, but the Arab leadership repeatedly turned them down, claiming sole ownership

over all of Palestine. Amos Oz, explaining the justness of Zionism, used the following fable:

The drowning man clinging to his plank is allowed, by all the rules of natural, objective, univer-sal justice, to make room for himself on the plank, even if in doing so he must push the others

aside a little. Even if the others, sitting on that plank, leave him no alternative to force. But he

has no natural right to push the others on that plank into the sea.5

Zionism is Not Colonialism: Unlike colonial settlers in modern history, the Zionist immigrants

did not serve the military or economic interests of any foreign colonial power. Quite the oppo-

site, in fact: they had escaped from discrimination and persecution in their countries of origin.And while colonial setters traditionally sought to exploit the colonized by living off the cheap

labor of the local population, Zionist immigrants aspired to cultivate their ancient-new homeland

by the sweat of their own brows. And again, contrary to colonialist practice, the Zionist enter-

prise did not seek to deplete the land of its natural resources, but to develop it by bringing in hu-man and financial assets. Imported Jewish capital during the 1930s, private and public, was the

main source of economic growth in mandatory Palestine, to the benefit of both the Jewish and

Arab communities.6

Refugees: The Palestinian Refugee problem came as a consequence of the Arab-Israeli war of

1948. Arabs fled their homes not as the result of a plan designed by the Zionist leadership before

or during the war, but because their leaders called on them to do so, promising that they wouldreturn when Arab armies took control of the country; because they feared Jewish reprisal; or be-

cause they were expelled by local Jewish forces who, in the wake of the bloody war, regarded

4Quoted in Chaim Herzog, Who Stands Accused? Israel Answers to its Critics (New York: Random House, 1978),

p. 7.5

Johann Hari, Israel Voice of Reason: Amos Oz on War, Peace and Life as an Outsider, The Independent, March

19, 2009. See also Amos Oz,In the Land of Israel (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), pp. 148-149.6

Yehoshua Porat & Yaacov Shavit (ed.), The History of Eretz Israel: The British Mandate and the Jewish National

Home [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1982), p. 142.


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them as a fifth column. None of this would have happened if the local Arab leadership and

neighboring Arab states had not imposed a war of aggression against the newly-born State of

Israel. Upon the wars end, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok observed:

There are those who say that we uprooted Arabs from their places. But even they will notdeny that the source of the problem was the war: had there been no war, the Arabs wouldnot have abandoned their villages, and we would not have expelled them. Had the Arabs

from the start accepted the decision of 29 November [1947], a completely different Jewish

state would have arisen . . . In essence the State of Israel would have arisen with a large

Arab minority, which would have left its impress on the state, on its manner of gover-nance, and on its economic life, and the Arab minority would have constituted an organic

part of the state.7

Benny Morris, a leading historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict, wrote: The permanence of the

refugee problem owed much to Israels almost instant decision taken in the summer of 1948, notto allow back those who had fled or been expelled. Morris further explained: The Zionist na-

tional and local leadership almost instantly understood that a refugee return would destabilize thenew state, demographically and politically. And the Army understood that return would intro-

duce a militarily subversive fifth column.8

After a bloody war in which Israel suffered 5,700-

5,800 dead (about one percent of its Jewish population), the Israeli leadership was justified intaking such a position.

Right of Return: For decades, Palestinian leaders, aided by Arab propaganda, have argued

that Palestinian refugees who fled their homes during the 1948 war should be allowed to return.

From Israels standpoint, the right of return is unacceptable since a large influx of Palestinians

would mean the end of the Jewish state. To slightly paraphrase Amos Oz, instead of two states,

Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side within secure and recognized borders, there will even-tually be two Palestinian states in the land currently shared by the two peoples. 9 In the first ten

years of its existence, Israel absorbed 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. The solution

for the Palestinian refugees lies in their settlement in the Arab lands where they currently live, or

their repatriation to a future Palestinian state. Israel has already indicated its willingness to par-ticipate in an international effort to implement such a solution. For many years, the Palestinian

leadership has failed to educate its people that the right of return is unrealistic. It is high time

that it does so now, lest this issue become a major obstacle to any progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks, as happened in the 200001 negotiations..

Occupation: The Arab and Palestinian political campaign condemns the Israeli occupation as

illegal and illegitimate. But occupation, in and of itself, is not necessarily illegal or illegitimate.While the occupation of Poland by Germany in 1939 was, the occupation of Germany by Allied

forces in 1945 was not. Whether an occupation is legal depends on the historical circumstances

that led to the occupation. In May 1967, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt violated inter-

7

Quoted in Benny Morris, 1948, The First Arab-Israeli War(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p.410.8

Morris, p. 411.9Amos Oz, Doves Should Re-Examine Their Perch, The Guardian, January 5, 2001.


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national law by closing the Straits of Tiran and deploying 100,000 troops in the Sinai Peninsula,

presenting an existential threat to Israel. On May 26 he stated:

The Arab people wants to fight. We have been waiting for the right day when we would

be fully prepared . . . Recently, we have felt strong enough to triumph, with Gods help, if

we enter into the battle with Israel. On that basis, we have decided to take the actualmeasure. Sharm el-Sheikh [the closure of the Straits of Tiran] implies a confrontation

with Israel. Taking this step makes it imperative that we be ready to embark on a total

war with Israel.10

After exhausting all diplomatic options, Israel was left with no choice but to exercise its right of

self-defense. Israel did not attack Jordan, hoping that Jordan would stay out of the war, and in-

deed sent messages to King Hussein promising not to attack unless it was attacked first. Unfortu-nately, King Hussein ignored Israels peaceful overtures, and instead used artillery and air power

to attack Israeli population centers and ground troops and to capture the UN headquarters in Je-

rusalem. It was only in response to these attacks, in a clear-cut case of self-defense, that Israel

captured the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem.

Fourth Geneva Convention: Article 2 of the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to all cases of

partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party [by another High Contract-

ing Party]. In other words, it is about occupation of the territory of one country that is signatory

to the Convention by another signatory. However, while both Israel and Jordan were signatories

to the Convention when the 1967 war erupted, the conquest of the West Bank by Israel cannot be

considered occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, since in 1948, Jordan occu-

pied the West Bank through aggressive conquest, which was unlawful, and two years later it

unilaterally annexed the area, an act recognized by only two members of the international com-

munity, Britain and Pakistan. Conversely, Israels conquest of the West Bank in 1967 was defen-sive and lawful. Jordan was not a legitimate sovereign in the area, and so the Israeli presence

there is not occupation within the meaning of this term in the Geneva Convention. Th us the

Convention does not apply to the West Bank. (Before its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in

2005, Israel used the same argument with regard to that area.) This being said, Israel has volunta-rily applied the humanitarian provisions of the Convention in the conquered areas, such as allow-

ing visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in facilities where persons

charged with security offenses, including terrorism, are held.

Disputed Area: Politically, the West Bank is best regarded as territory over which there are

competing claims that should be resolved in negotiations. Israel has valid claims to title in this

territory based not only on its historic and religious connection to the land and its recognized se-curity needs, but also on the fact that the territory was not under the sovereignty of any state

when it came under Israeli control in a war of self-defense imposed upon Israel. At the same

time, Israel recognizes that the Palestinians also entertain legitimate claims to the area. The veryfact that the parties have agreed to conduct negotiations indicates that they envisage a compro-

mise. Yet such a compromise does not require Israels withdrawal from the entire West Bank.

10Quoted in Herzog, p. 69.


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UN Security Council Resolution 242, which is accepted by the parties as a basis for negotiations,

stipulates withdrawal of Israel from territories, not the territories.

The Core of all Middle East Conflicts: AJC has long supported a peaceful settlement of the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on two states living side-by-side in peace and security, a resultthat would greatly benefit Israelis, Palestinians, and the peoples of the region as a whole. ButAJC does not agree that this conflict is the source of the region's troubles. There are many long-

standing conflicts in the Middle East that have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rather, the principal sources of tension in today's Middle East are non-localized conflicts, such

as the clash between Islamic extremism and the West, the divide between Shiite and Sunni, andthe contest for power and influence between Iran and the Arab world. Another major problem is

the long-standing struggle of the Kurds for self determination in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Further-

more, the regions Arab and Muslim countries suffer internally from corrupt regimes, economicstagnation and cultural isolation. A committee of Arab intellectuals working under UN auspices

from 2002 through 2006 produced a series of reports on human development in the Arab world

that revealed an appalling pattern of neglect and underdevelopment.11

It is such neglect and

underdevelopment that are the real root causes of extremism and terrorism.

Iran is the Main Threat: Iran is the single most important threat to the regions instability. It

smuggles weapons and ammunition into Gaza, thus sustaining the Hamas regime and perpetuat-ing the division of the Palestinian Authority into two competing entities. It meddles in the inter-

nal affairs of Lebanon, further destabilizing that country, and, with heavy subsidies, trains and

arms Hezbollah, a terror organization dedicated to Israels destruction. Through proxies, Iran al-

so engages in subversive activities in other countries. Most alarmingly, Iran aggressively pursuesnuclear weapons capability, blatantly defying the international community. While Israel has not

conditioned progress in the Palestinian track upon resolution of the Iranian threat, continued in-

ternational pressure on Iran and preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons capability wouldalso diminish that countrys capacity to sabotage the peace process.

Israels Quest for Peace: From the outset, the Zionist movement and then the newly-born State

of Israel sought to achieve peace with the Palestinian Arabs and the neighboring Arab states. In1937, the Zionists accepted the first partition plan proposed by Peel Commission. Ten years lat-

er, it accepted the UN partition plan. Israels founding document attests to this longing for peace:

In the midst of wanton aggression, we still call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of

Israel to return to the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State,

with full and equal citizenship and due representation in its bodies and institutions

provisional or permanent.

We offer peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and in-

vite them to cooperate with the independent Hebrew nation for the common good of all.

11Bernard Lewis, Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East(Oxford University Press, 2010), pp.

75-88. Lewis describes the Palestinian issue as Another major problem for the region, mentioning it together with

a series of other issues: rising national identities, economic backwardness, weak science and technology, poor edu-

cation, Islamic radicalism, the rise of Iran as a regional power and disenfranchisement of women.


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After the 1948 war, Israel and its Arab neighbors signed armistice agreements. Israel then called

on its neighbors to sign peace treaties based on the borders delineated by those agreements, butits overtures were repeatedly turned down by the Arab parties, who vowed to destroy Israel and

wipe it of the map.12

In the aftermath of the 1967 war, the Arab summit at Khartoum adoptedthe Three N0s with respect to Israel: no peace, no recognition, and no negotiation.

Yet when President Sadat of Egypt extended a peaceful hand to Israel in 1977, it was met with

an eager Israeli response. In the peace treaty with Egypt signed two years later, Israel agreed to

return the entire Sinai Peninsula, evacuating thousands of Israeli settlers from Northern Sinai. In2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted President Bill Clintons proposal offering the Pales-

tinians an independent state on 9496 percent of the West Bank, and all of the Gaza Strip, with

Arab Jerusalem as its capital and the disputed holy sites under Muslim custody. But the Palestin-ian leadership rejected the proposal and waged a campaign of violence and terrorthe second

intifadawhich cost the lives of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians. In 2005, Israel unilate-

rally withdrew from the Gaza Strip with the objective of reducing friction between Israelis and

Palestinians and creating better conditions for the advancement of peace. Rather than availing itselfof such an unprecedented opportunity, the Palestinian leadership in Gaza has allowed terror organ-

izations to smuggle in weapons, build bomb-making factories, and use the area to launch thousands

of rockets against Israeli towns and villages.

The real tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then, is that at every historical turning point

the Palestinian leadership has failed its people. The recent resumption of direct Israeli-

Palestinian talks presents another opportunity for a peaceful settlement to this longstanding con-flict. We sincerely hope that the Palestinian leadership will not miss yet another historic oppor-

tunity to fulfill the national aspirations of its people, which can be realized fully only in the

framework of an agreement with Israel.

Right of Self-Defense: The principle of self-defense, long regarded as a sovereign right, is en-

shrined in the UN Charter. Article 51 states: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the in-

herent right of individual or collective self-defense. . . . Israel has exercised this right in a re-strained and responsible way. In his bookA Case for Israel, Allan Dershowitz writes:

Israel is the only nation in the world whose judiciary actively enforces the rule of lawagainst its military even during war time. It is the only country in modern history to have

returned disputed territory captured in a defensive war and crucial to its own self-defense

in exchange for peace. And Israel has killed fewer innocent civilians in proportion to the

number of its own civilians killed than any country engaged in a comparable war.13

In the asymmetrical warfare that terror organizations impose on Israel, the IDF has been

guided by international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction and pro-

12

On May 19, 1967, on the eve of the 1967 war, Radio Cairo announced: This is our chance, Arabs, to deal Israel a

mortal blow of annihilation to blot out its entire presence in our holy land. On May 25 it added: The Arab pe ople

is firmly resolved to wipe Israel off the map. Quoted in Herzog, p. 69. 13

Allan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003), p. 2.


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portionality. These require IDF units to direct their attacks solely against military objectives

and to try to ensure that civilians are not be harmed. Where damage to civilians or civilian

property cannot be avoided, the IDF makes extraordinary efforts to ensure that force is notexcessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage.

Yet despite this record, the Human Rights Council and other UN organs have consistently sin-gled out Israel for disproportionate and unparalleled censure while failing to address the true vi-

olators of human rights in the same conflict. The Goldstone Report, which was initiated by the

Human Rights Council, accused Israel of major human rights violations, including war crimes,

during the hostilities between Israel and Hamas from December 2008 to January 2009. The re-port effectively dismissed Israels right of self-defense and made no moral distinction between

Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and Hamas, a terrorist organization that targets

civilians with suicide bombing and rocket attacks, and denies Israels right to exist. The implica-tions of this moral equivalence go beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, undermining also the

United States and other democracies that are facing asymmetrical warfare against adversaries

who deliberately attack and kill civilians to advance their goals.

State Terrorism: Palestinian advocates and their supporters frequently argue that a distinction

must be made between terrorism, of which they say they are innocent, and legitimate acts of re-

sistance to occupation. They maintain that the root causes must be taken into consideration,meaning that the plight of the Palestinians under occupation justifies violence, even against inno-

cent civilians. They also accuse Israel of state terrorism, in its response to Palestinian resis-

tance to occupation. This view is not only morally reprehensible, but also legally invalid. As

former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, There can be no acceptance of those who wouldseek to justify the deliberate taking of innocent life, regardless of cause or grievance. If there is

one universal principle that all peoples can agree on, surely it is this. As for allegations ofstate

terrorism, a strong set of international norms and lawsincluding the UN Charter and the Ge-neva Conventionsregulates and constrains states decisions to use force. There is no similar

normative framework regarding non-state actors. Therefore and without prejudice to states

obligations to refrain from harboring, sponsoring and financing terrorismthe term act of ter-

rorism technically applies only to non-state actors. Furthermore, Israels actions are meant todefend Israeli lives against Palestinian terrorism. There is no moral equivalence between the

former and the latter, just as there can be no moral equivalence between the arsonist and the fire

fighter.

Settlements:AJCs position regarding settlements was articulated in a statement dated October

25, 2009, a key paragraph of which reads as follows: AJC believes Israel should recognize that

expansion of the territorial footprint of Israeli settlements poses a challenge to reaching anagreement with the Palestinians. Israel should take timely and meaningful action to address this

issue, in order to assist in the efforts undertaken by Senator Mitchell to move the peace process

forward. We should recall, however, that before 1967 there were no Israeli settlements in theWest Bank and Gaza, and yet the Arab parties refused to make peace with Israel. In 1979, Israel

agreed to evacuate thousands of settlers from northern Sinai as part of its peace treaty with

Egypt. At the Camp David summit of 2000 and in the negotiations that followed, Israel agreed to

evacuate dozens of settlements from the West Bank and Gaza as part of a permanent status-


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agreement with the Palestinians. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, re-

moving 8,000 settlers.

A Genuine and Vibrant Democracy: Israel is certainly not above criticism, but much of the

censure directed at Israel today in the international arena is intended to delegitimize the Jewishstate. One example is the Goldstone Report, which not only criticized Israeli policy and conductbut also called into question Israels democratic values and rule of law. The history of the 20

th

century is replete with examples of democraciesnotably, those in Europe between the two

world warsthat, under internal and external pressures, collapsed and turned into dictatorships.

Israel, in contrast, has remained a genuine and vibrant democracy, indeed the only democracy inthe Middle East, despite a permanent security threat and the challenge of transforming hundreds

of thousands of new immigrants from all over the world into a coherent, modern nation.

Not an Apartheid State: In 1948, the same year that the term apartheid was first used to denote

legal separation of the races in South Africa, Israel issued its Declaration of Independence, which

stated:

The State of Israel . . . will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its

inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of

Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitantsirrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience,

language, education and culture . . . .

To the Arab inhabitants of Israel the Declaration promised full and equal citizenship and duerepresentation in its provisional or permanent institutions. Consistent with these principles,Israel has maintained a democratic political system based on majority rule. Israels Arab citizens

participate fully, actively and without any restrictions in this system and are represented in theKnesset and all branches of the government. Transportation, public services and universities are

open to all citizens, Jews and Arabs alike. Hospitals and other medical facilities are also open to

citizens of neighboring Arab states who seek medical treatment in Israel. Muslim law has

equivalent legal status in Israel with Christian and Jewish law in personal matters relating tomarriage, divorce and inheritance. This being said, the relationship between majority and minori-

ty is never simple, and Israel is no exception, all the more so because the ongoing Israeli-

Palestinian conflict compounds the situation for both Jews and Arabs in Israel. Yet despite thisdifficulty, Israel has achieved a remarkable degree of coexistence between these two communi-

ties. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political conflict between two peoples with competing

national goalsand should be addressed as such. Attempts to transform it into a racial or reli-

gious conflict make it much more difficult to resolve. By embracing the two-state solution andmaking generous peace overtures, Israel has made it abundantly clear that it does not want to

rule the Palestinians, let alone impose an apartheid regime upon them.

Some Final Thoughts


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Documents

The Campaign Against Israel Legitimacy AJC