Descriptors more befitting of nations like Saudi Arabia or Sudan, both of which are designated as the “worst of the worst” regarding their citizens’ liberties by Freedom House, are instead applied to Israel.
The depiction of Israel as a miscreant state is by no means novel, and it is one that has pervaded the entirety of its 68 years as a nation. Recently, however, criticisms of Israel’s government, specifically in regard to its perceived mistreatment of Palestinians, have been on the rise on college campuses across the U.S.
Israel has defeated countless adversaries since its conception, but the one conflict it cannot seem to overcome is its public image. The Zionist state’s marred reputation is the result of a single narrative of Israel, one which ignores the nation’s background and disregards the embattled history of the Jews.
In large part due to campaigns like Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions, a group that advocates Israel's political and economic exclusion from the international community, anti-Israel sentiment has become increasingly popular within the last year, especially among campus minority groups. The recent surge in animosity towards the Jewish state is the result of well-intentioned yet sadly misguided parallels drawn between minority populations in the U.S. and Palestinians in Israel.
This clever political juxtaposition has resonated particularly well among African Americans. The alleged displacement of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government is erroneously equated to the unjust treatment of blacks by police in the United States, a comparison that demonizes Israel and unjustly labels it as an unruly aggressor. A subscription to this single narrative completely neglects Israel’s complex past.
Such a limited understanding of Israel is akin to judging the disproportionately large number of imprisoned African Americans in the United States, without first taking into account the unfair and racist institutions that contributed to their incarceration. Such is the danger of a single narrative.
An account of Israel as an apartheid state ignores the fact that Palestine, a former British colony, was divided into two separate states by a United Nations mandate known as the Partition Resolution in 1947. This directive was designed to relocate the hundreds of thousands of Jews that were displaced after World War II. Understandably incensed by this arrangement, the Arabs declared war and quickly lost.
The Jews neither invaded nor took over Palestine. Rather, European Jews were plopped down in the Middle East (where Jews have consistently lived for 4,000 years), in an area that has somehow been even more hostile to them than Europe was, and have to defend themselves to this day. Since Israel’s establishment, Iran has repeatedly sworn to its destruction, and Hamas (simultaneously a recognized terrorist organization and the majority party in the Palestinian Legislative Council) has time and time again threatened to annihilate all of the Jews. Such threats are part of everyday life in Israel, yet somehow these details are excluded from the story.
A representation of the Jewish state as an aggressive and merciless antagonist of Palestine rejects the notion that, like any other country, Israel has a responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorist organizations. You can be sure that if Hamas launched thousands of missiles into the U.S., the world would not be quite as dismissive.
The depiction of Israeli soldiers as remorseless killers is similarly rebuffed by former British commander Col. Richard Kemp, who said, “No army in the world acts with as much discretion and care as the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) … the U.S. and the U.K. are careful, but not as much as Israel.” This statement is supported by the fact that Israel warns Gaza of impending missile strikes via phone and pamphlet. Merciless? Perhaps not.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is not clear-cut, as there have been injustices perpetrated by both sides. However, the single narrative of Israel as an inhumane antagonist, an account that plays upon the tenuous state of minority relations in the United States, and belligerently ignores irrefutable facts, must not continue.
To ignore a people’s past and motivations is to delegitimize their existence, a concept with which the Jews are all too familiar. The misguided attempts to boycott Israel by Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions are eerily reminiscent of Germany’s boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933. For obvious reasons, it is essential to proceed with caution and objectivity.