ISRAEL: THE JEW AMONG NATIONS By Asithandile Gxumisa

"Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren...Nazareth is [absolutely] forlorn....Jericho...accursed...Jerusalem...a pauper village...Palestine is desolate and unlovely." So did Mark Twain, author of the classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, write about Palestine in 1867. Clearly, the land that we were once told by our elders was running with milk and honey did not at all appeal to the celebrated American skeptic humorist. However, despite the bleak and dreary ambience of this mysterious land that Tom Sawyer observed with apparent disfavour, I do not think it would be a stretch to argue that it has been a magnet for all kinds of ugly, dark and fiery passions like no other land ever has. The Christian once claims it for his own, for his Lord was crucified upon its craggy heights. The Jew claims it for his own, for God gave it as an eternal inheritance to Abraham. And still the Muslim claims it for his own, for there did Allah give Muhammad the second pillar of Islam.

To whom then, one finds himself wondering, does the Holy Land belong? I could not possibly begin to measure the blood spilled, count the lives lost and fathom the accompanying sorrow in seemingly hopeless attempts of many years to decisively respond to this question.  The Palestinian, in the words of his poet Mahmoud Darwish, declares defiantly:

                 I Belong There.

The Jew, in the words of his own poet, asserts no less defiantly:

       

              If I forget thee, Jerusalem

             Let my blood be forgotten.

In my humble opinion, the answer - as is often the truth about baffling questions of this kind - lies (hidden) somewhere between the two extremes. And so, as a point of departure, I think it is prudent to announce that I believe firmly in the two-state solution as envisaged by the United Nations (U.N.) Resolution 242 of the 22nd of November 1967. Farthermore, as this piece is more than anything else a defense of Israel against outrageous accusations by her critics, the framework within which I will build my case is unapologetically pro-Israel. It is, however, not at all anti-Palestinian. But I will happily commit the veracity of the latter claim to the judgement of the reader. The tale of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is long and complex, and so it would be impossible to lay it all out here. Therefore, where the reader is left with a desire for more, then I will be more than willing to direct him or her to far better sources than myself.

The first seeds of the State of Israel -  Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew - were planted in the late 1800s. Students of history will quickly recognize that this was also an era when European powers, in the so-called Scramble For Africa, carved up the continent and re-drew the borders of lands they had never set foot on. The First Aliya, that is, the first major immigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine occurred in the year 1881. The Berlin Conference which formalized the colonization of Africa took place between 1884 and 1885. Thus, for this reason and many other less interesting ones, the birth of the State of Israel has often been associated with and accused of being colonialist. At best this accusation is woefully misleading, at worst it is worryingly ignorant. For this charge to make any sense at all one would have to turn our traditional understanding of colonialism on its head. Colonialism, as understood traditionally, entails a policy of a country directed toward acquiring either partial or full political authority over other countries with a view to benefiting economically from such countries. When colonial powers in Europe went about colonizing other folks across the planet two things often happened: they sent occupying settlers, and these settlers always planted the flags of their homelands in the newly-colonized territories. Proof: the Union Jack still flies among us, and a significant number of white people of British origin walk among us, for example.

When Jewish people embarked on the First Aliya, it was not to set up some colonialist post in Palestine. They were, in truth, fleeing from intolerable persecution and the awful Russian pogroms of the time. They had not been sent out by European powers bent on colonialist conquest; although, admittedly, anti-Semitic Europe would have been glad to see them leave. Obviously, the last thing on the minds of Jewish people who had just fled from their European oppressors was planting any European flag in Palestine. Thus, in Israel allegiance is owed only to the white and blue Flag of Zion, sporting the iconic Star of David. So, no, the charge that Israel is a colonialist state is not sustainable. Connected to the silly idea that Israel is a colonialist state, is the equally ludicrous assumption that the landmass that is currently all of Israel was, including all the land that is under either the Palestinian National Authority or Hamas, an existing and viable Arab state before Jews unlawfully stole it from the Arabs. The land of Palestine existed as no more than a province of the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1918. The Ottoman Empire lost it to imperial Britain after its tragic disintegration following the end of the Great War. Thereafter Britain administered the land on the basis of the Leaugue of Nations-approved mandate system of 1922.

Thus, never once did Palestine ever exist as an independent, viable Arab state - at least as far as statehood is understood in the Westphalian tradition and the Montevideo Convention of 1933. So the notion that in 1948 the State of Israel was cruelly and illegally built upon a viable Arab state is also simply not sustainable if, at the very least, we allow facts to be our guide. Recently, the most fashionable accusation often levelled against Israel by her critics is the following: Israel is an apartheid state. If respectable people like Noam Chomsky, and the not so respectable types like Marc Lamont Hill, were not calling Israel an apartheid state, I would dismiss this simply as hyperbole gone wrong. But, given the gravity of the claim and the veneer of legitimacy lent to it by such voices, it must be dealt with. Apartheid, as any man who still possesses a modicum of rationality will admit, was a diabolical and indefensible regime that systematically oppressed and ssegregated people on the basis of their skin colour. Now, here is a direct quote from the Chief Justice Aharon Barak of the Israeli Supreme Court in a 2002 judgement (the equivalent of the Constitutional Court in South Africa): “The principle of equality prohibits the state from distinguishing between its citizens on the basis of religion or nationality. The principle also applies to the allocation of state land. . . . The Jewish character of the state does not permit Israel to discriminate between its citizens.” So, there you go, Israel has no evil policy of racial segregation and exclusion. Indeed, Jewish Israel may have special laws of return for Jews, but so does 'Russian' Russia for ethnic Russians since the spectacular collapse of communism in the early 90s, and 'German' Germany for ethnic Germans since the harrowing displacements of 1939 - 1945. Interestingly enough, there is not a single screech about 'apartheid' Russia or Germany for keeping these special laws in their own books.

Admittedly, Israel has lots of 'walls and fences and heavily guarded entrances'. But so would any reasonable country in a comparable situation of constant threats of terrorism from its neighbours who harbour fantasies of its annihilation. Anyway, that 2002 decision should be enough to show the bottomless absurdity of the apartheid charge. No white judge would have made such a judgement in apartheid South Africa as this would ultimately have had the effect of nullifying racial segregation altogether. The last of the accusations I will deal with here relates to the two-state solution which, at the beginning, I admitted has my full support. It is always argued, in the media, academia as well as by any interested person, that Israel has either always rejected all the proposed peace settlements or done somewhat to undercut efforts to solve the crisis. In 1937 the British government published the Peel Commission Report. It contained conclusions of a comprehensive investigation it had conducted into the violent and terrorist disturbances of the 1920s which had been inspired by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Arab High Committee. Anyway, the report recognized the issue as "fundamentally a conflict of right with right". Thus, it proposed a partition plan of Palestine which would allow Jews to enjoy a right of self-determination over lands where Jews were the majority, and Arab Palestinians over lands where they were the majority. While the Jews reluctantly accepted the plan, Arab Palestinians rejected it vehemently.

Following the shocking murder of 6 million Jews by Nazis in Europe during the Second World War, international support for a homeland for Jews in Palestine grew strong. In 1947, just a year before the U.N. officially recognized Israel's statehood, a partition plan was also proposed by the newly-born U.N. Needless to say, the Jews accepted it and the Palestinians as well as almost all the Arab world rejected it. It is quite interesting that the Jews, who had fought for the Victors in the War, and not the Palestinians who had fought for the Vanquished (including aiding and abetting the Nazi massacre of Jews), were the ones who accepted the partition plan. Anyway, again, in the 2000s, during the Camp David-Taba peace process, another golden opportunity came up. Ehud Barak, then (a dovish) Prime Minister of Israel, made world headlines when he offered Palestinians, among other things they had been demanding, a state with its capital in Jerusalem, a return of about 95% of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip, control over the Temple Mount and a $ 30 billion compensation for the 1948 refugees. That refugee crisis, by the way, had been caused by the refusal by Palestinians to accept the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Be that as it may, still the Palestinians under the leadership of Yasser Arafat rejected the offer and resorted to cowardly acts of terrorism against innocent Israeli civilians. I believe it was at this point when the South African-born Israeli diplomat, Abba Eban, said memorably: "The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Even Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia (a kingdom that is staunchly pro-Palestinian) called the decision not to take the offer by Arafat a "crime against the Palestinians", even "...against the entire [Middle East] region". Of course, this meant that the Israeli-Palestinian crisis had been allowed to gasp back to life.

Naturally, I would very much like to add here that Israel has not entirely been guiltless in all this gory drama. No nation ever is. There are clear and well-documented instances where the Israeli government has mistreated non-Jewish citizens in Israel, engaged in pre-emptive warfare and driven Palestinians out of their homes and displaced them from their land. Particularly frustrating for its defenders, myself included, are the settlements that Israel keeps building in violation of U.N. resolutions - which do nothing to help her already desperate case.  Moreover, the squalor and the general immiseration of Palestinians cannot all be chalked up to the incompetence and the corruption of the Palestinian leadership. And all the world knows about Israel's 'transgressions' against the Palestinians - the media, the E.U., the U.N and the universities have all made it their mission to bring all these to light. However, this is part of the problem - if, indeed, not the worst part. Why all the selective outrage at Israel? There is so much outrage that a U.N's Conference on Women will tragicomically and suddenly spend most of its time denouncing Israel rather than sexism as occurred in Mexico City in 1975, and Copenhagen in 1980. Recall the 2001 Aids Conference in Durban that degenerated into anti-Israel squeals by Arab leaders - angering both America and Israel. Delegates of both countries ended up leaving even before the comical Conference came to a close. Why, I quite agree with Nikki Haley, erstwhile U.S. ambassador to the U.N., when she said that the U.N. had become  "a cesspool [of anti-Semitism]". Then there is the nasty boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement specifically targeting the Jewish state, which South Africa is foolishly supporting. The excuse for this apparent anti-Semitic campaign is often the wicked belief that Israel is the 'prime violator of human rights in the world'.

These self-righteous bigots will conveniently forget the truth that Israel is in fact the only democracy in the region. It is in Israel where members of the LGBT community enjoy equal and full protection under the law, women's rights are recognized and protected, and a culture of religious tolerance thrives. It was insufferably confusing when I learnt once of a pro-Palestinian protest by gay and lesbian people considering that if any of them ever set their 'rainbow feet' on any Palestinian-governed land they would most certainly face the gallows - or worse. Israel's human rights culture is far more admirable than that of an overwhelming majority of the world's nations. It certainly surpasses that of its theocratic Arab neighbours, where people of faiths other than Islam are subjected to discriminatory tax laws (e.g. the jizya) as well as limitations on the expressions of their religious faith. But, no, there is no BDS movement directed against authoritarian Saudi Arabia, or theocratic Iran. It is either that people somehow suspend their powers of reason when talking about the Jewish state, or something far more sinister is at play. The latter seems to be the more plausible of the two. Again, I am minded to ask, where exactly is the international outrage over the occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco, or the occupation of Xinjiang by China and its cold treatment of its Uyghurs? The only difference between China, Morocco (to name just a few states in a somewhat 'comparable' position to Israel) and Israel is that the latter is Jewish. Well, I know you will say it is unfair. But, until such time as the other side comes up with a credible explanation for this axiomatic and dangerous double standard, then the uncomfortable truth that Israel is targeted merely because it is a Jewish state will always be hovering above them like a sable cloud.