Max Marder

It’s very common for defenders of Israel to claim that the Jewish state comes under attack unfairly, and that its conduct is held to a double standard. On Sunday, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg repeated this claim, criticizing pro-Palestinian groups (‘anti-Israel’ groups, in Goldberg’s parlance) for boycotting an Israeli theater company’s performance of the Merchant of Venice at the Globe Theater in London. Goldberg writes:

“Does it surprise anyone that the controversy centers not on the anti-Semitic aspects of the play, but on the (anti-Semitic) demands of anti-Israel activists to scapegoat Israel by boycotting its cultural exports?…Chinese artists seldom, if ever, provoke widespread calls for boycott, even though China is engaged in a systematic campaign to wipe-out Tibetan culture, and, more to the point, Tibetans.”

Unfortunately, Goldberg’s comparison of Israel to China is a false analogy, and his argument that Israel is subject to a double standard is simplistic and misleading.

Goldberg attributes the willingness to boycott an Israeli theater company, rather than a Chinese one, to anti-Semitism. However, as difficult as it may be, it is necessary to distinguish between criticism of the Israeli government and racism against Jews. It’s disingenuous for Goldberg to insinuate that boycotts of Israeli products, companies, or “cultural exports” stems from hatred of Jews rather than Israeli policy, chiefly the occupation of the Palestinian territories. It is possible to have problems with Israelis and not with Jews.

Goldberg also fails to mention that the initiative to boycott Israeli products falls under the umbrella of the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions movement (BDS), possibly the largest manifestation of Palestinian civil non-violent resistance in history. BDS calls for”a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights.”

The suicide terror tactics of the Second Intifadeh and Hamas’ rocket fire from Gaza have largely been condemned by the international community. Yet today, the vast majority of Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule is peaceful. In line with the success of non-violent protest during the Arab Spring, and in pursuit of reconciliation with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party, even Hamas has stated that its commitment will be to non-violent resistance. To equate the BDS movement with anti-Semitism is to put it on a level playing field with Palestinian terrorism of years past.

Many ask “where is the Palestinian Gandhi?” Wherever he is, Jeff Goldberg considers him an anti-Semite. If the boycott of an Israeli theater performance in London is anti-Semitic, it’s hard to imagine what form of Palestinian resistance isn’t.

There are many reasons that have nothing to do with racism that explain why an Israeli performance would face calls for boycott while a Chinese one wouldn’t. Most obvious is that Israel holds elections and China does not. It’s easy to see why boycotting a nation of 8 million potential voters would be more likely to bring about policy shifts than a boycott of a nation of 1.3 billion people and the Communist Party. In Israel, citizens are both voters and soldiers. They have more ownership over their government and its decisions than Chinese citizens.

Supporters of Israel must stop pointing to Chinese, Zimbabwean, Iranian or Saudi transgressions as excuses for the Jewish State’s shortcomings. Goldberg’s tacit argument that Tibetans are more victimized than Palestinians is callous and irrelevant. Israel should seek to be the best that it can be, regardless of its peers in the community of nations.

Israel shouldn’t worry about double standards and hold itself to a common, moral and egalitarian standard—as a nation that views itself as Western democracy. It’s possible that Israel’s human rights record is better than Beijing’s, but it would be difficult to argue that there isn’t room for improvement.

As human beings, it’s very natural to fear what we don’t understand. Our cavemen ancestors who survived were the more cautious ones. Many of the cavalier risk-takers, unquestioning in their trust, were not naturally selected. In Israel-Palestine, neither side understands the other side very well, causing fear to permeate the Holy Land as a result. Much of the mutual distrust is a consequence of the infrequency of encounters between Israelis and Palestinians.

In Israel, segregation is pervasive. Within Jewish-Arab cities like Haifa, Acco and Jerusalem, there is a great deal of self-segregation—Arabs feel more comfortable living with Arabs and Jews with Jews. But the culture and politics of segregation run much deeper.

From a very young age, Jewish and Arab children are inculcated to distrust the other culture, which they rarely meet and later become unlikely to seek out. Israeli and Palestinian schools deliver completely opposite interpretations of history with no acknowledgement of the other narrative. This phenomenon is exemplified by the Israeli law, passed earlier this year, banning the mourning of the Naqba, or the Castrophe, in 1948 during which the State of Israel was declared and independence was achieved at the expense of dozens of Palestinian villages and over 700,000 Palestinian refugees. Israeli media perpetuates the national Jewish narrative, namely that Israel is “surrounded by enemies,” that Palestinians “don’t value human life” and that the United Nations is anti-Israel. Segregation is further institutionalized by checkpoints and restrictions on freedom of movement. Israelis cannot visit major Arab cities in so called Area A of the West Bank, which includes Ramallah and Nablus. Palestinians who aren’t citizens of Israel can’t leave the Occupied Territories without a permit. The latest segregationist project, called the separation wall or the security fence depending on who you ask, built by Israel in the last ten years, epitomizes the separation of the two peoples, at enormous cost to the Palestinians. In an article about the separation wall by Btselem, the Israeli human rights organization says:

“The construction of the barrier has brought new restrictions on movement for Palestinians living near the Barrier’s route…Thousands of Palestinians have difficulty going to their fields and marketing their produce…The restrictions on freedom of movement also impair access of rural Palestinians to hospitals in nearby towns, harm the educational system since many schools, primarily in rural areas, are dependent on teachers who live outside the community, and hamper family and social ties.”

With such rampant segregation, demonization and stereotyping flourish. There is little interaction with which to disprove myths and fears of the other.

Dr. Nava Sonnenschein of the School for Peace is a PhD in Psychology and has been organizing and facilitating dialogues between Israelis and Palestinians for 30 years at the School for Peace in Neve Shalom~Wahat al-Salam, a binational Israeli village. Dr. Sonnenschein conducted her PhD research on the effect that these interactions have on the Jewish participants.

The members of the encounter groups at the School for Peace are 50% Israeli and 50% Palestinian. Within the vacuum of the group, the two sides are equal, which is anathema to the reality outside, where Israelis are stronger in terms of numbers, arms, resources, territory and wealth. By being lowered onto an even playing field in this regulated environment, the Israeli group feels threatened.

“The Jewish participants in the beginning of the encounter will try to make the Palestinians seem inhumane, in order to justify the unequal treatment they undergo,” says Dr. Sonnenschein. “Over the course of the interaction, the Jewish participants begin to slowly dissociate violence from Palestinian culture, and understand it more as a result of the political situation.” 

According to Dr. Sonnenschein, an Israeli Jew herself, the discrimination that Jews have suffered over the course of their history, culminating with the Holocaust, has been imprinted on the Palestinians. The insecurity that Jews feel, the sense of existential threat, is an indelible part of the Jewish identity, and a source of community and togetherness. The goal of the dialogues is to “break the tendency to resort to anger and victimization and to nurture feelings of empathy and compassion.”

In one fascinating exchange that Dr. Sonnenschein oversaw, an Israeli Jewish participant was trying to construct this threat, in order to paint the Palestinians as violent and inhumane, which would thus strengthen her own identity. A Palestinian participant was commenting that he could understand Palestinians who would resort to violence, but he didn’t justify it. “They have no past, and they have no future, so they have nothing to lose,” he said. “Terrorism is the weapon of the weak and the disenfranchised.”

The Israeli participant pushed. “If you understand it, why don’t you justify it?”

“I won’t justify it,” the Palestinian said. Dr. Sonnenschein explained that if he had, the Israeli participant would be able to take the moral high ground.

For Dr. Sonnenschein, these facilitations are crucial in combating the social and political ill that are enabled and exacerbated by segregation. They allow Israelis to hear the Palestinians’ story, to hear about their suffering, and to see that there is remarkable collateral damage in the Israeli security campaign against Palestinian militants, who represent a small minority. For their part, it’s important for Palestinians to see that there are some Israelis willing to listen to them, willing to find a way to end the occupation and bring peace.

Dr. Sonnenschein concluded by commenting that Israelis are taken through a painful process. The dialogues deconstruct their identities, which she says are based to a large extent on a threat that, while having a tangible basis in reality, is hyperbolized by the government, the media, the educational system, and Israeli society as a whole.

It is remarkably rare for Israelis and Palestinians to sit together and discuss their fears and concerns. In addition to the dialogues conducted by Dr. Sonnenschein at the School for Peace, there are other projects and organizations which create independent pockets of integration, such as Wounded Xrossing Borders, an Israeli-Palestinian initiative that emerged from the People’s Peace Fund. Far from a leftist hippie peacenik get-together, Wounded Xrossing Borders brings together people from both sides that have been wounded in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many of the Palestinian participants have served prison sentences for fighting against the Israeli occupation. An Israeli warden who directed the prison in which many of the Palestinians served is also a member of the group. Most of the other Israelis were wounded in army service, or lost loved ones in terrorist attacks. The Palestinian co-founder of the organization, Suleiman Khatib, served over ten years in an Israeli prison for throwing rocks at soldiers during the First Intifadeh in the late 1980s. He was 14 when he was imprisoned.

Wounded Xrossing Borders is not an unadulterated success story or a manifestation of unfettered hope and optimism. Members of the group fight often. They’ve been trying to draft a group constitution since 2008 when the group was formed, and to date they have been unable to reach a consensus. Many people who attend a meeting are unable to return for another one, wholly unable to sit in the same room as a former Israeli soldier or an ex-Palestinian militant. But they talk. They sit at the same table over lunch. They listen, and come to understand, if not condone, the culture and policies of the other.

In Israeli and Palestinian society, attending such meetings with the other side is considered borderline treasonous. When asked how other Palestinians reacted when they heard he was attending these meetings with Israelis, a Palestinian participant, Jamal, responded that “my wife didn’t agree. My parents, my uncles, all didn’t want me to go. My own children were against it.”

Jamal was in and out of prison in his teenage years for protesting the Israeli occupation during the First Intifadeh. He was imprisoned as a youth three separate times for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.

“When I first came to the meetings, I thought I would come once or twice and then stop. But it was the first time I had met Israelis that weren’t soldiers [in uniform]. I didn’t know that there were Israelis who were willing to listen, Israelis who wanted peace and felt that there was something wrong happening to the Palestinians.”

Since he was last released from prison in the early 1990s, Jamal has settled down, started a family, opened a business and turned to non-violence and reconciliation efforts. It’s a story worthy of mainstream media attention which it doesn’t receive, since Jamal’s metamorphosis doesn’t fit into the violent narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which most consumers want to read, and which most Israeli and Palestinians are ironically more comfortable believing. “I’ve lost business and I’ve lost friends because I go to this group [Wounded Xrossing Borders]. But now, after two years, my wife attends meetings with me sometimes.”

The implications of this separation of Israelis and Palestinians—physically, psychologically and historically—are substantial. If an eventual two-state solution further separates Israelis and Palestinians, it’s possible that suspicion and distrust will remain constant. Without perceived security, there may not be genuine stability.

For many Israelis, when they think of Gaza, or even Palestinians, or even the Arab world as a whole, the first thing that comes to mind is an image like the one above. For many Israelis, they feel that they are surrounded by people who will hate them no matter what they do.

This blogger has long emphasized that it is vital to understand the narratives of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, to take psychology and feelings of insecurity into account when analyzing the conflict. I’ve written a lot about why Palestinians feel insecure: they are walled in (in what Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan oft calls an ‘open air prison’), have been displaced from their land, have little freedom of movement, and see a military presence all around them.

Many Palestinians cannot understand why Israelis— with one of the greatest armies in the world, an American best friend and a nuclear arsenal— feel insecure. I talked to an Israeli friend of mine, who lives in the village with me, to try and find out more.

“Do you see what is happening in Egypt?” he asks me.

“About the embassy attack in Cairo?”

“Yes,” he says. He went on to emphasize how frquent terrorist attacks are, even though there have been less instances of them in the last several years. “Just last month, terrorists murdered eight people in Eilat.”

I pointed out that the attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo was in response to the events of that very day, September 19th. “While chasing the terrorists back into Sinai, Israeli forces killed five Egyptians.”

“One Egyptian.”

“Five,” I said.

“One, maybe two,” he said.

Despite the insistence of the interim government in Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), that they are committed to peace with Israel and keeping law in order in the Sinai peninsula, where the attack originated from, my Israeli friend was more than skeptical.While most reports blamed the Egyptian military for simply not having a firm grip on security in Sinai, he felt that the Egyptians purposefully turned a blind eye to the attack.

“How is it that Israeli forces chasing terrorists into Egypt end up shooting Egyptian military? Did you see the pictures? The terrorist camp was right next to the military camp. Right next to it. You can’t tell me they didn’t know they were there.” For him, Israel will always be insecure, because forces all around it are complicit in a campaign to destroy the Jewish state.

“I hate the army and I hate my government, but I love my country,” he’s fond of saying. My friend, who’s 26, served three years in the army like most Israeli men. Earlier, when I’d asked him what he would change about the country if he was in charge, he quickly answered, “I wouldn’t give every 18 year-old child in this country an M-16. When you’re 18, you’re not a man, you’re a child.”

He seems to still be reeling from the effects of his tour of duty. Once he asked me to ask him what he remembered from going into Lebanon in 2006. Before I could open my mouth to ask him the question, he said “Nothing. I remember going in, I remember my friend getting shot in the head, and I remember getting out.” He told me many times in our conversation that the army does terrible things.

He told me that he personally witnessed or participated in the arrests of “20 or 30” arrests of terrorists. He’s seized explosives and found papers on which there were plans to attack Israel. “If we just let everyone in, some of them will blow themselves up. We have good intelligence, thank god, and good security, and we catch most of them.”

It’s not hard to figure out why Israelis are perpetually concerned about their security. “Everyone in Israel knows someone who was killed in the army or by a terrorist,” he’s told me more than once.

“We’re the dumbest country in the world. We do everything we can to minimize civilian deaths. We dropped millions of leaflets into Lebanon in 2006 saying ‘If you’re not Hezbollah, you shouldn’t be here.’ There are guided weapons, I’ve seen them, which can kill a [Hamas militant] riding a motorcycle and not damage any other cars or people. We are a tiny country, surrounded by people who hate us, yet we are concerned about , what others think. What do you think would happen if one rocket was launched at Texas from Mexico?”

I asked him if these people attacked Israelis because they hated Israel or because they hated Jews.

“They hate Jews,” he said.

“I think it’s because they hate Israeli policies.”

“Jews.”

“Israel.”

It went back and forth like a teeter-totter.

Most of his concerns were legitimate and based on his personal experiences from the army, which as he pointed out, almost all Israelis are exposed to. Yet there was an unmistakable tinge of racism in his rhetoric. He told me the Arabs will never want peace, that they will always fight viciously for ‘dignity’ and ‘respect.’ He told me that if I insulted an Arab’s mother, they wouldn’t think, they would just stab me. He pointed to dictators like Bashar al-Assad, Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein, and told me that as the world has moved ahead, the Arabs have lagged behind, massacring their own people.

There were also concrete, non-theoretical things that we couldn’t agree on, like how many Egyptian were killed in Sinai in September, for example. He felt that almost everyone killed in the Cast Lead siege of Gaza was a member of Hamas, while I’ve read very different statements. He also said that every Palestinian in an Israeli prison was a terrorist, and that there were no inmates under 18. He insisted on this last point quite vociferously refusing to believe that minors are arrested or detained by Israelis. However, since we’ve talked, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have “upped the age for suspects to be tried as minors from age 15 to up to 18,” although they can still be arrested and detained as minors.

I lamented that it was so difficult to find consistent and reliable information about the conflict. I hated that my information and my experiences were so contradictory to his information and his experiences. He looked at me very seriously and said, “listen—there is no truth. One side has their story, my side has mine. I’m sure you’d get a very different story if you talked about this with someone [from the other side].”

I agreed completely.

“If you call someone in China right now, they will say they can see the sun, even though it’s dark as night here.”

In late May, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a speech that saw more cheers than the banquet after the Royal Wedding. Incredibly, the Israeli’s speech received more bipartisan support in Washington than just about any speech or event in recent memory. Much of Netanyahu’s speech was aimed to counter President Obama’s speech on the Middle East delivered at the State Department on May 19^th.

In his speech, the President discussed other matters in the Middle East for more than 40 minutes before addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict. Importantly, he tipped the scales of his Administration’s position on the events in the Arab world toward democracy promotion and away from unconditional support of allies.

The President delivered his strongest statements yet against atrocities committed by the governments of Bahrain, an ally and host of the American Fifth Fleet, and Syria, a quasi-ally (it’s complicated). Mr. Obama continued to demand strong action against Muammar Qaddafi while reaffirming the importance of the will of the people to decide how they’re governed.

Yet all of this was overshadowed by Mr. Obama’s seemingly controversial statement that an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan should be based on the foundation of Israel’s 1967 borders with mutually agreed landswaps.

Mr. Netanyahu was outraged and members of Mr. Obama’s own party, including Senate minority leader Harry Reid, claimed that the President had thrown Israel under the bus.

This is hardly the case.

Using the 1967 borders as the foundation of formulating a two-state border solution is not a new idea. The most broadly supported Arab peace plan to date consisted of returning to 1967 borders, honoring UN Resolutions 242 and 338, a full cessation of hostilities, and full Arab recognition of Israel, from Mecca to Beirut.

It was proposed by Saudi Arabia in 1981.

The Israelis, for their part, do not want to return to their 1967 border without any alterations. There are significant Jewish populations in the West Bank and significant Arab populations in Israel proper. Thus, during both secret and bilateral negotiations in the 1990s, after the Oslo Accords reinvigorated the peace process in 1993, the idea of landswaps gained noteworthy appeal.

Mr. Netanyahu’s predecessors (Olmert and Barack), as well as Mr. Obama’s  (namely President Clinton) and even Yasser Arafat sent proposals and counter-proposals during negotiations involving a return of the vast majority of the West Bank to the Palestinians, excluding some major Jewish settlements, in exchange for an equal amount of land from mainland Israel.

Negotiations broke down because, among other reasons, the specific nature how much land and which land to swap was not agreed upon.

Mr. Obama has been criticized for inciting his Israeli counterpart when there was little to gain. A resumption of talks was never likely. He had not proposed a new or specific peace plan or changed the equation enough to bring either side back to the table.

This allegation is legitimate. But given the landscape of the Middle East today and the benefits to U.S. interests that Israeli-Palestinian peace would provide (or rather the reduction in catastrophes), it’s hard to blame the President for trying to shake the Israelis from their slumber as the September UNGA vote on Palestinian unilateral statehood draws closer.

The Middle East is changing, and as much as Mr. Netanyahu hates to admit it, he can’t stop this from happening. Israel is losing the demographics battle; the Arab population is Israel is growing much faster than the Jewish one. Governments are springing up around Israel that will be held accountable to public opinion. Right now, the court of public opinion is firmly anti-American and anti-Israeli, primarily because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The importance of the conflict’s resolution is being made clear every day by Bashar al-Assad’s actions in neighboring Syria. Under intense internal scrutiny, the Alawite sultan is employing a time-tested autocratic tactic—using popular hatred of Israel to divert attention and dissent from himself.

Assad has been doling out incentives for Syrian protestors to charge the Syrian-Israeli border. In two clashes in as many weeks, Syrian protestors have lead incursions across the Israeli border, only to meet inevitable resistance from Israel’s Armed Forces. Despite taking great care not to cause fatalities, Israeli soldiers have unfortunately inflicted them, distracting Assad’s opposition slightly while inflicting more damage to Israel’s reputation.

This is the time for the Israelis and Americans to change their ways. Democratic values must trump valueless self-interest, compromise must trump force, and inclusiveness must trump isolation. Mr. Obama is starting to realize this. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon realized this, abandoning the right-wing Likud party, whose mantel Bibi has taken up, in favor of forming his own moderate and dovish party, Kadima.

Mr. Netanyahu is not seeing the light, and he’s hitting out at his best ally as a result.

Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli right is painting Mr. Obama has abandoning Israel. This is hardly true. Mr. Obama is receiving flak because, relative to his predecessors, he is harsh on Israel. This is only because he’s not unconditionally supporting every measure the Israeli government supports.

Mr. Obama’s Administration has continued to back Israel in the United Nations, and has, like Mr. Netanyahu, opposed the rapprochement of Fatah and Hamas, as well as unilateral Palestinian declaration of Statehood, scheduled for September when the UN General Assembly convenes.

Some progressives believe that Fatah-Hamas unity was an essential step toward peace. While the parties still have their differences, and haven’t yet formed a unity government, their agreement paves the way for Israel and the United States to have one Palestinian government to negotiate with instead of two.

On this matter, for better or worse, Mr. Obama echoes Mr. Netanyahu in saying that he won’t support negotiations with any government involving Hamas, a political party with a militant wing that doesn’t recognize Israel’s existence and preaches violent resistance.

Instead of appreciating Mr. Obama’s support on this matter and others (military and financial support for Israel hasn’t stopped or been lightened), Mr. Netanyahu is determined to pick a fight over a statement that, while not previously public, reaffirmed the status quo of the last 13 years of negotiations.

While speaking in front of the U.S. Congress, a few days after Mr. Obama’s speech, Mr. Netanyahu delivered a famous Israeli trope—that Israel could not accept a settlement based on 1967 borders because those borders were undefendable. Clearly, Mr. Netanyahu needs a lesson in history. When those borders were attacked by an Arab coalition, the Israelis routed them, famously defending their border while pushing hostile outward, all the way to the Sinai desert in the West, the Golan Heights in the North, and the Jordan River to the East.

That campaign lasted just six days.

And perhaps most troubling, throughout all of this, a American Congress that hasn’t been able to agree on anything since it was formed, gave the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister over 25 standing ovations during his speech in opposition of the American Head of State. The sincerity of those ovations is debatable.