Behind the controversy
By Gwen Frost
The international debate over antisemitism’s relation to criticism of the state of Israel came to Western’s campus last week.
StandWithUs is an international, non-profit Israel education organization, sponsored a talk on February 2 to discuss antisemitism versus legitimate criticism of Israel.
As well as spreading information about Israel the organization has worked to counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to use economic means to advance rights for Palestinians, on campuses, including hostinga yearly conference dedicated to combating the movement..
The speaker, Noa Raman, is the Northwest campus coordinator and has been working for StandWithUs for three years.
We asked WWU Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER) and Assistant Professor of History Sarah Zarrow to respond to aspects of the talk to bring in more perspectives.
Zarrow works in research areas of Jewish history, nationalism and Central and East European history among other topics. Zarrow taught “History of the Jews” in fall at Western, and will be teaching it again this spring.
The Statement: Raman defined zionism as “a jewish liberation movement based on justice for the oppressed and the right of Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland.”
Raman argued that anti-zionism is sometimes just antisemitism in disguise, and that antisemitism could be legitimized by taking on the appearance of anti-zionist or anti-Israel sentiments.
The Context:
SUPER took issue with equating criticism of Israel and prejudice against Jewish people.
“Anti-Zionism means fighting against both the occupation of Palestine and the settler-colonialist movement that resulted in the creation of the state of Israel on indigenous Palestinian land,” said SUPER’s leadership, in a statement.
“Both of these are issues with the actions of the Israeli government, not the Jewish people.
SUPER clarified they believe there is a distinction between criticizing Israel and criticizing Jewish people.
“It is necessary that we be able to criticize any government for its violations of international law, regardless of the religious group that it claims to represent,” they said.
Additionally, “a significant percentage of the international Jewish community does not support Israel and actively opposes their occupation of Palestine,” which furthers the inability to equivocate Jewish peoples and the actual entity of Israel and its inhabitants, they said.
Zarrow acknowledged that it was possible for the two terms to overlap.
“I have seen criticism of Israel’s policies kind of launch into this ‘Oh yeah, and you know, the Jews control everything’ and then this has gone in a direction where this is no longer about policy, this is no longer about human rights, this is about some broader issue with ‘the Jews,’” Zarrow said.
“And that to me is the line. It’s not about Israel or Israel’s government, it’s suddenly about Jews everywhere.”
The Statement: Among the legitimate criticisms of Israel, Raman noted these: Having a discussion about Israel’s 1967 borders, arguing that Israel should have a greater separation of church and state, and acknowledging that Israel has a long way to go regarding LGBTQ+ rights.
Despite these concessions to criticism of Israel, she denied the characterization of Israel as an apartheid state. This denial was supported by the evidence that both Hebrew and Arabic are recognized by schools, and that all citizens are allowed to vote regardless of race.
The Context:
SUPER denied the claim that both Hebrew and Arabic are equally recognized in Israeli schools.
“Arabic, when taught, is taught as a military training tool, as a language for intercepting ‘terrorist plots,’” they said.
The leadership said that while it is true that non-Jewish Arabs can vote in Israel, there are example of apartheid characteristics of the state of Israel in its immigration policies.
“Palestinians, even Palestinians born in Palestine who are now refugees from 1948 or 1967, are barred from returning to their homeland (against international law). Meanwhile any person of Jewish heritage can travel and immigrate to Israel as part of the Birthright program,” they said.
“There are countless other examples of Israel’s apartheid policies, and it is disingenuous to suggest that Palestinians in Israel are equal citizens just because they can vote.”
Israel was been called “an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole,” in a 2017 United Nations report commissioned and produced by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia that also cited Israel’s immigration policies.
“Israel defends its rejection of the Palestinians’ return [to Israel] in frankly racist language: alleging that Palestinians constitute a ‘demographic threat’ and that their return would alter the demographic character of Israel to the point of eliminating it as a Jewish state,” reads the report, written by Richard Falk, a former UN rapporteur, and Virginia Tilley, a political science professor at the Southern Illinois University.
Zarrow emphasized the current basic structure of citizenship in Israel.
“At the moment, Israel has two groups of people who live within its borders. It has people who are citizens, and it has people who are under military occupation,” said Zarrow. “To me, that is not a democracy.”
Within these two groups in Israel, there is a group of Palestinians who are not citizens, and there are Israelis, who are citizens, she said.
“To essentially have separate systems for different groups of citizens who enjoy different rights (these are very basic fundamental rights, rights to free travel, rights to equal educational systems)… that is not a fully democratic country,” she said.
The Statement: According to Raman, antisemitism is not a far-away issue, in either history or location.There have been 11 antisemitic incidents on Western’s campus in the last year, she said. Western is a very antisemitic campus on a national scale, Raman said, and this juxtaposes with Western’s widespread liberal ideology.
The Context: Three antisemitic hate incidents were reported to Western in the first two months of 2016.
After these events, Western’s Equal Opportunity Office investigated, and the Task Force on Preventing and Responding to Antisemitisim was formed, which then-president Bruce Shepard said would work to “recommend ways to educate and help people better understand the impact of anti-Semitic actions,” as reported by the Seattle times.
From Spring 2016 to Winter 2017, there were 11 antisemitic incidents on Western’s campus, according to the Task Force.
Monday, February 19, around two weeks after Raman’s talk, more antisemitic graffiti was found in the fourth floor men’s bathroom in Wilson Library. Graffiti included accusations that “Israel did 9/11” and the star of David equated to “serpent servants,” as well as alluding to connections between Israel and ISIS.
Host of the event Student Sophie Rittenberg voiced in response that there hasn’t been much dialogue around antisemitism on campus. “I’ve seen things happen and I’ve experienced it,” said Rittenberg. “There’s this idea with antisemitism, we don’t feel comfortable talking about it.”
The Statement: Raman also pointed to what she called the United Nation’s institutional bias against Israel. The UN Human Rights Council has passed more resolutions against Israel than against any other nation, she said.
The Context: From 2012 to 2015, there were 93 resolutions criticizing countries, and 83 were about Israel.
The Statement: To justify rights to land, Raman argued that for over 3,000 years, Jewish People have been indigenous in the what-is-now the state of Israel, and talked about how they have faced centuries of displacement and violence from countries across the world.
One argument in advocacy for the state of Israel is that Jewish people have been displaced throughout history, so they need to have a safe state, even though the development of this space has relied on the actual displacement of Palestinians.
Rittenberg emphasized that Jewish people have historically had ties to the land as well.
“The homeland is really important to the three monotheistic religions; the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews all have ties to the land,” Rittenberg said. “When it comes down to it, eventually our peace will be all of us being able to coexist there, but to say that one group or another doesn’t have a claim to the land is just completely negate all of history.”
The Context: Zarrow explained that the Jewish political power historically located within Jerusalem (which is different from the modern state of Israel) ended in the year 70, and since then, Jews have been in diaspora.
“In terms of a state that’s formed in 1948, I’m not sure what weight of history there should be, what role history gets to play,” Zarrow said. “[In determining rights to land], do we look to biblical records of civilization? That makes no sense to me.”
After the presentation, Ramant declined to be interviewed and asked instead to be e-mailed so the questions and responses could be reviewed by StandWithUs’s public relations people before being received by the AS Review.
Editor’s note: While Raman said that the presentation was “off the record,” agreements for publicly available information or conversations to be “off the record” must be mutually agreed upon between all parties. The presentation was advertised as being open to the public and was on matters of public concern to the Western community, and involved statements of opinion that needed contextualization from experts and dissenting groups in our community. One of the goals of journalism is to drive informed discussion in our community, and that is what we have attempted to do here.