Hmmm. Airbnb now forbids the listing of Jewish owned-apartments on the West Bank of the Jordan River — but Arab-owned apartments on the West Bank are not subject to the same restriction.
The Jewish apartment owners do not discriminate in who they rent to, while the Arab apartment owners do discriminate. They do not rent to Jews. But Airbnb singles out Jews.
It is perplexing how large, successful, sophisticated, international businesses can fall prey to small, unsophisticated, parochial political pressures.
Airbnb canceled rentals, not on the West Bank, but only on Jewish-owned homes in the West Bank, because, Airbnb says, critics maintain that “companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced” and “may be contributing to exiting human suffering.”
Displaced. Who has displaced whom? Clearly, six Arab countries displaced every single Jewish resident of the West Bank from 1949 to 1967. After the Six Day War of 1967, Jews returned to places from which they had been displaced, and in doing so rarely displaced others. In those unusual instances in which they did displace others, they evacuated these lands under order by Israel’s High Court.
“Displace” is a smokescreen. It is not who lives where, or lived where, that Airbnb has allowed itself to be sucked into. Rather, it is the permanent political status of the West Bank. That is a political question. Supposedly, Airbnb has forsworn involvement in all political matters by defining itself as “a community of all the world.”
As for existing human suffering on the West Bank, indeed! Check it out with Hamas and Fatah, each of which, according to Human Rights Watch, runs a “police state” (HRW’s term, not ours). Check it it out with the same political actors who hoodwinked Airbnb, and whocoerced Israeli employers of West Bank Palestinians, such as SodaStream, to leave the West Bank and thereby fire its Palestinian employees. Yes, there is “human suffering,” but the primary contributors are the very political actors to whom Airbnb listens.Yes, there are a small number of Jews who damage small plots of Palestinian lands — they’re subject to prosecution. Airbnb deserves the same for its anti-Semitism.
The irony is that Airbnb’s anti-Semitism will boost business on the West Bank like never before.
Copyright © 2018 by the Intermountain Jewish News
