Demonization of Israel is condemnation without context
Israel is being demonized worldwide, based on ignorance of facts. The upshot is twofold: the characterization of Israel as an ugly society and polity; and the advocacy of apartheid. Let the logic of the demonizers unfold, for all to see.
What is the demonization of a country? It includes:
The denial of a country’s right to self-defense.
The ascription to the country of policies it does not implement and motives it does not harbor.
Demonization is bigger still. It is the recasting of the gestalt, the total character of a country, in ugliness.
Demonization is dangerous when it reachesthe highest levels of society, such as members of Congress and editors of major media outlets.
For example, the Guardian newspaper of London regards the existence of Israel as akin to the Confederate States of America. If ever there were an inaccurate, ugly comparison, this is it. This is demonization!
It is one thing to question or criticize Israeli actions or policies; it is quite something else to demonize Israel. Demonization has exploded since the beginning of the war in May between Hamas and Israel.
It has two primary foci: deaths in Gaza, and dwellings in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem.
I. Deaths in Gaza
Demonization is condemnation without context.
It is the refusal to acknowledge Hamas’ refusal to build bomb shelters, and its deliberate use of civilian neighborhoods and journalists’ offices to station its rocket-making and rocket-launching facilities, alongside the condemnation of the deaths caused by Israel’s military response to Hamas. Thus, the context is: Casualties in Gaza rise because of Hamas’ use of its citizens as fodder in a PR war.
Condemnation of Israel is tantamount to demonization because this context is ignored. The out-of-context message, the sound bite, comes out: Israelis are murderers. This is demonization.
US Rep. Ilhan Omar characterizes Israel’s military response to Hamas’ attacks on Israel’s civilian population as “terrorism.”
This message, delivered without the back story — the Hamas policy of deliberately preventing the protection of its citizenry — amounts to a denial of Israel’s right to self-defense. Given Hamas’ policy of turning its own citizens into fodder, there is only one way Israel could avoid civilian casualties in Gaza: Allow Hamas to fire rockets at Israeli civilian centers with no response. Israel should let its citizens be killed and its crops be burned —and thereby avoid condemnation. This amounts to the denial of the right of self-defense. This is demonization.
It seems that, to some, Jews are best eligible for sympathy when they are dead. Sen. Bernie Sanders all but said so, pronouncing himself horrified at the great discrepancy between the Israeli and Palestinian casualty count in the last war. It seems that if there were higher Israeli casualties, he would not be so horrified. He is a prime example of one who condemns without context: without acknowledgement of Hamas’ intent to expose its citizenry to attack.
A variation on the theme:
Demonization is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ and other Democrat House members’ simultaneous condemnation of Israel for the deaths in Gaza and their opposition to the sale of precision-guided missiles to Israel. This is “demonization a la ‘the future is now’”: condemnation-to-come, without context. If Israel is denied precision-guided missiles, then, if Israel responds to a future attack, its non-precision weaponry would kill more people. Boom! Israelis are murderers. Demonization!
II. Sheikh Jarrah
The property dispute in Sheikh Jarrah has ignorant national leaders such as Ocasio-Cortez demonizing Israel this way: Israel is an apartheid state, she says. Follow her logic: It actually leads to her advocacy of apartheid. Let the logic unfold:
As presented by NPR and other outlets, Sheikh Jarrah is proof positive of Israel’s inherently discriminatory nature. Here is the claim:
Both Jews and Arabs lost their property in Israel’s War of Independence of 1948. However, Israel allows Israelis to reclaim their property, but does not allow Palestinians to reclaim their property. What could be more discriminatory than that? Israel is an apartheid state.
Consider the facts, but do not even consider two critical contexts:
• First, there would have been no Israeli War of Independence (and no Palestinian “nakba”) had the Arab states accepted the two-state solution of the UN of 1947. The Arab residents of the West Bank — they didn’t call themselves Palestinians back then — would have had their own state. They would not have been displaced from their property. This year, the “State of Palestine,” alongside the State of Israel, would have celebrated the 73rd anniversary of its independence! In 1947, the fledgling Israeli state accepted the “State of Palestine.” But the Arabs rejected the two-state solution and went to war to prevent an Israeli state. All questions of Palestinian refugees and Palestinian property stem from the unilateral Arab decision to reject the original two-state solution.This casts the Sheikh Jarrah dispute in a totally different light.
But, put this aside.
• Second, there would have been no Israeli recapture in 1967 of Jewish property lost in 1948 in East Jerusalem and the West Bank had the Arab nations not declared in April and May, 1967 their intent to wage a genocidal war against Israel, to “drive Israel into the sea.” They prepared for war by, for example, traversing the Sinai Peninsula and massing their troops at the Gaza border, a few miles from Israel. To preclude its destruction, Israel preemptively attacked. The Arab military plan to destroy Israel is the only reason why Jewish property claims in East Jerusalem arose. This, too, casts the Sheikh Jarrah dispute in a totally different light.
But, put this aside.
Consider only the narrower facts. They belie any discrimination in Israeli policy and any “eviction” of Palestinians by Israel from their property.
Fact #1: The property in dispute in Sheikh Jarrah was purchased by Jewish owners in 1875. It was taken by Jordan in 1948. After Israel regained control of this Jewish property in 1967, the Jewish descendants of its original owners sued for recovery of their property. In Israeli courts, they lost. The Israeli courts ruled that even though the Palestinians on the property were squatters and the descendants of the squatters, they could remain if they paid rent. They did not pay rent, so the owners sued again to recover their property. That is the status of the dispute before Israel’s High Court.
But shouldn’t the Palestinians who lived on these Jewish-owned properties in East Jerusalem after 1948 be allowed to remain? After all, it’s not their fault that Jordan took the property from Jews.
Fact #2: The Palestinians do remain. In every instance where Jordan transferred formal title of these Jewish-owned properties to Palestinians, Israel after 1967 recognized the Palestinian titles! The Jews lost their land and Israel did not reclaim it, even though it had the power to do so! The only reason there is now a dispute in Sheikh Jarrah is because the squatters there never had title to the land, and never paid rent.
But even so, shouldn’t the Israeli courts let the Palestinians keep this property because, after all, this is an Arab neighborhood, and Jews should not “Judaize” Arab neighborhoods?
Jews and Palestinians should not live in the same neighborhood? Translation: apartheid. Translation: redlining, Middle-East style. The progressives who demand that Israel not “evict” Palestinians from “their” neighborhood advocate segregation. Progressives say: Jews and Arabs should not live together.
But the claim that Jews want Sheikh Jarrah to be a mixed neighborhood is contradicted by the rest of Israel, isn’t it?
Fact #3: Actually, not. Twenty percent of Israel’s population is Arab, and while most Israeli Arabs live in their own cities and neighborhoods, there are mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhoods in Israel (for example, French Hill, Jerusalem). Most important, there is no Israeli law against them. The progressive advocates of a purely Arab Sheikh Jarrah want the Israeli court to outlaw Jewish residency in Sheikh Jarrah. This is advocacy of apartheid.
Not so fast. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled their homes in 1948, and some were expelled, so they too should be allowed to return to their homes in Israel!
This is a valid claim, if two presuppositions are accepted: first, twenty Islamic states are OK, but a single Jewish state is not OK; and, second, the 800,000 Jews who were expelled from Arab countries, mainly from 1947 to 1949, have no legitimate counterclaim. In fact, there was a de facto exchange of populations, a tragic outcome of war that, in every other instance in modern history, has been accepted.
Fact #4: Under the legal system in the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and in Gaza under Hamas, a Palestinian is subject to the death penalty for selling property to a Jew. By ignoring the Palestinian death penalty for coexistence while demonizing Israel for defending itself with exquisite care to reduce civilian casualties, and for sustaining the claim of Jews to untitled land, progressives reveal their defense of the indefensible in the service of irrational hostility to Israel. There is a term for this.
It is anti-Semitism.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
