As Americans Reckon with Racism, In Israel Jewish Privilege and Supremacy Reigns
DR. M. REZA BEHNAM
Israeli soldiers confront a Palestinian protester during clashes following a demonstration against the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Beit Dajan, east of Nablus, on Dec. 11, 2020. (PHOTO BY AYMAN NOBANI/XINHUA VIA GETTY)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March/April 2021, pp. 44-45
Special Report
By Dr. M. Reza Behnam
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR. became the 46th president of the United States on Jan. 20, aspiring to “restore the soul of America.” Although his message was aimed at domestic restoration, the new administration, if it is to lay claim to principled policies, must apply the same standard to America’s morally bankrupt policies in the Middle East, especially regarding Palestine.
Applying Biden’s aspirations to the Palestine/Israel catastrophe would finally end decades of humiliation and bring justice to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and in imprisoned Gaza. A new Biden policy—should there be one—would benefit the entire region and strengthen America’s moral standing in the world.
Washington’s inexorable, unqualified advocacy of Israel has been at the heart of America’s disastrous policies. Policymakers have remained stubbornly resistant to challenging the Israeli narrative. To infuse soul into America’s policy in Palestine, the story that Israel has sold the people of the United States must finally be demystified.
Even though its national objectives more often than not run counter to U.S. interests, Israel has been extremely influential in determining American policy in the Middle East. Decades of appeasement and generous subsidies have convinced Israel’s leaders that they will always have America’s financial and military support. Consequently, with U.S. backing and through force, Israel has become the hegemonic power in the region—its goal from the start.
A question the Biden administration should be asking is whether the United States has benefited from its role as Israel’s champion and security guardian. Israel continues to capitalize on the myth of a “nation under siege” to justify and legitimate its aggressive actions in the Occupied West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and against Iran.
For Israel, the issue is whether the Zionist plan—framed as far back as 1895—of systematically seizing Palestinian land and dispossessing its people can be sustained without continuous, devastating invasions and wars.
Israel’s founders understood that illegally confiscating Palestinian land would be seen unfavorably. A way had to be found to make an illegitimate undertaking seem legitimate and rational in the eyes of the world. The Zionist plan involved not only planting the Israeli flag on the land but planting it in the hearts and minds of the American people and the international community. They embraced the idea of selling Israel biblically, harnessing the power of religion as well as history and race, to build the Jewish state.
Although Zionism began as a secular movement, the ideological influence of the Jewish religion on Israeli policies and politics has been significant. Jewish nationalism and religious exclusivity—claims to be God’s chosen people—run through Jewish history and Israeli state practices. That Judaism and Zionism have become increasingly congruent is reflected in the messianic religious right’s considerable power and influence within Israeli politics.
The government uses the Bible as an attested historical record to assert its claims over Palestine as the ancestral home of the Jewish people. It exploits stories of biblical ancestors and ancient archeological sites to validate land claims and to legitimize its colonial, expansionist practices.
Israel’s representation of the past predictably erases all traces of the ancient and continuous Palestinian presence on the land. Sacred, ancient terms such as the “redemption of Zion” are employed to legitimize Jewish settlement expansion, and to fortify the belief of many Israelis that God promised Palestine solely to the Jews.
Jewish ideology demands that no part of Israel can belong to non-Jews. Consequently, as an exclusive Jewish state, its leaders have been unwilling to conceive of autonomy or equality for non-Jews living inside Israel, or for Palestinians living in Gaza and the occupied territories. Zionism’s historical objective has always been Palestinian capitulation and removal.
The Talmud—the primary source of Jewish theology and religious law—is ambiguous as to the precise geographical definition of the term “Land of Israel.” The Israeli government has never accepted definite territorial limits in its realization of a Greater Israel. And it formally uses the Hebrew biblical terms Judea and Samaria in all references to the West Bank.
Preserving its Jewish nature and character has been a paramount objective of the state of Israel from its inception. Intermarriage and assimilation are seen as threats to survival of the Jewish state. That fear is reflected in the country’s labyrinthian marriage laws.
Matrimonial law in Israel is religious, not civil, and only marriages performed by an Orthodox religious body are recognized by the state. Marriage to a non-Jew is forbidden in traditional Jewish law. Consequently, when a couple wants to marry, they are required by law to prove their Jewishness. Marriage with Muslims or Christians is not legally acknowledged by the state, and children born to a non-Jewish woman are not considered Jewish.
Israel is an ethnic state for the Jews, not for all its citizens. Since ethnicity determines all rights, resources and power, Israel cannot rightfully be described as a democracy. And it cannot be a democracy while maintaining military control over and denying equal rights to 4.8 million Palestinians under occupation and the 1.9 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Supremacy is discordant with democracy.
Jewish privilege and supremacy were written into the 1948 Declaration of Independence and in subsequent Basic Laws—Israel’s de facto constitution. The 1985 amendment to the Basic Law regarding the Knesset states that no candidate or party whose program denies the existence of Israel as the state of the Jewish people is allowed to participate in the elections to the Knesset.
The 2018 nation-state Basic Law reaffirms Israel’s founding principle. It states unequivocally that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people only. Under the law, only Jews have nationality rights; only they are entitled to first-class citizenship. With no national rights, the 20 percent of Israel’s population that is not Jewish face uncertainty regarding all of their rights.
Ironically, Americans would never accept the United States being designated an exclusive Christian state, with national rights and protections only for citizens defined as Christians. And some Jews in the U.S., those of whom have been the staunchest supporters of civil rights, tolerate the violation of those same rights by the Israeli government.
While the United States and the rest of the world are attempting to reckon with their colonial, racist pasts, there is no such reckoning in Israel. It has, instead, institutionalized and codified discrimination against the Palestinians, whether citizens of Israel or non-citizens in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel continues, with little or no opposition, to annex land and make life unbearable for the Palestinians. Forty-two percent of the West Bank is presently controlled by Jewish-only segregated settlements. It has stubbornly resisted envisioning alternatives to its ideology of an exclusive Jewish state.
Through its unwavering support, the U.S. has given its blessing to the plan of Zionist founders such as David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who told a meeting of the Jewish Agency in 1938: “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.” Compulsory “transfer” was a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Israel’s dependence on the United States has allowed it to nurture its exclusivity and to remain an intruder in the Middle East. If it were untethered from Washington, the Israeli government would be forced to seek reciprocity rather than domination of its neighbors. It would no longer have to buy-off or shop for regional friends and allies.
Stability requires that the two peoples living on the same land—Palestine/Israel—share the same privileges and rights. However thorny, Israel can choose a different narrative, a different fate and future, one that is clearly compatible with democracy.
It is an idea whose time has come and one Biden’s “soul restoring” administration should be promoting. As the new president signs executive orders to increase racial equity at home, he should re-examine financial and military support for an ethnic state with rights only for its Jewish citizens.
M. Reza Behnam, Ph.D., is a political scientist whose specialities include American foreign policy and the history, politics and governments of the Middle East..
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