MY STUDENT GROUP RECEIVED A LETTER. WE WRITE BACK

NOVANEWS

Two freshman at Cornell University did not like the posters for the Joseph Dana talk that my student group, United for Peace and Justice in Palestine, recently hosted. They disliked it so much that they wrote us a letter, and because one of them placed it in the public domain on her blog (Shalom from Home) I am quoting it in full:

Carl,

We recently came across a poster for the UPJP event, Anarchists Against  the Wall. The poster’s message, “SMASH ISRAELI APARTHEID,” offended us personally as supporters of Israel and Jews. The message implies that  Israel is an Apartheid state and Israel’s supporters condone the alleged Apartheid.

Israel is not an Apartheid state. Apartheid is a legally enforced system that  institutionalizes segregation, discrimination, and oppression based on race, gender, sexuality, or religion. The Separation Barrier and laws in Israel do not discriminate based on race, gender, sexuality, or religion, as Palestinians live on both sides of the wall, and  Palestinians in the West Bank have their own government, the Palestinian Authority.

Along with the Palestinian government in the West Bank, Arabs in Israel have full citizenship and voting rights, and 14 out of the 120 members of the Israeli Parliament are Arab. The Israeli  government is aware of the inconveniences the Barrier poses to residents of the West Bank and is working to find a more advantageous long term  solution; however, the safety of the Israeli people is paramount.

The “Wall” itself is actually only about 5% cement wall, which comes out to approximately 10 miles, built to prevent sniper shootings that were  frequent in those selected areas. The Security Barrier has been extremely effective in halting attacks on Israeli citizens. Between 2002 and 2003, when major portions of the Barrier was constructed, there were 30% fewer attacks by terrorists from the West Bank and 50% fewer Israelis were murdered. The effectiveness of the Barrier has continued in even greater magnitudes today.The posters for this event blatantly incite  hatred toward Israel by feeding Cornell students misleading information about the status of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.

This use of propaganda is unfair and uncomfortable for students like me who  feel a strong connection to the State of Israel. For students who have  not yet formed a connection or a strong opinion with either side, their  opinions will easily be manipulated by the depiction of Israel as an Apartheid state.

It is our hope that you will find validity in our concerns and we can work together to find a solution to this problem, to educate Cornell  students about the conflict while representing facts as clearly as  possible and without bias.
Jordana Gilman and Rachel M–

This is anthropologically interesting in a number of ways. The editorial commentary located on the student’s blog is even more interesting, if not exactly heartening (“tearing down the anarchist with our own bare hands”? This after a 7th grade teacher strangled Rae Abileah a few days ago in New Orleans). Below is our response:

Dear Jordana and Rachel:
Thank you once again for your letter, and sorry for the delay. We understand your anger and frustration with the words on our poster. We know that they are harsh, and that characterizing Israel as an apartheid state may be perceived as vitriolic.
However, we also think there may be significant misunderstandings on your part of (1) the facts on the ground; (2) the policies of the Israeli state; and (3) our group’s mission and outlook, and that discussing those misunderstandings and misperceptions may help you to better understand the poster and why the use of the word “apartheid” may be more appropriate than you seem to think (incidentally, we took the graphics from Anarchists Against the Wall).
On (1): You assert that the wall is only 10 percent concrete. That may be true, but the remainder is razor wire, motion sensors, guard towers, and machine-gun turrets. It is a “fence” approximately the width of a four-lane highway. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the proper word to use to describe this structure is a wall. The ICJ also ruled that the portions of it that are not on the Green Line–i.e. the pre-’67 borders–are illegal.
That is perhaps 84 percent of the wall. The Court’s ruling reflects the understanding that territory may not be annexed by means of war, as well as the accompanying understanding that the wall is effectively an annexation wall, not a security wall, as its route, encompassing the main settler blocs, makes quite clear. We trust you believe that international law is a reasonable guideline for resolving the conflict, and that we cannot simply ignore it.
You also claim that attacks against Israeli civilians have plummeted since the wall was constructed. We think you mistake correlation for causation. Palestinian civil society issued a statement calling on those carrying out such attacks to cease suicide attacks against civilians roughly as attacks were decreasing in frequency.
The ease with which the wall can be penetrated by those who wish to work on the other side—usually, it takes a bribe—suggest that it is not the wall which has stopped the attacks, but other conditions. Israeli intelligence services agree. In 2006, Haaretz reported the Shin Bet finding that “The main reason for the sharp decline is the truce in the territories…The security fence is no longer mentioned as the major factor in preventing suicide bombings, mainly because the terrorists have found ways to bypass it.” But even were we to assume for a moment that the wall is entirely responsible for the decline in attacks on Israeli citizens, and that its primary purpose is security, a question would remain – why is it not built along the Green Line?  
In addition to providing the same prophylactic function, this route would also be easier to defend militarily, as many have pointed out. As it stands now, the route of the wall makes it very clear that the guiding concern is not security but territorial annexation–the UN agency OCHA notes that “what was once justified by the Israeli authorities as a short-term military response…appears to be developing into a permanent system.”
On (2), while we acknowledge that it is still provocative to label Israel an apartheid state, there are compelling arguments to support this claim. These are based on rigorous empirical research–the South African Human Sciences Research Council recently released a massive report detailing how Israeli policies precisely reprise apartheid.
Recent pieces by researcher Ran Greenstein offer further support for the argument that Israeli is practicing apartheid, defined by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid as “similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa . . . committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”
We also do not understand the relevance of your claim that “The Separation Barrier and laws in Israel do not discriminate based on race, gender, sexuality, or religion, as Palestinians live on both sides of the wall, and Palestinians in the West Bank have their own government, the Palestinian Authority.” For one thing, the Palestinian Authority is unelected and Palestinians broadly regard it as illegitimate. For another, it has no sovereignty, even in Ramallah, its de facto temporary capital. The IDF has total rule over every square inch of the West Bank, and regularly conducts incursions into all areas, including Oslo-defined zones A, B, and C. No sovereignty, no effective government.
No effective Palestinian government means Palestinians are living under the laws of the Israeli government. Clearly, those laws treat differentially Palestinians living in the West Bank and the illegal Israeli settlers living there with respect to home construction, water usage, their right to speedy trials, and so on, and thus by definition, these laws establish “domination.” We are unaware of any reasonable dispute about those matters.
Likewise, within the pre-’67 borders, it is true that ’48 Palestinians formally have “full citizenship and voting rights,” and that 14 out of 120 members of the Knesset are Palestinian. They have those formal rights alongside a slew of laws that treat the indigenous Palestinians differently from the (overwhelmingly) settler-colonial Jews: including the Law of Return (1950), the Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of the State’s Property (1951), the Law of Citizenship (1952), the Status Law (1952), the Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), the Construction and Building Law (1951), and so on.
The discrimination between the two populations within the pre-’67 borders is not limited to the legal system: even when the laws are the same for everyone, they are enforced differently for different populations. Since 1948, the Israeli government founded 600 new Jewish settlements and no Arab ones. Although the Arab population in Israel amounts to 20% of the population, their municipal jurisdiction is restricted to 2.5% of the land. Arab villages and neighborhoods do not receive the same quantity of funding and services from the state as Jewish ones. In turn, their infrastructures–water, sewage, electricity–are inferior to Jewish Israeli infrastructures. Israeli Arabs are often denied construction permits, and so are forced to build illegally. Thus they live under constant threat of their homes being demolished.
Even the very basic freedom to demonstrate is not equally defended: for example, Israeli police recently allowed ultra-rightist Zionist Jews to march in the Arab-Israeli town of Umm al-Fahem to mark the death of their leader, Meir Kahane, who had called for the transfer of Palestinians outside ‘Israel’, and even escorted this march with 1500 policemen. In contrast, in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood where Israeli-Palestinians and their supporters protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, demonstrations are always declared illegal and are frequently met with police brutality before they even start.
In that context, your claim that Israel is not practicing apartheid is hard to accept. The notion that the “Israeli government is aware of the inconveniences the Barrier poses to residents of the West Bank” in this respect is touching, but we see little evidence of this “awareness,” let alone of concrete steps to remedy the core illegality, which is that most of the wall is built on Palestinian land and must be dismantled, in accord with the 2004 ICJ ruling. (We also question the claim that “the safety of the Israeli people is paramount” in the eyes of planners, but perhaps we can reserve that issue for another forum.  
We also here place to the side the question of whether it’s appropriate to consider Israel in any sense in “temporary” occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, since it has had total military control over those areas for over two thirds of its existence.)
On (3), you bring up the issue of inciting “hatred toward Israel.” We think we have dealt adequately with the issue of “misleading information,” although again, we are happy to continue this debate in other, more public fora. We feel that your charge that we are “inciting hatred toward Israel” approaches the disingenuous accusation of anti-Semitism–an accusation that is often deployed to shut down dialogue, instead of looking at the facts and positions in their own right. Furthermore, this claim implies that the conflict is between two monolithic entities, “Israel” and “Palestine,” when in fact it is an issue of human rights and social justice. We oppose specific policies on the grounds that they violate universal precepts of justice, and do not see how this is tantamount to inciting “hatred toward Israel,” an odd, undefinable unit—do you mean the Israel of Azmi Bishara and Haneen Zoabi, Moshe Machover and Matzpen, or the Israel of Yisrael Beitenu, Yitzhak Shamir, and Gush Emunim? There are many Israels, and we oppose a coercive definition identifying current policies with any “essence.”  
As a corollary, we don’t know what you mean when you say that we imply that “Israel’s supporters condone the alleged [sic] apartheid.” The existence of the sets of laws and institutions which constitute apartheid seems relatively clear and quite hard to dispute. If you accept the legitimacy of those laws and institutions, you condone apartheid. If you don’t accept them, you don’t. That is a decision for you to make, not for us to make.
Similarly, we do not accept your characterization of these facts as “propaganda” and are puzzled as to why you would use such a term. Would it have been “propaganda” to accuse the South African government of apartheid in 1970? Of course not. Similar standards must be maintained with respect to Israel, notwithstanding your attachment to that country. For us, the question is not whether those practices exist. They do.
The question is what to do about them. You are concerned that students might find their “opinions…manipulated.” We certainly hope that our peers are intelligent enough not to be brainwashed by 11 x 17 publicity posters – our intention in putting the posters up was to get people to come to the talk and engage on the level of facts and analyses. We do our best to base our work on accurate information. Where it is inaccurate, we welcome revision, challenge, and vigorous debate. One student did precisely this, and came to Joseph Dana’s talk and challenged his interpretation of the current situation.
He received a civil and factual response, and we welcome such interventions and back-and-forths in the future. You might also be interested to know that Dana was questioned and challenged on certain points by members of our own group. This is all precisely in accord with our mission. When we organize talks on campus, we do so to promote critical discussion, intellectual exchange, and the sharing of information, not to propagandize blindly. So even our own speakers, as solid as they usually are, do not get a free pass.
On the question of educating Cornell students about the conflict, we repeat that we welcome joint initiatives and debates on these issues. There is always an opportunity for learning and changing minds. Information is cumulative. That is why we come together at university.
Thanks,
UPJP
Max Ajl, Carl Gelderloos, Mario Martone, Kevin McGinnis, Ari Linden, Liron Mor, Dan Sinykin, Tatiana Sverjensky
PS – you may be interested in this article, which we’re discussing in two weeks, since it argues against characterizing Israel as an apartheid state:
http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/articles/moshe%20machover%20%202006lecture_b.pdf

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