Schapira: Anti-Zionism will not end Palestinian suffering

Just as facile activists have managed to falsely equate Defund the Police with police reform and the Border Wall with solving immigration, so too have they recently come to falsely equate anti-Zionism with pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Never mind the fact that anti-Zionism is, in any real-world sense, antisemitic. That critical detail aside, one must ask: is dismantling Israel as a Jewish state actually the answer for Palestinian suffering?

The clear answer is no.

First, it’s important to acknowledge which Palestinians we’re actually talking about. It’s not the nearly 2 million who currently live in Israel proper as full citizens with equal rights. It’s also not the millions of Palestinians who live in Arab countries, such as those who are being murdered in Syria’s civil war or legally barred from economic advancement in Lebanon. Anti-Zionism never professed to care about them.

When anti-Zionists claim the mantle of the Palestinian cause, they’re selectively talking about the roughly 4.5 million Palestinians who live in Gaza and the West Bank.

Certainly, there are forms of oppression that come as a direct result of these Palestinians’ perpetual conflict with Israel. Regardless of who is to blame for the impasse, no one can deny the indignity of statelessness and living under military rule.

But who gets to define plight? Who determines which culprits are more urgent?

According to anti-Zionists, the only Palestinian plight worth addressing is that which can be plausibly blamed on Israel in general, and Israeli Jews in particular. Meanwhile, anti-Zionists are silent as Hamas turned Gaza, the first experiment for complete Palestinian autonomy, into a civilian military base. They are silent as Hamas leaders pump billions of dollars in aid money into rockets and underground factories, lining their own pockets on the way. They are silent as Fatah leaders in the West Bank engage in state-sponsored child abuse, teaching youth to hate and glorify martyrdom while paying the families of violent terrorists. And they are silent as Palestinian civilians are denied a free press, the right to protest, the right to an abortion, the right to be LGBTQ or the right to their own political opinions.

These are the truths that Palestinians are not allowed to speak about, lest they be tortured. And they are the truths that anti-Zionists won’t speak about, because it’s not their fight.

This isn’t whataboutism. It’s an observation that the primary vehicle to fight for the Palestinian cause has no real concern for Palestinian well-being.

There’s another reason why advocates for Palestinian rights should think twice before jumping on the anti-Zionist bandwagon:

The blinders that anti-Zionists have for the despotism of Palestinian leaders are the same ones that cause anti-Zionists to paint an overly rosy picture of what would happen if anti-Zionism achieved its core goal. That is, dismantling Israel as a Jewish state and founding a new political entity in its place encompassing the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Are we supposed to believe that the same kleptocratic thugs who have cancelled every single election since 2006, who trample on the civil rights of their own people and who violate every norm of an enlightened society are going to suddenly and sustainably build an egalitarian state that will bring peace to the Middle East and an end to Palestinian suffering?

None of this is remotely plausible.

Palestinians deserve to live a life of dignity and respect. They deserve representative government, working infrastructure, quality education and economic opportunity. But anti-Zionism won’t get them there, and the false equivalence between that ideology and genuine pro-Palestinian advocacy does them no favors.

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Zach Schapira is executive director of the J’accuse Coalition for Justice. 

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3yK6AQR