The five illusions of Israel Apartheid Week...

Every University that hosts an Israel Apartheid Weeks needs some immediate historical lessons...

First, Israel is no apartheid state. It has over one million Israeli Arab citizens of various faiths that comprise about 19 per cent of Israel’s population, including political science professors, political parties and parliamentarians, and members of the national football team seeking to qualify for the 2010 World Cup. Israel is both a Jewish and democratic state, and like any democratic state, it can evolve by allowing more upward mobility for Israeli Arabs in the state and civil society. In contrast, Jews are not welcome in Gaza or Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, Jews are less-than-tolerated minorities in once prominent Jewish communities in the Arab world from Morocco to Iraq.

Second, Israelis and Palestinians, the Arab and Muslim worlds, and world powers are all players in perpetuating the conflict. Palestinians are victims of a historical tragedy and statelessness, but also destructive ideologies and leadership. Along with Arab states, they rejected the UN call for two states in 1947 through war, declared no to recognition, negotiation, and peace with Israel at the Arab summit in Khartoum in 1967, and began a campaign of suicide bombings under Yasser Arafat and assorted Islamists after progress was made towards a two-state solution with the Oslo Accords in 1993. Israel played its part in the cycle of conflict as a regional, military power that in the past did not adequately recognize legitimate Palestinian aspirations to statehood.

Third, the one-state solution proposed by “Israel Apartheid Week” is a stunt masquerading as liberal and universalist, yet hiding an exclusionary project that would lead to the demise of Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state. In no “intractable” ethnic conflict do we have proposals for putting ethnic ultra-nationalists together so that they might further butcher each other. Serbs, Bosnians, and Croatians gained sovereign states, so why should Israelis and Palestinians govern one state together? In Lebanon, the state exists in name only; a state that is hostage to ethnic or religious militias more powerful than the state. A one-state solution is a disastrous recipe for the “Lebanonization” of Israel. A one-state solution is based on the false premise that Jewish national self-determination (Zionism) is illegal, while its Palestinian nationalist counterpart is a legitimate national liberation movement. In reality, both nationalist movements are legitimate and worthy of their statehood claims for objective and subjective reasons.

Fourth, a Palestinian-Israeli “divorce” or two-state solution is more realistic for now. If two states get along, they might then talk of “marriage,” an economic and political union, and even a supranational arrangement with other Middle Eastern states. The two-state solution is ignored as an option by the hosts of “Israel Apartheid Week.”

Fifth, “Israel Apartheid Week” anti-Zionist narratives are gaining appeal. Israel is losing legitimacy among the opinion-creating intelligentsia worldwide. Sadly, even a moderate Zionism with its desire for a two-state solution and equality for Israeli Arabs is denigrated as a brutal, expansionist ideology devoid of moral content. The loss of Palestinian civilian life, as in the recent war in Gaza, adds to the narrative of Palestinian victimization and Israel as oppressor. “Israel Apartheid Week” engages in demonisation of democratic Israel, while silence reigns in respect of the Palestinian and Arab masses languishing under authoritarian regimes. It ignores the cynicism of Hamas leaders who continued to fire rockets into southern Israeli towns after Gaza’s occupation ended in 2005. “Israel Apartheid Week” peddles the illusion of continuing Israeli “occupation” in Gaza and ignores Palestinian autonomy gains in the West Bank. The Palestinian “civil war” between Hamas and Fatah is a taboo subject.