by Asaf Romirowsky
The American Jewish left has once again fallen in line with the Palestinian demand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict always be conflated to a problem of “occupation,” regardless of facts or history.
Like clockwork, U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo’s recent observation that “the establishment of Israeli civilian
settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with
international law” was immediately denounced by the Jewish left.
The head of the Reform Movement in North
America, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, said the U.S. government’s new position on
Israeli settlements will undercut the fight against BDS and the
delegitimization of Israel in the United States, specifically on college
campuses.
It is not clear when Rabbi Jacobs was last on a
campus, but the debate on North American college campuses is not about
the so-called “occupation” but about whether Israel has a right to
exist, period. Pro-BDS groups, including “Jewish” ones, are talking
about the illegitimacy of the 1949 armistice lines, not those of 1967.
Moreover, a recent survey conducted by Ron Hassner at the University of California, Berkeley shows
that most students who care strongly about the “Israeli occupation of
Palestinian territories” do not have knowledge of even basic facts on
the subject.
Jacobs’s lack of understanding speaks to the
divergent lexicon of the conflict, and more pointedly to the growing
split between American Jews and Israelis. In many “progressive” circles
there is little to no understanding of what areas are even in dispute;
witness the continued claims that Gaza is “occupied” by Israel. For the
BDS movement, everything Israeli, including Haifa and Tel Aviv, is a
“settlement” and hence “illegal.”
Far more than American policy, it is the language
of “occupation” that plays a key role in what has become the religion of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The main feature of that religion is
the Palestinian claim that their (alleged) territories are “occupied” by
Israel, regardless of where they are located on the map, much less in
any legal sense under international law.
The mantra of “occupation,” and the demand that
Israel be shunned until the “occupation” is ended—meaning the time when
Israel is dissolved by the implementation of the Palestinian “right of
return”—is the key demand of the Palestinians and the BDS movement.
The weaponization of the term hitnahlut (settlement)
began after 1967 by the PLO and the Arab world. For the government of
Israel under Levi Eshkol, newly established communities were an
outgrowth of military outposts that had been created with the clear
understanding that they were Israel’s first line of defense against its
enemies. But 52 years later, no one remembers that Eshkol headed the
Labor government or that Israel made overtures toward reconciliation in
the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War. The only legacy preached by
rabbis like Rabbi Jacobs are condemnations of the “occupation.”
Naturally, Rabbi Jacobs continues to echo the
left-wing mantra that “The U.S. is giving a green light to settlements
and settlement expansion. This could also be interpreted as a first step
toward supporting any Israeli annexation efforts.”
Jacobs’s interpretation characterizes the entire
Arab-Israeli conflict as a territorial one, ignoring its religious
foundations and thus all the many ingredients necessary for peace to
actually come about. The relegation of the conflict to a matter of land
alone is the reason why all peace proposals over the past century have
been rejected by the Palestinians. The essence of the two-state placebo
is the belief that peace will come when there are two states living side
by side. But the reality is that the resilience of Jewish-Israeli
survival has been overshadowed by the false Arab-Palestinian notion of
being “occupied” and “robbed” of their true destiny by religiously
ordained supremacy.
Consequently, Israel is the “oppressor.” The
Palestinian concept demands that the “occupation” remain the root cause
of all that society’s problems, self-imposed and otherwise, from social
and economic woes to terrorism. The historical fact that the Trump
administration decided to acknowledge—that the 1949 boundaries were
neither sacred nor a permanent border and were always subject to
adjustment—has been known for over five decades. This reality will not
change no matter how falsely the facts are described on campus or by the
Reform Movement.
This article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Asaf Romirowsky is executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), a senior non-resident fellow at the BESA Center and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/dont-confuse-me-with-facts-its-always-about-the-occupation/
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