Calls for a boycott not motivated by antisemitism

By Dror Etkes, Haaretz (Hebrew original), 15 March 2009

The demand to change Israel’s ethnocentric regime is a consequence of its 40-year long policy, which included the cultivation of the settlements.

“Durban 2″, scheduled for April in Geneva, of all places, again places the issue of boycotting Israel and the international community’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist, or lack thereof, on the agenda.

In the prevalent Israeli discourse, which is bolstered by the political establishment as well as by local media, initiatives for a partial or full boycott of Israel are perceived as a clear expression of antisemitism. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that some supporters of such a boycott are motivated in part by antisemitic sentiments. Antisemitism is a product of modern European culture, and despite the changes Europe has undergone over the twentieth century, it is plausible that certain norms and modes of thinking that originated in antisemitic ideology also affected parts of the European Left, whether consciously or not.

Nonetheless, the conclusion that most or all the supporters of a boycott of the Israeli state, or even those who negate Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish national home, are antisemitic, is self-righteous and unfounded. There are various reasons unrelated to antisemitism, leading different people, including many decent ones, to the conclusion that the idea of a Jewish state in the heart of the Arab Middle East is unjust, or at least, unfeasible.

The Israeli instinct, which categorically labels anyone who decisively objects to Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians, or even to the basic goals of the Zionist movement, as ‘antisemitic’, rejects out of hand any meaningful and essential debate about the formation, nature and future of Israeli society.

It is worth mentioning a fact commonly forgotten by many Israelis today: some of those who avidly support Israel’s policies and its right to exist as a Jewish state (as long as it is far away from Europe, of course), are those who studied under self-declared antisemites of earlier generations, and who adopted their teachers’ doctrines, making minor alterations to accord with the times.

Past experience shows that the (almost Pavlovian) Israeli response in these situations is the claim that “Israel is a country forever under siege and existential threat”, and a rapid launch of another “commando unit of teenagers” to a media-spotlighted tour of Auschwitz, replete with patriotic declarations set against billowing blue and white flags.

But in sharp contrast to the artificial hubbub created by various sponsored producers in the death camps in Poland, the question raised in the West today by those who deny Israel’s right to exist is completely different: while they do not doubt the right of a large Jewish public to exist in Israel, their doubts are increasing as to this public’s right to manage a regime which grants Jews certain rights over the Palestinian population between the Jordan and the sea. The global debate regarding Israel therefore centres on the political context in which the Israeli Jewish public is sustained, and sees once more the demand to do away with Isral’s ethnocentric regime and replace it with a bi-national one.

The Israeli public must understand that the growing influence of those who call for the cancellation of Israel’s ethnocentric regime is a result of its 40-year policy, which included the cultivation of the settlements in the West Bank. For many around the world, the “settlements project” has become, and rightly, synonymous with Israeli state and society. It is therefore only natural that a project whose aim is perceived by many to be the delegitimisation of the Palestinians as a national entity, faces opposition that negates Israel as a Jewish national home.

In their reflections on the human tendency to reject the behaviour of others, the Jewish Sages wrote that “it takes one to know one”. Again, it turns out, that laws that apply to private relationships do not always lose their currency among nations.

Dror Etkes is a Peace Now veteran.

[Hebrew translation by Keren Rubinstein, distributed by Australian Jewish Democratic Society]