Criticism of Israel: Difference between revisions

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Criticism of the

One of the effects of international criticism has been the impact on social psychology of the Israeli Jewish public - according to a survey more than half of Israelis believe "the whole world is against us", and three quarters of Israelis believe "that no matter what Israel does or how far it goes towards resolving the conflict with the Palestinians, the world will continue to criticize Israel".[16]

Criticisms of Israeli policies come from several groups: primarily from activists, Arabs and Muslims within Israel and worldwide, the United Nations and other non-governmental organizations including European Churches, and mass media. Media bias is often claimed by both sides of the debate. Since 2003, the UN has issued 232 resolutions with respect to Israel, 40% of all resolutions issued by the UN over the period and more than six times that of the second placed country, Sudan.^[17]

Subjects of criticism

Palestinian refugees

Further information:

Lausanne Conference, 1949

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2011)

Palestinian refugees are defined by the UN as

1948 Palestine War

.

The causes and responsibilities of the exodus are a matter of controversy among historians and commentators of the conflict.

In 2002, John Pilger stated "Shortly after it was founded in 1948, Israel controlled, mostly as a result of a United Nations partition and partly by force, a total of 78 per cent of historic Palestine. The Palestinians, who were the majority, fled in an orchestrated campaign of fear and terror, or they were expelled. These days, this would be known as ethnic cleansing."^[27]

Occupation and annexation of neighboring territories

The territories occupied by

• The wars in 1956 and 1967 were waged by Israel to ensure the state's survival. As most hostilities were initiated by the Arab side, Israel had to fight and win these wars in order to ensure the state's sovereignty and safety. Territories captured in the course of those wars are therefore legitimately under Israeli administration for both security reasons and to deter hostile states from belligerence.
• In the absence of peace treaties between all the parties at war, Israel has under all circumstances the right to maintain control of the captured territories. Their ultimate disposition should be a result of peace treaties, and not a condition for them. Even so, Israel asserts that:
  • The 1956 war was caused by a pattern of Egyptian belligerence against Israel, culminating with the nationalization of the Suez Canal and the blockage of the canal for Israeli traffic in violation of the Convention of Constantinople and other relevant treaties, in their view a clear casus belli (i.e., an act justifying war)
  • The 1967 war was similarly caused by the closing of the Straits of Tiran, the rejection of UN forces in the Sinai desert, and the redeployment of Egyptian forces. Jordan and Syria entered the war in spite of Israeli efforts to keep these frontiers peaceful.
  • The 1973 war was a surprise attack against Israel by Syria and Egypt.

The Arab position is that:

• The 1956 war was a result of a conspiracy between France, the United Kingdom and Israel in violation of Egypt's sovereignty. Egypt claimed several legal justifications for refusing Israel use of the Suez Canal, including the right of self-defence.
• The war in 1967 was an unprovoked act of aggression aimed at expanding the boundaries of Israel, and the territories captured during this war are illegally occupied.
• As a result, the territories must be ceded in order for peace to be achieved.

Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in 1980-1 by the

Despite the fact that Israeli security legislation for Palestinian territories does not state that military law applies only to Arab residents of the territories, and not to Jews or to Israeli citizens.^[34] Israeli citizens are governed by Israeli law whereas Palestinians are governed by military law.^[35]

Some Israeli individuals such as Avraham Burg, Ilan Pappé, Gershom Gorenberg, David Remnick, Oren Yiftachel, and Miko Peled and organisations as Human Rights Watch, B'tselem, Peace Now and others have questioned Israel's status as a democracy. These questions focus on the lack of democracy in the Israeli-occupied territories, not Israel proper. Such criticisms are based on the belief that both Israeli citizens in settlements and Palestinians should be given the right to suffrage, considering the Palestinians are effectively under Israeli authority and thus should benefit from it. They share a concern that the occupation of the territories is not temporary, given the over forty-five year duration and the large and the permanent nature of the Israeli settlements.^{[9][10][11][12][36][37][38]}

Israeli settlements

The participating High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention,^[39] numerous UN resolutions, the International Court of Justice^[40] and other instances have ruled that Israel's policy of establishing civilian settlements in territories considered occupied, including in East Jerusalem, is illegal. Israel disputes the notion that the West Bank and in particular East Jerusalem are occupied under international law, though this view is dismissed internationally.

Israel's settlement policy has drawn harsh criticism from the United States^[41] and the European Union.^[42]

Ali Jarbawi called the policy as “one of the only remaining settler-colonial occupations in the world today.”.^[43] In his book “Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation”, Eyal Weizman describes Israel’s policy as a “political system at the heart of this complex and terrifying project of late-modern colonial occupation.”^[44]

The international community criticized Israel for 'failing to protect the Palestinian population' from Israeli settler violence.^[45]

Human rights

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said Israel operates a "two-tier" judicial system in areas of the occupied Palestinian territories it administers, to an effect which provides preferential services, development, and benefits for Israelis living in settlements in the occupied territories while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians and other non-Israeli citizens. In some cases Israel has acknowledged differential treatment of Palestinians and Israelis, such as having separate roads for both communities and operating checkpoints for Palestinians, asserting that the measures are necessary to protect Israelis from attacks by Palestinian armed groups. In 2011 the Israeli parliament passed a law criminalizing participation in boycotts of Israeli settlements. The law drew criticism from the EU, the United States and the Anti-Defamation League.^[46]

Imprisonments

Amnesty International reported that in 2009 hundreds of Palestinians were detained and held incommunicado for extended periods of time by Israel. While most were later released without charge, hundreds were tried before military courts whose procedures often failed to meet international standards for fair trial. According to Amnesty, almost all Palestinian prisoners were held in violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the transfer of detainees to the territory of the occupying power (ie, Israel proper). It claimed that about 300 minors and 550 adults were held without charge or trial for more than a year.^[47]

In 2011, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Israel held thousands of Palestinians as prisoners, and called on Israel to release them. Ban said the release of political prisoners would "serve as a significant confidence-building measure" and boost prospects of peace in the region.^[48] Also Amnesty International has called on Israel to release political prisoners, saying "all political prisoners held without charge or trial should be tried in fair trials or immediately released".^[49] Israel objects to releasing prisoners, many of whom have been convicted by Israeli courts for violent crimes such as murder. However, several prisoner release deals have been conducted by Israel as a gesture in negotiations, many which involved the release of hundreds or more prisoners.

According to Amnesty International, methods of torture used by Israel on Palestinian prisoners include prolonged tying in painful stress positions, sleep deprivation and threats to harm detainees’ families. Beatings and other ill-treatment of detainees are common during and following arrest and during transfer from one location to another.^[47]

Treatment of ethnic and religious minorities

Organizations such as Amnesty International, the

According to a study commissioned by Israel's Courts administration and Israel Bar Association, Arab Israelis who have been charged with certain types of crime are more likely than their Jewish counterparts to be convicted, and once convicted they are more likely to be sent to prison. The study also found differences in lengths of prison sentences given, with the average prison sentence at nine and a half months for Jews and 14 months for Arabs.[51]

Rights groups have said that anti-discrimination employment laws in Israel are rarely enforced. A coalition of nine Israeli rights groups has opposed a practice under which companies can advertise their policy to hire only Jewish Israelis, and no Arab Israelis. Companies advertising under a "Hebrew labor" banner adhere to a segregated employment philosophy derived from a practice by Jewish immigrants in Palestine in the first half of the 20th century which was meant to strengthen emerging Israeli industry from British and Arab influence.^[52]

Stagnating peace process

In February 2011, Netanyahu called German Chancellor Angela Merkel to complain about Germany's vote in favor of a resolution at the United Nations Security Council to declare Israeli settlements to be illegal and she responded "How dare you! You are the one who disappointed us. You haven't made a single step to advance peace."^[53] A few days later veteran Israeli diplomat Ilan Baruch resigned saying that Netanyahu's policies were leading to Israel's delegitimization.^[54]

Military practices

Human shield allegations

The IDF acknowledged using the "Neighbor Procedure” or the “Early Warning Procedure”, in which the IDF would encourage a Palestinian acquaintance of a wanted man to try and convince him to surrender. This practice was criticized by some as using "human shields", an allegation the IDF denied, saying that that it never forced people into carrying out the Neighbor Procedure; and that Palestinians volunteered to prevent excess loss of life. Amnesty International^[55] and Human Rights Watch^[56] are among the groups who made the "human shield" comparison. The Israeli group B'Tselem also made the comparison, saying that "for a long period of time following the outbreak of the second intifada Operation Defensive Shield, in April 2002, the IDF systematically used Palestinian civilians as human shields, forcing them to carry out military actions which threatened their lives".^[57] The Neighbor Procedure was outlawed by the Supreme Court of Israel in 2005 but some groups say the IDF continues to use it, although they say the number of instances has dropped sharply.^[57][58]

Possession of weapons of mass destruction

Israel is seen to possess a nuclear arsenal of about 150 weapons, and Israel has been criticised for maintaining nuclear weapons and for not agreeing to a nuclear-free Middle East zone. In September 2009, the

Israel has signed the Chemical Weapons Convention but not ratified it, citing neighbouring states that have not done so either.^[60] Israel is widely believed to have chemical weapons but officials have never directly admitted it, although in 1990 Science Minister Yuval Neeman threatened to retaliate against an Iraqi chemical-weapons strike "with the same merchandise".^[61] Israel has not signed the Biological Weapons Convention.^[60]

Targeted killings of terrorists

Amnesty International has condemned Israel's policy of assassinations targeting individuals.^[62] Israeli officials have admitted that the policy exists and is being pursued, saying it helps prevent acts of terrorism from being committed against Israel. The United States has a very similar policy.^{[citation needed]} Criticism against has been raised also from some on the Israeli left, who say assassination policy is "gangster behavior" unbecoming of a government and is against Israeli law.^[63] Israel's Supreme Court has ruled that assassinations are illegal, but leaked documents suggest that Israel's army has ignored the ruling.^[64]

Judaization of Jerusalem

The term Judaization of Jerusalem refers to the view that

Critics claim that the guaranteed right for Jews to immigrate to Israel is discriminatory to non-Jews and therefore runs counter to the democratic value of equality under the law.[72]

Criticism at the United Nations

The UN has issued 232 resolutions with respect to Israel since 2003, representing 40% of all resolutions issued by the UN over the period and more than six times that of the second placed country, Sudan.^[17]

According to testimony by the pro-Israel human rights NGO UN Watch to the United States Congress in January 2011 with respect to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Israel has been the focus of 70% of approximately 50 condemnatory resolutions by the council, 60% of the ten Special Sessions of the council and 100% of the council's five fact-finding missions or inquiries.^[73]

Analogies

Accusations of apartheid

Comparisons between apartheid South Africa and Israel are increasingly made. Israelis recoil at the analogy, but the parallel is widely drawn in international circles.^[74][75]

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a group in Israel with support from several EU states, asserted in 2008 that the separate road networks in the West Bank for Israelis and Palestinians, the expansion of Jewish settlements, restriction of the growth of Palestinian towns and discriminatory granting of services, budgets and access to natural resources are "a blatant violation of the principle of equality and in many ways reminiscent of the Apartheid regime in South Africa".^[76]

Israel has also been accused of apartheid by Michael Ben-Yair, Israel's attorney-general from 1993 to 1996 ^[77] and Shulamit Aloni, who served as Minister for Education under Yitzhak Rabin.^[78]

Comparisons with Nazi Germany

Israel is sometimes compared to

In 1984, author Israel Stockman-Shomron noted Nazi allusions in articles critical of Israel in publications including The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post and The New York Times.^[89]

In 2000, Nur Masalha characterized Israel's occupation of Palestine territories as comparable to the Nazi Lebensraum (living space) policy of gaining land and materials for the benefit of Germans.^[90]

In 2002, Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author

In 2004, writer Josie Sandercock described Gaza as the "largest concentration camp in the world".[92]

In 2005, Chilean author

In 2006, Arab journalist Jihad al-Khazin wrote an article in Al-Hayat comparing Ehud Olmert to Hitler.^[94]

In 2009, Professor

The European Forum on Anti-Semitism stated in 2004 that "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" amounted to anti-Semitism[102] In 2006, the British All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Anti-Semitism recommended that the UK Government adopt the same stance.^[103]

Sociologist David Hirsh accuses anti-Zionists of double-standards in their criticism of Israel, and notes that other states carry out policies similar to those of Israel without those policies being described as "Nazi". He suggests that to describe Israel as engaged in "genocide" carries an unspoken accusation comparison with the Holocaust and an equation of Zionism with Nazism.^[104]

British author Howard Jacobson has suggested that comparisons between conditions faced by Palestinians and those of the Warsaw Ghetto are intended "to wound Jews in their recent and most anguished history and to punish them with their own grief" and are a form of Holocaust denial which accept the reality of Jewish suffering but accuse Jews "of trying to profit from it". "It is as though," he says, "by a reversal of the usual laws of cause and effect, Jewish actions of today prove that Jews had it coming to them yesterday." ^[105]

In December 2015, during an interview on Kol Yisrael, Dr. Ofer Cassif, a political science lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said: "I think it's fair to compare Israel to Germany in the 1930s, and not to the years of genocide... we have moved into a completely different phase in the history of this country. We are now the Germany of the 1930s."^[106]

Criticism of Israel and antisemitism

Some criticisms of Israel or Israeli policies have been characterized as anti-Semitic. Proponents of the concept of New Antisemitism, such as Phyllis Chesler, Gabriel Schoenfeld and Mortimer Zuckerman, argue that, since the 1967 Six-Day War, many criticisms of Israel are veiled attacks on Jews and hence are essentially antisemitic. Abba Eban, Robert S. Wistrich, and Joschka Fischer focus on criticism of Zionism, and contend that some forms of anti-Zionism, particularly attacks on Israel's right to exist, are anti-Semitic in nature.

Critics of this view often portray this view as an "equation" of criticism with anti-Semitism. Some critics of Israel or Israeli policies, including

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) prepared a report in 2003 that distinguished criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism by testing whether "Israel is seen as being a representative of 'the Jew'": if the speaker is considering Israel as a representative of Jews in general, then anti-Semitism is deemed to be underlying the criticism.[116]

Demonization and double standards are often used as evidence of anti-Semitism in relation to criticism of Israel. Sharansky believes that some criticisms involve applying an especially high moral standard to Israel, higher than applied to other countries (particularly compared to surrounding countries), yet the only special characteristic of Israel is that it is a Jewish state, hence there is an element of anti-Semitism.[118]

Delegitimization was a factor addressed by Abba Eban, who claimed that efforts to deny "the equal rights of the Jewish people its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations" constituted anti-Semitism.^[119]

European Union 2006 report on antisemitism

The

This part of the definition has proved highly contentious and is seen by many as attempting to proscribe legitimate criticism of the human rights record of the Israeli Government by attempting to bring any criticism of Israel into the category of antisemitism, and as not sufficiently distinguishing between criticism of Israeli actions and criticism of Zionism as a political ideology, on the one hand, and racially based violence towards, discrimination against, or abuse of, Jews.[122]

Paul Igansky points out that one of the EUMC anti-Semitic behaviors, comparisons between Israeli policy and those of the Nazis, is "arguably not intrinsically antisemitic", and that the context in which they are made is critical. Igansky illustrates this with the incident where Israeli prime minister

Following the 2006 EUMC report, the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (EISCA) published a report in 2009 entitled Understanding and Addressing the ‘Nazi Card' - Intervening Against Antisemitic Discourse which discussed comparisons of Israel with Nazi Germany.^[124]

The 2009 report incorporated from the 2006 report the five specific kinds of criticism of Israel that should be considered as anti-Semitism (see above for a list of the five).^[125]

The report does not say all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic: "Abhorrence and protest against the policies, practices, and leaders of the Israeli state can be expressed in numerous forceful and trenchant ways, as they could against any other state - none of which would be antisemitic…",^[126] and "Drawing attention to the consequent harms in [playing the Nazi card against Israel] should not be intended, or taken, in any way as an attempt to suppress criticism of Israel and its military practices."^[127]

Antony Lerman criticized the report, and suggested that it could be used to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel, and suggests that the report's authors do not adequately address that possibility.^[128]

Responses to criticism

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2014)

Claims of media bias

Mudar Zahran, a Jordanian of Palestinian heritage, writes that the "tendency to blame Israel for everything" has provided Arab leaders an excuse to deliberately ignore the human rights of the Palestinian in their countries. As an example, he said that while the world is furious over the blockade on Gaza, the media choose to deliberately ignore the conditions of the Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon and other Arab countries.^[129]

George Will claims that the "blame Israel first (and last, and in between) brigade" is "large and growing".^[130]

Claims of United Nations bias

The United Nations has never condemned China's occupation of Tibet or recognized the Tibetans' right to self-determination. Alan Dershowitz finds the UN position hypocritical, as he concludes China's occupation of Tibet has been longer, more brutal, deadlier and less justified than Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.^{[131][page needed]}

Foreign Ministry

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Israel) has encouraged the use of social media to counteract criticism of Israel's policies.^{[citation needed]} One member of the diplomatic corps proposed more aggressive action regarding Israel's critics. In June 2012, Israel's Channel 10 published an e-mail in which Nurit Tinari-Modai, deputy head of Israel's mission in the Republic of Ireland and wife of the ambassador, Boaz Moda'i, proposed harassing expatriate Israelis who criticized Israeli policies, posting photos of them and publishing disinformation that would embarrass them. She claimed that they were critical of Israel because of their sexual identity. Following the publicity about Tinari-Modai's tactics, the Foreign Ministry quickly distanced itself from her letter. Her recommendation included the following :"You have to try and hit their soft underbellies, to publish their photographs, maybe that will cause embarrassment from their friends in Israel and their family, hoping that local activists would understand that they may actually be working on behalf of Mossad."^{[132][133][134]}

Israeli public opinion

International criticism is an important focus within Israel. According to an August 2010 survey by Tel Aviv University, more than half of Israelis believe "the whole world is against us", and three quarters of Israelis believe "that no matter what Israel does or how far it goes towards resolving the conflict with the Palestinians, the world will continue to criticize Israel".

See also

• Anti-Zionism
• Bibliography of the Arab–Israeli conflict
• Religious relations in Israel

References

Footnotes