Monthly Archives: March 2017
Get Over it! Israel is Not an Apartheid State
A couple of weeks ago the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) issued a report equating Israel with apartheid. The ESCWA is charged with promoting economic and social development in Western Asia but spends much of its time bashing Israel. This is easy enough since the committee is composed of 18 Arab states each of which is eager to delegitimize Israel. But the “apartheid” analogy continues to rear its ugly head and has become an effective weapon against Israel and its legal and moral standing. You can learn more about ESCWA here.
Since Israelis and West Bank Arabs live separately and there is an asymmetrical relationship between Israel and the Palestinian territories it becomes quite easy, albeit sloppy thinking, to turn the word apartheid into a convenient hammer in order to bruise the Jewish state. Labeling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as apartheid stretches the meaning of the term beyond recognition and out of its historical context. It is like calling any human violence a “holocaust” or “genocide.” There are differences.
And my guess is that the apartheid analogy is often motivated by anti-Semitism but we will set that aside for the moment and consider some more compelling historical and political theory reasons for why Israel is not an apartheid state. If someone wants to just “name call” and lash out at the despised other, then the word apartheid is a good place to start because of its inherent implication of racism. And if you repeat it often enough people will believe it.
But the apartheid accusation is more than just name-calling. Language has power and consequences and cannot be divorced from specific behaviors. Thus, the apartheid accusation is used to justify violence against Israel and deny Israelis basic human rights of self-defense. It is a way of dehumanizing Israelis which makes it easier to justify violence. The apartheid accusation also distorts information and data and makes it more difficult to understand the truth or new information because attitudes and perceptions of the other become entrenched and impossible to unfreeze.
Some differences between Israel and apartheid
- Apartheid is a system of inequality based on racial ideology. The Israel-Palestine example is a failure to negotiate agreed-upon solutions. Racism is not what motivates Israel. Israeli Arabs can vote and serve in the Knesset in Israel. This was not true in apartheid South Africa.
- The Palestinians regularly reject compromises and good faith efforts. Partition has been considered the most fair-minded approach but is rejected by the Palestinians.
- Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not governed by Israel. They are governed by the Palestinian Authority.
- Skin color, voting rights, restrictions on movement, and geographical separation are not based on racist attitudes but on security concerns the goal of which is to one day eliminate, not perpetuated as a permanent definition of the political relationship.
- Zionism is certainly concerned with the development and defense of the Jewish people but is not rooted in racist ideology as much as – like any other political entity – national defense.
- Israel does not want to oversee and control Palestinians. On the contrary, Israel would like to help the Palestinians launch their own independent state and free themselves from the Israelis.
- Actually, apartheid is just what Israel is trying to avoid rather than perpetuate. The demographic threat along with pressures for bi- national and uni-national states threatens Israel’s existence as a democratic and Jewish state.
- Equating Zionism with colonialism is one reason the apartheid accusation seems plausible. But the Zionist movement was never part of the designs of an outside state on Palestine, and Zionist immigration was more interested in investing in Palestine rather than exploiting it.
- Apartheid in South Africa was based on the absolute domination of a racially defined minority (Whites) over an indigenous majority (Blacks). The Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in the clash of nationalisms.
- Finally, the Palestinians have been offered numerous opportunities to negotiate a compromise from the 1930s to the present. They have regularly rejected these opportunities and consequently have a clear role in the responsibility for maintaining the present situation.
Israel is certainly not blameless with respect to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but equating Israel with apartheid is little more than denying Israel its fundamental right to self-defense and a national identity.
The Latest Big Idea for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – Sovereignty
This week’s Jerusalem Post had a 25 page insert that was a political journal sponsored by the “Women in Green” who are a very conservative grassroots group concerned with advancing the interests of Israel. This is an interesting document and not something you would see in the United States, at least not typically. The entire document – or political journal as it is called – is devoted to the issue of declaring sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza. Because the two-state solution is losing favor and fading in the eyes of some, the right wing has seized the moment and is trying to kill off the two-state solution once and for all. Moreover, the election of President Trump has empowered the right wing because he is seen as sympathetic to their issues and the best chance for the United States to be more aggressive in the defense of Israel’s conservative environment. The election of Trump is considered a game changer because he is perceived as willing to find alternatives to the two-state solution and will be “tougher” in his defense of Israel. Note the appointment of Friedman as the ambassador to Israel who is very conservative and pro-settler.
A proposed solution that is receiving increased talk time anyway is the issue of sovereignty. Political sovereignty is when a political authority has power over independent states. That power is established through some sort of enabling law or Constitution. Governments maintain the integrity of the sovereignty relationship and ensure that the administered groups keep their rights and cultural freedoms.
Now there are different types of sovereignty and numerous complexities but we don’t want to send everybody scrambling to find their old political science books. Go here for more on sovereignty. Suffice it to say that Israel would be the primary overseer of a collection of communities that maintain their independence but had limits on citizenship rights, military, and certain other conditions that might damage the standing of the primary sovereign. Here is an outline of the sovereignty plan.
- There would be the establishment of Arab “autonomies” subject to the rule of the Israeli sovereign.
- Security and national issues will be under the control of the State of Israel.
- The autonomies would be bound together in an infrastructure that supports water, electricity, and a host of municipal services.
- Members of the autonomies would be eligible for health benefits, insurance, education, and freedom of movement. This grants the right of permanent resident but not citizenship.
- Martial law will be canceled and normal government services will be returned to civil society.
- The Oslo Accords, which turned out to be unsuccessful, will be canceled.
- The UN refugee organization will be released and refugees will have the right to settle in any autonomy.
- Ultimate responsibility for the protection and maintenance of holy sites will be with the State of Israel. All holy sites will be accessible to believers of all religions.
- No foreign country would have special status over holy sites anywhere in the country.
- The Gaza Strip is part of historical Israel that would ultimately have to become part of the sovereign relationship with Israel.
Suffice it to say that reasonably fulfilling and satisfying relationships can develop under conditions of sovereignty. Still, the success of sovereign relationships is dependent on the history of the relationship between the dominant political authority and the weaker party. Why do those supporting sovereignty believe that the Palestinians will be any more accepting of a sovereign relationship than of outright Israeli control. This conflict has been complex and delicate for a long time. The Palestinians have honed their own consciousness into images of a cohesive collective with all the requirements of nationhood – ethnic identity, religious orientation, national boundaries and borders, and the possibility of a proper functioning political system. The proposal of sovereignty is subject to the same deficiencies of any other proposal – the Palestinians still end up in the weaker position. That’s why a two-state solution remains the only hope for a mature political relationship between Israel and Palestine.
Trump and Netanyahu Make Decisions the Same Way – Incompletely
There is a term in political and communication theory known as “democratic reason.” Generally, democratic reason is the collective intelligence of a group of people. It is the notion that democratic communicative processes – that is, things like inclusion, balance, equality, resources, speaking rights, participation – result in higher quality decisions. Or, we could express it in the everyday phrase “two heads are better than one.”
Netanyahu and Trump both fail to meet some basic communication quality standards. Both face electoral problems and controversies because they refuse to recognize attitude trends in the citizenry that call for inclusive and democratic input. Polls in Israel show that about 60% of the population wants peace and is willing to make some sacrifices. It is the leadership that is stubborn and not serious about real progress. Real progress, without being naïve, can be made if a representative group of people spent their time in serious deliberation with the goal of using the communication process to create new ideas solutions.
This notion that two heads are better than one is actually pretty powerful. Even in simple aggregation such as voting more participants improves the likelihood of decisions being improved or not random. In the well-known “jar of beans” example, we could ask individuals with no previous exposure to the jar about how many beans are in the jar. We then get a group average on the basis of the entire group (the group produces a simple average) and the group average will be better than the average of the individuals. Finally, we can organize a group and give them time to talk to each other, deliberate, and share ideas. In other words we could make the communication system available to them. This third group, which allows for as rich and controlled democratic communication process as possible, will most consistently produce better answers.
The reason for this is the epistemic nature of communication but we will talk about that some other time. For now, I want to make the observation that the full Republican control of the senate and congress along with Trump is a dangerous situation. Key decision-making issues will escape the scrutiny of diverse voices and fail to let each side fully participate in the intelligence of the other side. This is why the Congress is polarized rather than democratized.
Trump already has authoritative tendencies. He has no patience for other people and little history having to answer to anybody. Much of leadership in his business world is based on clear lines of command with few or no constituencies to please other than investors. Moreover, Trump holds to the belief that the best and the brightest are going to beat and know more than the average citizen. Whether or not Trump has actually identified the best and the brightest we will leave for others just to say, but his aristocracy theory that the elite will always know more and therefore make better decisions than the average citizen does not always hold sway.
The reason that elites do not always make better decision is because they lack diversity; they may hold expertise even deep expertise in a particular subject but they lack diverse points of view and variety. In an interesting book by Scott Page (The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Society: Princeton University Press), he demonstrates the power of inclusiveness and diverse voices in decisions.
True enough that collective reason can go awry but that is usually managed by the communication process and the conditions of contact. Communication is only smart when it is allowed to work properly. When communication is restrained or distorted or the victim of a host of other maladies it then becomes a mechanism for collective unreason preventing itself from finding real solutions.
Peace and Conflict Politics 