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| Response to Mandaville’s Response to Spencer |
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I am certain that all of you read the reader response section at the beginning of the paper and therefore need no further framing of this issue. If you didn’t, go back and do it now. We can wait. Okay, good. As you know, we at the Rearguard are not famous for being ones to take anyone at their word, particularly in matters that get people this irrational and biased. So, we asked Bob Horenstein, the Community Relations Director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland and a former post-graduate student of PSU’s Political Science program, specializing in Middle East Studies, to address some of the claims made in Jon Mandaville’s response to Scott Spencer’s article. Rearguard: First of all, let’s address the apartheid comparisons. Is there any legitimacy to these claims? Bob Horenstein: The term apartheid is being used to resonate with people on the left. Apartheid suggests that the security barriers are boxing Palestinians into ghettos and that is simply not the case. Israel is totally surrounded by Arab states. The minor Arab populations living inside Israel have more freedom than in any surrounding Arab country. A recent Harvard study found that 76 percent of Arab-Israeli citizens would prefer to live in Israel than anywhere else. And that’s anywhere else in the world, not just the Middle East. It also found that around 99 percent of Arab-Israelis would not move to a Palestinian state. Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East and the only that offers them freedoms like those of religion, government participation, political freedom, and other social rights. Second, apartheid is a racist policy. To suggest that Israel is committing apartheid at all is totally incorrect. In fact, hundreds of refugees from Darfur came to Israel after being denied any basic civil rights by Egypt and being slaughtered by the Egyptian military as they crossed the Sinai Peninsula. Israel was at war with Sudan, so the refugees were arrested. But after their arrest they were well taken care of and had more rights than they had in Darfur. The refugees themselves said they understood why they were jailed and that they were treated very well. Israel’s citizens come from over 100 different countries around the world [and are of] of all skin colors. Israel’s ethnically diverse population enjoys equal rights. There are some laws that show Jewish preference, such as the Law of Return for people of Jewish heritage and their spouses, but this is because Israel was a place of refuge for those fleeing Hitler’s Reich. For example, Germany has similar laws concerning the naturalization process that favor people of German heritage. Most countries do. RG: So, if it’s not apartheid, can you give us a better idea of what’s going on? BH: Israel captured Gaza as a result of a war it did not seek. In the ensuing decades, no Palestinian peace-partner emerged to return the territory to. Israel no longer controls Gaza, anyway; it’s Hamas-controlled now. It has been in negotiation status several times now, but there has never been any willing Palestinian partner to end the conflict. Of course, while the land is in dispute, the population is unsettled. There is no sovereign state. RG: What about these checkpoints he mentions, and the assertion that the Geneva Convention is violated? BH: First of all, there is no border in this area. There is an armistice line. In the late 1980s, Palestinians were allowed to cross into Israel and work. My father-in-law employed many Palestinian laborers and greatly appreciated them. During this time, over 100,000 Palestinian laborers were working for a better wage than they could get anywhere else. Then suicide bombers began pouring into Israel. After this, the number of workers coming in was reduced drastically, but it is not discrimination to protect one’s nation from what is an immense security risk. Second, the Geneva Convention does not apply to this situation. The Geneva Convention is interested in protecting an occupied people by preventing an occupying power from transferring its citizens into occupied territory as Germany did with Poland. This has no bearing on Palestinian citizens. Israel is not trying to transfer the Palestinian population out or the Israeli population in. There are settlements, but it is not an occupying force. RG: What about the assertion that the Palestinians don’t have equal rights? BH: Israelis believe that Israel must maintain its Jewish character. This is the only state where Jews are the majority and the only safe haven for a people persecuted for 2,000 years. And not just in the Middle East. Venezuela, Argentina, Iran, France and so on are all dangerous to Jews. If Palestinians in the West Bank get what they want, they will be the majority in Israel within 25-50 years. It’s a tactic to make Israel no longer Jewish and make it the 23rd Arab state. There are 57 Muslim countries and only one Jewish state. Israel cannot be asked to commit demographic suicide. The 57 Muslim states persecute non-Muslims and are immeasurably more homogenous than Israel. Israel would be happy to see a democratic Palestinian state, but the fact is, Israel is the only democratic state anywhere in the Middle East. Israel has about 1.4 million Arab citizens. Druze are the majority of the Arab-Israeli population. Druze and Bedouins serve in the Israeli army; other Arabs do not. There was a question of there being a security risk in asking them to fight their brothers and also, they didn’t want to fight other Arabs. So, they were not conscripted. They were given the opportunity for other national services that were unarmed. Israel has done a phenomenal job giving its citizens equal rights relative to all the surrounding countries. In Akko, north of Haifa, the state recently gave permission for a demonstration by its citizens against the Israeli state. The idea of this happening in any other place in the Middle East is unimaginable. RG: Why is it, then, that so-called liberal, open-minded people at PSU and all over the U.S. that claim to support women’s rights, gay rights, civil liberties and so on refuse to support Israel, the only country in the Middle East that has these rights, and support inherently fascist Arab states? BH: They are either making assumptions without information, or there is a more troubling motive. Either way, it exposes a deep hypocrisy. Hamas executes gays. Egypt imprisons suspected gays, and according to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran has no gay people. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive, cannot vote, cannot leave the country without permission from a male relative and can be arrested for what they are wearing. In Israel, gay rights are written in the law. Israel has a female prime minister, has 21 women in parliament and their supreme court chief justice is a woman. Is it perfect? No. But truly open-minded people can see that it is not black and white. RG: What about the multiple complaints of PSU students about professors who are clearly teaching with an agenda, such as Joel Beinin, who we were lucky enough to avoid employing at our university? BH: In terms of academics who teach Middle East Politics, students should test their professors and ask other students to determine their political agenda. We all have bias, but the important thing to ask is: does it turn into an agenda that affects the information students are given? Jewish educational tradition encourages the questioning of authority and the challenging of information. Those who are telling the truth don’t mind hard questions.  |
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