August 07 , 2009
Is Israel Held to A Higher Standard?
Israel has for many years held a privileged place in America. Its original sin, the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians, was swept under the rug and ignored by the American media for decades. Since then Israel has done all sorts of things that most moral people would find reprehensible, but is little remarked on by the US media.
For example, most people do not know that in 1972 Israel’s Air Force shot down a 727 passenger jet that had missed the Cairo approach and strayed off course over the Suez Canal into Israeli-occupied territory. Every passenger and crew member was murdered that day, and Israel never apologized for such an evil act. Compare the US media and President Nixon’s response to that shoot-down and the reaction that occurred in 1983 when the Soviet Union shot down a Korean airliner that went off course over Soviet military installations.
Despite Israel’s checkered past, there is a deep sense among many supporters of Israel that the world is being unfair. That in fact Israel is no worse than most other countries, and is being criticized for doing things that pass with little comment or world attention when carried out by others. On a superficial level, there is some merit to this. The Israelis have never carried out a mass genocide. And Israel is sort of a democracy, certainly more so than its immediate neighbors. Israel is also certainly not the only country to deny self-determination to a restless and aggrieved minority.
But there are two huge problems with this argument. First, Israel is unique in that it is the only nation that is occupying another people. By doing so it has sovereign power over their lives, but denies them citizenship. No other nation does that. In all other nations, the minorities may be unhappy, but they are still full legal citizens. This includes the Kurds in Turkey, the Tibetans in China, the Chechens in Russia, and even the French-Canadians in Canada. Only the Israelis deny citizenship to the Palestinians and instead occupy them and consign them to a legal status that is akin to slavery.
Palestinians have no recognized legal rights by the Israeli basic law ( Israel has no constitution as that would require it to address some very difficult issues head-on). They can be killed and their property confiscated with no recourse at the whim of the Israeli army.
Occupation is also uniquely evil in that the occupied people have no ability to participate in the power that governs them. In a society that is not democratic, the average person still has many ways to participate in society and acquire meaningful power and influence. One can be a bureaucrat, a police officer, serve in the military, become a business tycoon, be a judge or lawyer, achieve social prominence in arts or television or literature or sports, join the diplomatic corps, and a host of other ways that you can participate in a non-democratic society. In addition, you can influence the government through personal connections, family relations, public opinion, and even bribery. In all these ways a normal society allows widespread participation by the people even if the President is not freely elected. But for the Palestinians, occupation means none of these normal routes exist. They are totally and completely crushed by the heavy hand of the Israeli government.
In fact, the Israelis tremble in fear at the notion of granting the Palestinians equality. There is a huge gulf between granting your citizens equality but denying them the right to secede, which happens in many countries, and denying them citizenship in the land of their birth, which is the uniquely abominable act of Israel.
The second reason why the claim of an unfair standard is preposterous is that Israel itself wants to be admitted to the club of normal Western nations that respect human rights. It demands to be accorded that status, rather than dismissed as a Third World apartheid state. It cannot have it both ways. If it wishes to accept its real status as an apartheid oppressor of the Palestinians, then it cannot justify 3 billion dollars in annual aid plus a guaranteed pro-Israeli veto at the UN from the United States. The US should wash its hands of such a nation, and neither judge it more harshly than Congo or Libya, nor provide it the full weight of American support and legitimacy.
