Several months ago I argued that Bowdoin should stop selling Sabra hummus in the C-Store. Sabra has become a target of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement because its mother company, the Strauss Group, materially and financially supports the Israeli military. In the same article, I claimed that that labeling hummus an Israeli food is an example of cultural appropriation.
Michael Levine ’14 and Judah Isseroff ’13 both wrote columns in response. Isseroff claimed that a new form of anti-Semitism is manifest in liberals who shield prejudice in the guise of compassionate motives, such as those who “flock to the plight of the Palestinians as a cause whose burden they wish to share in.”
Levine asked, “Why is it that when other groups borrow cultural elements it is rightly termed ‘diffusion,’ but when Jews do so it becomes ‘theft’?”
Contrary to Levine and Isseroff’s claims, I never accused Jewish hummus eaters of cultural theft. I spoke specifically of the adoption of aspects of Palestinian culture by Israelis as their own.
Levine and Isseroff blur the distinction between Judaism and Zionism. And there is a great distinction; one is a religion and the other an ideology.
Hummus and other Arab foods are part of the cultural heritage of Mizrahi and Sephardi Israelis (Jews of Middle Eastern descent). However, marketing hummus as an Israeli food is problematic because it claims that culturally Arab foods contribute to national Israeli culture, despite the state’s refusal to allow its non-Jewish Arab population equal rights and political participation.
Conflating opposition to political Zionism with anti-Semitism is belittling of the racism that is anti-Semitism. The Zionism championed by Israel, as represented by its ideological father, Theodore Herzl, as well as David Ben Gurion, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, among others, is a political ideology. It advocates for a Jewish nation in the land currently claimed by the State of Israel, disregarding an existing indigenous population, the Palestinians, the majority of whom are not Jewish.
I reject Zionism just as I reject any political ideology that, as Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “excludes people on ethnic or other grounds over which they have no control.”
The toxic effects of political Zionism are evident in the colonial nature of the State of Israel, and in the State’s perpetuation of segregation and apartheid.
The New Oxford American Dictionary defines colonialism as, “The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial control over another country, occupying it with settlers and exploiting it economically.” Israel could not fit this description better.
Since 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights, with the exception of small isolated enclaves such as the cities of Ramallah and Jericho. Israeli forces regularly enter these cities, and authority of the Palestinian Authority is negligible.
Despite frequent condemnations by the United Nations and other organizations, Israel avidly continues to build settlements in the occupied territories.
The Paris Protocol (the economic equivalent to the 1993 Oslo Accords) established a system in the occupied territories whereby all Palestinian imports and exports are controlled by Israel, restricting competition for Israeli companies and turning Palestinian consumers into a captive market for Israeli goods.
Israeli companies based in the occupied territories enjoy tax incentives, access to resources and cheap Palestinian labor, and lax enforcement of environmental and labor protection laws. Omnipresent restrictions on the movement of Palestinian labor and products further increase the dependency of the Palestinian economy on Israeli companies.
As for apartheid and segregation, a 2012 report by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found racial discrimination to be present in almost every facet of Israeli governance.
Within its formally recognized borders, the report concluded, Israel denies Palestinians and Bedouins equal access to land and property through discriminatory laws and an ongoing policy of forced displacement and house demolition. There are two separate systems of local government for Jewish municipalities and “municipalities of the minorities.”
Similarly, there are two separate systems of education, one in Hebrew and one in Arabic. According to the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education, the Israeli government spends an average of $192 per year on each Arab student, as compared to $1000 for each Jewish student.
The U.N. committee found two entirely separate legal institutions for Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the occupied territories. The committee stated that it was “appalled at the hermetic character of this segregation.” Also mentioned was the continued expansion of settlements while systematically denying construction rights to Palestinians and Bedouins, the arrest, jailing, and military trials of children, and the immunity enjoyed by settlers for racist violence and acts of vandalism.
Numerous independent organizations, including Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, B’tselem (a human rights watch organization) and Amnesty International arrived at similar conclusions.
Yet, defenders of Israeli policy will often assert the essential need for security.
While security is a crucial function of the state, what is most dangerous about this security-centered thought process is that it detracts from rational thinking and debate. “Wars, raids and strikes are conducted in the name of security. Borders are closed and people are detained, interrogated and tortured,” wrote Tarak Barkawi in an editorial for Al Jazeera.
Killing is to be deplored regardless of whether the victim is Israeli or Palestinian. Why is there no discussion of the security of Palestinians?
Israel has among the most sophisticated and powerful militaries in the world, funded generously by American tax dollars. Militant resistance groups in Gaza do pose a security threat to Israelis, but they do so with shoddy weapons of very limited range. The comparative strength of Palestinian militant groups is minuscule.
Any threat from Palestinians does not stem from inherent anti-Semitism. Rather, it is the inevitable consequence of a colonial occupation that the colonized will demand freedom, especially in a situation such as this, where Israeli control and domination is ubiquitous in all aspects of life. It is no surprise that a man who is beaten would fight back.
The Israeli security apparatus is predicated upon a distorted value of human life. Discussion regarding the security of Israel is profoundly flawed unless it is understood that security is not possible without equal treatment of all inhabitants.
This is not an issue that we can afford to be indifferent about. In the words of Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” The first act of preventing injustice is recognizing it.
When I write that it is unjust for an Israeli company to sell hummus as an Israeli product, it is not because Israel defines itself as a Jewish State. Israeli apartheid and anti-Semitism stem from the same vein of racism and social injustice. Just as one must be struggled against, so must the other.