Can U.S. Jews overcome our shame and talk about apartheid?
Last Friday, the first night of Passover, the woman across the table asked my friend a question.
"You said that you admire AOC. You know that she called Israel an apartheid state. How can you still admire her?”
My friend paused and smiled. “I think there are arguments that you can make that Israel is an apartheid state.”
“Well, I guess we just have different definitions of apartheid,” the woman replied.
“My definition is separate and unequal treatment under the law. What’s yours?” I asked.
The conversation did not lead to anywhere productive. It was unlikely to, particularly because I entered the conversation from a place of indignation, rather than curiosity and humility. The woman told me that we would have to “agree to disagree” and I didn’t have much to say in response.
Talking about Israel and apartheid is a new and difficult experience for me. I was raised in a liberal Zionist home. Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat were heroes to me. We were anti-settler, pro-peace Zionists. The country I was raised to love as a home for the Jews, a refuge in an anti-Semitic world is unrecognizable to me now. This is not just because of Israel’s increasingly racist, xenophobic, authoritarian policies. I also look at Israel’s whole history in a different light.
Another time recently I was on the phone with someone I love. He too was upset about the apartheid label. “Sure, Israel has problems with its treatment of Ethiopian Jews, but apartheid?” Here was a liberal Jew, willing to acknowledge Israel’s systemic racism, but uncomfortable with the language of apartheid. I get frustrated in these conversations. Sometimes it feels like semantics can be a distraction from the core issue - the suffering of Palestinian human beings under Israeli military occupation.
But also words matter. I hate to get all high school five paragraph essay, but Merriam Webster defines as apartheid generally as “segregation or separation.” Israeli non-Jewish Arabs and Palestinians under Israeli occupation do not have access to the same rights and privileges as Israeli Jews. Numerous international rights groups and Israel human rights groups agree: Israel is an apartheid state. Acknowledging Israel’s systemic racism, or raising points about systemic racism in the United States, does not change this fact. But despite numerous reports, the images on the news and social media, and cries for justice from Palestinian activists in Palestine and the United States, Jews in the United States resist this reality. What’s going on?
It reminds me of something I used to do when I let down people I cared about. I would do something hurtful, and they would tell what I had done was hurtful. Next I would often respond with defensiveness. “It makes me sad that you could think that about me. You know I love you!” My sense of shame over the harm I caused consumed me. I allowed it to become more important than listening, and being accountable for the harm I caused itself.
Similarly, many liberal Jews in the United States hear accusations of apartheid, and a deep sense of shame is triggered. “Are you saying we’re racist? We vote Democrat! Don’t you know that Abraham Joshua Heschel marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!”
Our self-concept is unimportant. Our sense of shame is not what matters most. We can and should deal with that as a community. We can support each other unpack it and process it. But what matters is the harm that the Israeli state is causing to Palestinians in our name.
I know facing this truth is hard. When I consider it myself, I feel a tightness in my chest. I think it’s a mix of sadness over what is happening to Palestinians, and a fear of acknowledging this truth with many people I love. Words like apartheid, occupation, Palestinian suffering are often treated as dangerous slander against Israel.
But I know I can speak up. And I believe Jews in the United States who care about justice can have this conversation. Together we can face the impact of Israel’s policies on Palestinians. We know in our hearts that Palestinians are deserving of human rights just like everyone else. Are we willing to set our feelings of hurt aside to acknowledge this? Can we really listen to the pain that’s being caused? Can we use our voices to speak out for justice? I wonder what new ideas about freedom we might discuss at our seder tables if did.
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