WASHINGTON-In April, the United Methodist Church s General Assembly will vote on whether or not to divest its holdings in companies that do business with Israel. The Methodists divestment campaign is not the only one of its kind. There are hundreds of efforts throughout the world which have as their goal ending investment in Israel or terminating relationships between local universities and Israeli universities.
These efforts all have one thing in common-the belief that Israel s behavior in the West Bank/Gaza is so heinous that pressure has to be applied directly to Israel s people, all of them. It is argued that crippling the Israeli economy, which is the goal of divestment, will cause all Israelis to suffer and lead them to rise up against the occupation to protect their jobs, their incomes, or their profits. (Funny, how economic pressure does not cause suffering Palestinians in Gaza to turn on Hamas, however.)
Proponents of divestment argue that, like South African apartheid, the occupation can be brought down by economic pressure. The analogy, however, is specious and not because there is anything good to say about the occupation. There isn t.
It has been in place for 41 years and there is little evidence it will end soon. Settlements continue being expanded. Checkpoints-obstacles to movement not on the Israeli-Palestinian border but deep inside the West Bank-keep going up despite promises to take them down. And innocent Palestinians keep dying as collateral victims of Israeli retaliations or targeted assassinations.
The occupation has been a curse on Palestinians and Israelis both. The best thing that could happen for both peoples would be if it ended tomorrow.
I could, at this point, discuss all the suffering Israelis have experienced at the hands of the Palestinians since peace talks broke down in the summer of 2000. I won t because the issue here is the actions of the Israelis, not of the Palestinians.
I don t want to create one of those hokey balance sheets where we measure one side s suffering against the others. And, frankly, I do not use the same yardstick to judge the actions of the Israeli government and Palestinian terrorists. It s not the Palestinian Authority that is inflicting terror on Israelis but terrorists, suicide bombers, and thugs. Forgive me, if I will not judge the state of Israel by the same standard I apply to Palestinian Islamic Jihad or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. I hope I never do.
However, it is fair to compare Israel s actions to our own country, the United Methodist Church s own country: the United States.
Most of the world, including a clear majority of Americans, thinks that the US invasion of Iraq was a disaster, that it was unjustified, and that it has caused untold suffering among Iraq s people. Some make the case, and it s not hard to make, that the US invasion of Iraq essentially destroyed that country and that it will be many, many years before Iraq is reconstituted as a nation in which its people live with any sense of security. Additionally, the international community made its opposition to the US invasion clear before it began. The United States government was indifferent to world opinion.
The war began and it continues. Like the Israeli occupation, there are few signs that it will end anytime soon.
Does that mean that American citizens and businesses should be boycotted? Does that mean that righteous EU countries should divest from the United States to show opposition to the war? Should all Americans be punished because our policies in the Middle East are so destructive? Frankly, I have never heard that proposed by anyone.
The United States of America, and its people, is considerably more than the sum total of its various policies. So is Israel. And, even in countries where we choose our leaders, ordinary people should not be punished for the sins of their government, except in very rare cases, like the case of South Africa.
Apartheid permeated every aspect of South African life. There was not a city, village, or township that was not permeated with apartheid. It is no accident that the nation of South Africa was called the apartheid regime because that is what it was. From top to bottom, there was no escaping it.
Without apartheid, in fact, there was no South African state. The collapse of apartheid produced an entirely new state.
That is not the case of the occupation and Israel. There is an Israel, a breathing, legitimate, Israeli state that exists independent of the occupation. Not only would Israel not collapse if the occupation ended, it would be infinitely better off.
Israel is a whole lot more than the occupation. It is the nation of Yitzhak Rabin, Tel Aviv, and the kibbutzim, not just the settlements and Jewish Settlers Only West Bank roads. It is the home of a million survivors of the Holocaust and their progeny. It is the only place in the Middle East where women and gays have equal rights under the law (obviously any gay Palestinian is safer in Israel than in Palestine or in any other place in the entire region). Israel s media is one of the freest in the world; in fact criticism of Israeli policies that are considered off-limits here are regularly presented in Israel s mainstream press.
But divestment would punish all Israelis – opponents of the occupation, civil rights activists, crusading journalists, ordinary people – for policies inflicted on the country by a powerful minority.
Former President Jimmy Carter was widely criticized, viciously in some quarters, for writing a book called Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.
Segments of the pro-Israel community called him anti-Semitic for suggesting that Israel was comparable to apartheid South Africa.
But that is not what he said. He said in dozens of interviews and speeches, The book is about Palestine, the occupied territories, and not about Israel. The word apartheid, Carter said, does not apply to Israel although, in his view, it does apply to the West Bank.
Carter has no reservations about condemning the occupation. But he distinguishes between the occupation and Israel.
The divestment campaign seems not to recognize that distinction. The goal is to punish all Israelis. It s a terrible idea.
The way to end the occupation is through negotiations. Our role as Americans should be to promote those negotiations and to play the role of honest broker in them rather than simply acting as Israel s lawyer.
Divestment makes sense only if one s goal is not to end the occupation but to dismantle the Israeli state (as apartheid was dismantled).
Surely that is not the goal of the mainstream Protestants promoting divestment. They should shelve the idea.
MJ Rosenberg is the Director of Israel Policy Forum s Washington Policy Center. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
