BDS, prejudice and double standards

Instead of demonization, criminalization and dehumanization, Israel should be judged just like everybody else.

By ASHER SUSSER
Protesters call for boycott of Israel [file] (photo credit: REUTERS)
Protesters call for boycott of Israel [file]
(photo credit: REUTERS)
ISRAEL IS not above the law and not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. The issue, however, is not the merits or demerits of any specific Israeli policy, but Israel-bashing, or the prejudicial way in which Israel is often treated in the international community and the global media.
Prejudice is recognized by its three constituent practices: it singles out the subject; it then applies a double standard; and, of course, the subject is always guilty. In the case of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), Israel is indeed singled out for prejudicial treatment in comparison to cases far more severe than its occupation, such as the genocide in Darfur, the killing in Syria of over a quarter of a million people, the hanging of hundreds of dissidents in Iran every year, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Russian behavior in the Ukraine and countless other human rights infringements infinitely worse than the Israeli occupation and settlement movement.
Just about every Israeli act of self-defense has been criminalized by its detractors. When Israel built a security fence to put an end to the suicide bombings that were ravaging Israeli civilians, the fence was immediately dubbed by Israel’s critics the “apartheid wall,” as if its construction was motivated by racist reasoning. Such argumentation ignores the hundreds of Israelis killed by the bombers before the fence was put up, as if they were no more than human dust.
When Israel targeted operatives responsible for the dispatch of suicide bombers to its cities or for the rocketing of Israeli civilians, it was frequently condemned for “extra-judicial killing,” as if this kind of warfare was a judicial proceeding and Israel was operating against political dissidents. When the US carried out identical operations against its enemies in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, these were routinely euphemistically described by the media as “drone operations,” whereas, Israel cannot defend its citizens against massive rocket attacks from Gaza without being condemned for “war crimes.”
But, on the other hand, there are two polar aspects of the Israeli experience, one worthy of the international community’s admiration, the other deserving its condemnation. There is the defensive Israel, the heroic project of self-defense against the horrific historic fate of the Jews, the most oppressed of all peoples. And then there is the more aggressive Israel, the post-1967 triumphalist Israel of occupation and settlement expansion, riding roughshod over the Palestinians, as if they were entitled to nothing in what was, after all, their historical homeland, too.
Undoubtedly, some and even many of Israel’s most vicious critics are motivated by the ageold European pathological prejudice of anti-Semitism. But Israelis and their defenders cannot simply dismiss all criticism as anti-Semitism and thus absolve themselves of any responsibility for the evils inherent in post-1967 Israel.
The Israeli occupation and settlement policies of nearly half a century, squeezing the Palestinians out of the little less than a quarter of historical Palestine that remains for their prospective statehood, is indefensible.
One does not have to be an anti-Semite to see the blatant injustice embedded in that reality. Israelis must accept responsibility for their actions; they cannot just brush off legitimate criticism as anti-Semitic in a desperate effort to continue basking in a false sense of self-righteous innocence.
Some of Israel’s policies are indeed unacceptable, and as aforesaid, Israel is not above the law. Nevertheless, the law should not apply only to Israel. It should apply to Israel just as it applies to all other countries. The disproportionate condemnation of Israel by the UN Human Rights Council, a body controlled by major human- rights abusers, is an Orwellian corruption of the UN Charter and an insult to humanity and human rights.
Instead of demonization, criminalization and dehumanization, Israel should be judged just like everybody else. The jurisprudence of democracies upholds the principle of equality before the law. Israel should enjoy this right too, rather than constantly having to face selective prosecution. Prejudice is prejudice in whatever form, and the BDS movement only against Israel is no exception.
Prof. Asher Susser is the Stanley and Ilene Gold Senior Research Fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and the Stein professor of Modern Israel Studies at the University of Arizona