On Monday, the remaining presidential candidates made their ritual voyage to the AIPAC Policy Conference, hosted by Israel’s primary lobbying group. This year, only Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, did not attend. While Sanders’ decision to skip and the protests around Donald Trump’s presence made headlines, what went unnoticed was the expectation that all serious candidates would go to speak uncritically of the Jewish state.
The monolithic support for Israel of the presidential candidates is increasingly matched in society and academia. Earlier this month, the regents of UC Davis voted to strongly condemn anti-Zionism, opposition to the state of Israel, on campus as part of an initiative to curb anti-Semitism.
To be fair, there are definitely some critics of Israel who are anti-Semites. Ann Coulter comes to mind. But there are enough good reasons to be opposed to at least the current Israeli government that our culture of unquestioning support is ridiculous.
As a start, the current Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, won re-election by drumming up fears about Arab citizens in Israel exercising their right to vote. His ministers have even proposed segregating the bus system. Netanyahu has also pushed to change Israel’s equivalent of the Constitution to say that the country is the nation of the Jews and “no other people.” It’s worth noting that over 20 percent of Israelis are Arabs, so the current government is implicitly opposed to representing one in five people in its country.
That’s not even taking into account the Palestinians. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has seized control of most of the land originally allocated to be an Arab state or U.N.-managed neutral territory. The remaining Palestinian territory is dependent on the Israeli government for basic supplies, tax revenues and utilities. This became relevant twice in recent years when Israel temporarily cut off tax money it collected on behalf of the Palestinian government. The first was over a bid to be recognized by the U.N. and the second over an application to join the International Criminal Court, the body that tries war crimes.
Israel has good reason to fear the Palestinians joining the court. Amnesty International has collected a record of war crime and human rights violation allegations against Israel that includes torture, forced evictions, bans on protest and extrajudicial killings.
What is particularly jarring is that, in some ways, the Palestinian Liberation Organization seems more committed to peace than the Israeli government. The group, which Israel recognizes as the representative of the Palestinians, has denounced violence and recognized the right of Israel to exist. The current Israeli prime minister, by contrast, has expressed skepticism of the two-state solution and stated that the Palestinians would need to be disarmed and demilitarized for peace to occur. Bear in mind that the U.N. charter that created Israel recognized an Arab state as well.
Of course, the chances of Israel ever being sanctioned for violations of international law are low, in part because of the candidates who gathered to speak to AIPAC this week. On dozens of occasions stretching back decades, the U.N. General Assembly or Security Council has made a resolution to sanction or reprimand Israel. All of them have failed due to the U.S.’ veto power. Sometimes we’ve been literally the only country on the Security Council to vote in support of Israeli conduct.
That is precisely why it is important to be able to freely and critically discuss Israel and America’s relationship with it. The public has a key role in deciding whether or not a rogue state can be allowed to violate treaties and commit war crimes with impunity simply because it's more democratic than its neighbors. The least we can do is talk about it.