Progressives should not support Israel’s apartheid government

In her current op-ed, “You’ll be able to — and may — be each a progressive and a Zionist,” Arizona Home of Consultant’s Democrat Alma Hernandez goes on a 15-paragraph rampage towards Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for one thing she didn’t say.

Hernandez writes that “Tlaib shocked the world when she not too long ago argued that progressives who help the world’s solely Jewish state aren’t progressives in any respect.” I learn Tlaib’s remarks as properly, and nowhere does she make this declare. Tlaib said that “you can not declare to carry progressive values but again Israel’s apartheid authorities.”

Backing an apartheid regime and supporting Israel aren’t the identical factor. Folks protesting South African apartheid weren’t calling for the downfall of the South African state; they have been calling for an finish to its apartheid regime. I embrace myself amongst these folks, simply as I now oppose apartheid in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories the place two units of legal guidelines are utilized: one for Jewish Israelis, who’re handled as first-class residents in each locations, and one for Palestinians, who can’t even be referred to as second-class residents beneath the prevailing legal guidelines and rules pertinent to them.

I lived in Israel twice — in 1963-64, and as a scholar in 1981. I additionally lived in Palestine: in Gaza in 2002, and quickly in Ramallah. I’ve been again to each locations so typically I’ve misplaced depend. I used to be final in Israel/Palestine once more this previous summer season (2022), and the brutal regime that dictates its discriminatory measures towards Palestinians each in Israel and occupied Palestine has develop into extra grotesque, extra oppressive and scary, than ever. There isn’t any query {that a} advanced system of apartheid separates Palestinians and Israeli Jews, and that beneath this technique the last word objectives are separation, dispossession and in the end expulsion (if not worse) of the Palestinian Arabs. If the present Israeli authorities considers itself the rightful expression of contemporary Zionism, then that Zionism is profoundly racist.

Final I checked, upholding the values of “liberty, equality, fraternité” and demanding that common human rights be utilized unconditionally to all folks all over the place shouldn’t be anti-Semitic. In truth, it bothers me an increasing number of that champions of Palestinian human rights are labeled “anti-Semitic” as if by demanding rights for one group of individuals you’re asking that human rights for one more group of individuals be rescinded. This couldn’t be farther from the reality.

Progressives, greater than another group, declare to uphold these values, and subsequently — as Rashida Tlaib mentioned — shouldn’t be supporting apartheid wherever. Tlaib is true, and Hernandez, who may profit from a keep in Jenin or Nablus, must learn to learn extra rigorously or to cease calling herself a progressive Democrat.