Imprimir

There is no disputing that Israel is discriminated against globally. Zionism (e.g. Jewish nationalism) was the only movemer of national liberation ever to be branded racist by the family of nations. About a third of all United Nations condemnations fall on just one state: Israel. The Commission on Human Rights monitors the 191 U.N. member-states collectively, whereas Israel is scrutinized separately under a special agenda item. When the contracting parties to the Geneva Conventions met for the first time, 52 years after its founding, they did so to discuss Israel.

Even the Magen David Adorn (the Red Star of David, in Hebrew), Israel’s humanitarian-aid organization, is denied membershi| in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, where the Christian Red Cross and the Muslim Red Crescent are recognized agencies. Western campaigns of divestment target Israel alone, and Israeli academics alone are boycotted by their Western colleagues.

Anti-terror fence

Ditto for the International Court of Justice — mankind’s highest legal institution for resolving disputes between countries –whose 15 judges began this week to ponder the legality of Israel’s anti-terror fence. The ICJ is judging Israel not for committing crimes against humanity but for preventing them from being perpetrated by others, as international lawyer Alan Stephens aptly noted.

No nation is so often labeled Nazi, fascist, imperialist, expansionist, genocidal and segregationist, as Israel is. A recent European poll found that 60 percent of Europeans regard Israel the gravest threat to world peace.

What we are witnessing here is essentially a Palestinization of Western intellectual discourse. It is as if some opinion-molders in the West have adopted the intransigent and offensive terminology to be found in the Palestinian National Charter, the PLO’s founding document that calls for Israel’s destruction.

This is not meant as an ironic comment. The Palestinian National Charter’s Article 22 calls Israel «a base for world imperialism and «a constant source of threat vis — vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world,» a view reflected in the European poll.

Zionism is described as «racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods,» a characterization regularly ascribed to Israel even in respectable Western platforms.

Many would abolish Israel

Article 9 states that «Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine,» a concept already echoed in many U.N. resolutions And one should be pardoned for thinking that the ICJ seems to be answering to Article 18 where the Palestinians stated that they «look to freedom-loving, justice-loving, and peace-loving states for support … to restore their legitimate rights in Palestine.»

Such language leaves the realm of rhetoric to enter that of incitement. Pierre-Andre Taguieff, author of La nouvelle Judeophobie, put it this way: If Israel has become, indeed, an ugly, dangerous and peace-threatening entity comparable to Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa, then shouldn’t the world community ostracize — if not outright abolish — the Jewish state?

The demonization of Israel is so total and the criticism so unforgiving that one can hardly regard this attitude unbiased or eve nonmalicious. Has Israel become, as is increasingly being heard, the Jew among the nations? How can we tell exactly where reasonable criticism ends and odious attack begins?

Clearly, criticism of particular Israeli policies is fair game. It is not only legitimate but also necessary. Israel is a perfectible nation, as every nation is. And this is the point: Singling out only the Jewish state for moral judgment among a plurality of imperfect nations is a discriminatory act. Considering that there are so many far more urgent and, indeed egregious, human-rights violations, wars and destruction worldwide, the focusing of so much international attention on democratic Israel is misplaced.

Crossing the line

It is wrong to tie all criticism of Israel with prejudice or hatred. But it is just as wrong to ignore the fact that sometimes the link does exist. When the condemnation of Israel is so merciless, selective, disproportionate and absolute as it currently is, when the Jewish state is discriminated against so unfairly and demonized, then inadvertently or not a line is crossed — the line, «thin as a hair» in the words of historian Leon Poliakov, between antilsraelism and anti-Semitism.

This is my last column as a Herald contributor. I wish to thank and bid farewell to readers who followed my writings during the last three years.

Julián Schvindlerman is a writer and journalist in Buenos Aires.