Naftali Bennet in the United States: Israeli – American Jewish Apartheid

2 October 2021

Marwan Dalal

Israel was formed and continues to be the State of the Jewish people, preferring a religious understanding of Jewishness. It is therefore by definition hostile to an inclusive country content of the supremacy granted to Israeli and non-Israeli Jews. But even dominant attempts to secularize the constitutional and legal premise of Israel’s Jewishness insist on a Zionist supremacy. For a non- Jew the difference between both attempts to navigate Israeli identity is not material and futile.

Disregarding history and geography yield a clear result of Israel’s nature. Adding both clarifies this outcome. Since its inception, Israel has manipulated its own historical narration, with exceeding reliance on the calamity of the Second World War as a justification for the Zionist movement’s claim for political rights in Palestine which, from the perspective of a non-Eastern European settler, is bizarre and false.

To this day there are three main arguments to justify Israel’s political right in Palestine. A biblical one which traces its presence to ancient unclear era. A colonial proposition that underscores the incorporation of the 1917 British Balfour Declaration (a right to establish a Jewish home in Palestine) into the preamble of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate over Palestine. And a post-World War Two United Nations resolution (181) that divided Palestine into two states one Jewish and the other Arab.

It is not difficult to refute the three branches of Zionists’ quest for a political right in Palestine. The biblical reasoning is grounded in myths, beliefs, and the selectivity of Israeli archaeological research. Responding in this line of reasoning would therefore insult those who hold the faith in ancient Israel as the source of the contemporary one. It also requires engaging in countering Israel’s self-assuring archaeological scholarship that sets out to demonstrate the given disregarding any dirt of evidence to the contrary.

Britain manipulatively granted the 1917 Balfour declaration to a British Jewish politician when the predominantly Eastern European Jewish community in Palestine formed no more than 10% of the population. The British Empire contradicted its assurances a year earlier while trying to attract Arab support against the Turks during World War One in what is known as the McMahon – Hussein Correspondence. The nullity of Britain's declaration’s stems from its awkward geographical and citizenship span. It is baseless also given Britain’s status as a colonial power lacking any political right in Palestine.

The 1947 United Nations resolution 181 which partitioned Palestine was unjust proportionately and qualitatively. It was inspired by the realities of the Second World War elsewhere as well as from active lobbying by American Jewish forces with the rising global power the United States. Israel has fervently negated the implementation of this resolution reaching a climax by Golda Meir’s rejection of the existence of a Palestinian people, a common theme in Israeli society until the 1993 Oslo Accords. More importantly, Israel’s performance during the 1948 war in which more than two thirds of the Palestinian community were ethnically cleansed informs the irrelevance of resolution 181 and consequently Israel’s failed legitimacy.

The American Jewish community supportive of Israel can be characterized by three main groups. The first, organizations actively supportive of Israel such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, J-Street, New Israel Fund, World/American Jewish Congress, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the Jewish National Fund. The second, organizations engaging in combatting anti-Semitism and placing the defense of Israel at the center. The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee fall within this category. The third, organizations and individuals who do not address Israel but in their minds and hearts consider any historical or contemporary critique of Israel emanates from anti-Semitism. The most irrelevant category of American Jews, to my mind, is those who insist that their mild well below international law imperatives critique of Israel is enshrined in deep commitment to the country and its undisputed historical political right in Palestine.

Failing to generate courage and face the history of their countries of origin, pro-Israel American Jews found in Israel a haven for their identity crisis as well as a historiographic base, irrespective of it’s a-historicity. They followed the tradition of Israel’s academy in the production of the country’s national identity. The affinity between American Jews and Israel began before the 1967 Israel – Arab war and increased after it. The problem, of course, is Israel’s geographic location and its intention to abolish Palestine. The looting of PLO’s archives in Lebanon,[1] the academic and popular hostility to Israel’s actual history in 1948, and the repetitive memorialization of the disastrous results of the Second World War signify Israel’s continuous nation building on the expense of Palestine’s location and its non-settler / immigrant pre 1948 majority.

While organizations such as the Jewish National Fund actively participated in the dispossession of Palestinians in collaboration with the Israeli government, the other organizations strive to provide political support for Israel in the United States. The most obvious one is AIPAC which attracts significant members of the two main political parties in the United States and operates to discredit others critical of Israel.

Israeli Prime Ministers and politicians are frequent speakers at AIPAC’s annual conferences and regularly visit other American Jewish organizations. The Pro Israel American Jewish community blindly and wholeheartedly parrot Israel’s outlook for the region. Other than James Baker, there has hardly been any American diplomat who voiced criticism of the country while in office. Blinken’s Clintonian approach mirrors that of Thomas Friedman’s in the New York Times. Israel is not violating international law nor has the country committed any historical wrongdoing, rather the Palestinians should be pressed to compromise their rights.

In general, American politicians are either following Israel’s lobby in Washington, or thinking about Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Seth Meyers, Steven Spielberg, Jerry Seinfeld, and Howard Stern when the Israeli issue is discussed in Congress.

Like their fellow Israeli Jews, Pro Israel American Jews are unwilling to see Israel’s Apartheid in the entirety of mandate Palestine. Some former American Jewish diplomats have emphasized Mansour Abbas’s outside participation in the current Israeli coalition in an attempt to counter the claim about Israel’s Apartheid. His naivety and lack of political and legal shrewdness escaped their analysis although I am confident that they are aware of his insignificance in terms of regional politics and particularly with respect to the Question of Palestine.[2]

Naftali Bennet is a right-wing politician in the Israeli sense, which far exceeds the norm in “developed countries”. On the issue of Palestine, he could be worse than Netanyahu. His ally from the Israeli political center Lapid is a hawk regarding Palestine regardless of his rhetoric as Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. The same can be said of Benny Gants the former senior Minister in Netanyahu’s government and the current Minister of Defense with a long history of grave breaches of international law. Avigdor Liberman and Zeév Elkin are the “other peaceniks” in the Israeli government.

Given the American political constellation, the United States is the last country that should be trusted to assist in upholding international law, secure Palestinian rights, and bring Israeli war criminals to justice.

Naftali Bennet, Israel's Prime Minister

[1] Ihsan Hijazi, “Israeli Looted Archives of P.L.O. Officials Say”, New York Times, 1 October 1982. See also “Palestinian intellectual Anis Sayegh dies of heart failure at age 78”, The Daily Star, 29 December 2009.

[2] Given Abbas’ adolescent politics, even his main announced achievement, securing additional funds for Palestinian local municipalities in Israel will turn out as void considering the Israeli budgetary practices and the nature of his agreement with some segments of the Israeli coalition.