Forwarding from Professor Wintemute. I found it fascinating, and given our recent discussions on pinkwashing, I find this post to be relevant as well. Hope this will lead to some lively discussion on the issues raised. Best, Aditya B
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Professor Wintemute, Robert Date: 15 August 2012 23:54 Subject: "Europe's Last Colony", (2012) 21 Social & Legal Studies 121-134 ** Dear Friends, In addition to LGBT human rights, I have taken up the cause of Palestinian human rights, and thought I would share with you my first publication in this area. "Europe's Last Colony: 1918 Palestine's Arab Majority, Jewish Immigration, and the Justice of Founding Israel Outside Europe" Robert Wintemute, Social and Legal Studies 2012, vol. 21, pp. 121-134 *http://sls.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/21/1/121?etoc*<http://sls.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/21/1/121?etoc> (or attached PDF) This review essay was inspired by a trip to Ramallah, Occupied West Bank, in December 2009, to speak at a conference about a proposed Constitutional Court of Palestine. My reaction when I saw the replica of the Berlin Wall that Israel has built in the West Bank, and experienced the Qalandiya checkpoint (through which some Palestinians with permits may pass, with difficulty, to travel from Ramallah to East Jerusalem), was similar to that of Roger Water of Pink Floyd: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/11/cultural-boycott-west-bank-wall I also take inspiration from Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (the most famous living graduate of King's College London), and brave Jewish-Israelis like Jonathan Ben-Artzi (a nephew of Binyamin Netanyahu). See below. Those of us working on LGBT human rights must consider to what extent we might be involved in "pinkwashing" Israel's image. Prof. Sarah Schulman of the City University of New York wrote about this phenomenon in the New York Times in Nov. 2011: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY is organising a conference on "Homonationalism and Pinkwashing" on 10-11 April 2013: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/clags/pages/conferences/homonationalism.html For me, citing (and attempting indirectly to benefit from) Israel's progress against sexual orientation discrimination means "looking the other way", by ignoring Israel's severe, ongoing problem of racial discrimination against ethnically-cleansed non-citizen Palestinians denied the right of return since 1948 (or 1967), non-citizen Palestinians living under military rule (or external control) in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, and second-class Palestinian citizens of Israel. In 2010, I stopped citing positive developments in Israeli law with regard to LGBT human rights. They add relatively little to developments elsewhere and, in my opinion, are overwhelmed, tainted and discredited by Israel's negative record on Palestinian human rights. My apologies to anyone who finds my position upsetting. Please let me assure you that it is based on "tough love" for Jewish-Israelis, and a determination to challenge racial discrimination wherever it occurs, especially when our governments are silent about it. Best wishes, Rob *Against Israeli Apartheid *Desmond Tutu and Ian Urbina (July 2002)****** http://www.merip.org/newspaper_opeds/Tutu_IU_Israeli_Apartheid.html**** (International Herald Tribune, The Nation (magazine), Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Morning Call (Allentown, PA), Cairo Times, Middle East Times, Manila Times)**** The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure -- in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation.**** Divestment from apartheid South Africa was fought by ordinary people at the grassroots. Faith-based leaders informed their followers, union members pressured their companies' stockholders and consumers questioned their store owners. Students played an especially important role by compelling universities to change their portfolios. Eventually, institutions pulled the financial plug, and the South African government thought twice about its policies.**** Similar moral and financial pressures on Israel are being mustered one person at a time. Students on more than 40 US campuses are demanding a review of university investments in Israeli companies as well as in firms doing major business in Israel. From Berkeley to Ann Arbor, city councils have debated municipal divestment measures.**** These tactics are not the only parallels to the struggle against apartheid. Yesterday's South African township dwellers can tell you about today's life in the Occupied Territories. To travel only blocks in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in Israel's cities, but their luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralyzing an entire people. The indignities, dependence and anger are all too familiar.** ** Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels to what we went through. Ronnie Kasrils and Max Ozinsky, two Jewish heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle, recently published a letter titled "Not in My Name." Signed by several hundred other prominent Jewish South Africans, the letter drew an explicit analogy between apartheid and current Israeli policies. Mark Mathabane and Nelson Mandela have also pointed out the relevance of the South African experience.**** To criticize the occupation is not to overlook Israel's unique strengths, just as protesting the Vietnam War did not imply ignoring the distinct freedoms and humanitarian accomplishments of the United States. In a region where repressive governments and unjust policies are the norm, Israel is certainly more democratic than its neighbors. This does not make dismantling the settlements any less a priority. Divestment from apartheid South Africa was certainly no less justified because there was repression elsewhere on the African continent. Aggression is no more palatable in the hands of a democratic power. Territorial ambition is equally illegal whether it occurs in slow motion, as with the Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories, or in blitzkrieg fashion, as with the Iraqi tanks in Kuwait. The United States has a distinct responsibility to intervene in atrocities committed by its client states, and since Israel is the single largest recipient of US arms and foreign aid, an end to the occupation should be a top concern of all Americans.**** Almost instinctively, the Jewish people have always been on the side of the voiceless. In their history, there is painful memory of massive roundups, house demolitions and collective punishment. In their scripture, there is acute empathy for the disfranchised. The occupation represents a dangerous and selective amnesia of the persecution from which these traditions were born.**** Not everyone has forgotten, including some within the military. The growing Israeli refusenik movement evokes the small anti-conscription drive that helped turn the tide in apartheid South Africa. Several hundred decorated Israeli officers have refused to perform military service in the Occupied Territories. Those not already in prison have taken their message on the road to US synagogues and campuses, rightly arguing that Israel needs security, but that it will never have it as an occupying power. More than 35 new settlements have been constructed in the past year. Each one is a step away from the safety deserved by the Israelis, and two steps away from the justice owed to the Palestinians.**** If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined. The current divestment effort is the first, though certainly not the only, necessary move in that direction.**** [*Archbishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his work against apartheid. Ian Urbina is associate editor with the Middle East Research and Information Project*.] Peace for Israelis and Palestinians? Not without America's tough love. An Israeli student explains why the US should act on moral outrage over Israel’s discriminatory policies before it’s too late. By Jonathan Ben-Artzi / April 1, 2010 [Christian Science Monitor] http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/j.ben-artzi/ [now at Univ. of Cambridge, England] http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0401/Peace-for-Israelis-and-Palestinians-Not-without-America-s-tough-love ------------------------------ ------------------------------ Providence, R.I. More than 20 years ago, many Americans decided they could no longer watch as racial segregation divided South Africa<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/South+Africa>. Compelled by an injustice thousands of miles away, they demanded that their communities, their colleges, their municipalities, and their government take a stand. As Martin Luther King Jr.<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Martin+Luther+King+Jr.> said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Today, a similar discussion is taking place on campuses across the United States <http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States>. Increasingly, students are questioning the morality of the ties US institutions have with the unjust practices being carried out in Israel<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Israel> and in the occupied Palestinian territories. Students are seeing that these practices are often more than merely “unjust.” They are racist. Humiliating. Inhumane. Savage. Sometimes it takes a good friend to tell you when enough is enough. As they did with South Africa two decades ago, concerned citizens across the US can make a difference by encouraging Washington<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Washington%2c+DC> to get the message to Israel that this cannot continue. A legitimate question is, Why should I care? Americans are heavily involved in the conflict: from funding (the US provides Israel with roughly $3 billion annually in military aid) to corporate investments (Microsoft<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Microsoft+Corporation> has one of its major facilities in Israel) to diplomatic support (the US has vetoed 32 United Nations Security Council<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+Nations+Security+Council> resolutions unsavory to Israel between 1982 and 2006). Why do I care? I am an Israeli. Both my parents were born in Israel. Both my grandmothers were born in Palestine<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Palestine> (when there was no “Israel” yet). In fact, I am a ninth-generation native of Palestine. My ancestors were among the founders of today’s modern Jerusalem<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Jerusalem> . Both my grandfathers fled the Nazis and came to Palestine. Both were subsequently injured in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. My mother’s only brother was a paratrooper killed in combat in 1968. All of my relatives served in the Israeli military for extensive periods of time, some of them in units most people don’t even know exist. In Israel, military service for both men and women is compulsory. When my time to serve came, I refused, because I realized I was obliged to do something about these acts of segregation. I was denied conscientious objector status, like the majority of 18-year-old males who seek this status. Because I refused to serve, I spent a year and a half in military prison. Some of the acts of segregation that I saw while growing up in Israel include towns for Jews only, immigration laws that allow Jews from around the world to immigrate but deny displaced indigenous Palestinians that same right, and national healthcare and school systems that receive significantly more funding in Jewish towns than in Arab towns. As former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Ehud+Olmert> said in 2008: “We have not yet overcome the barrier of discrimination, which is a deliberate discrimination and the gap is insufferable.... Governments have denied [Arab Israelis] their rights to improve their quality of life.” The situation in the occupied territories is even worse. Nearly 4 million Palestinians have been living under Israeli occupation for over 40 years without the most basic human and civil rights. One example is segregation on roads in the West Bank<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/West+Bank>, where settlers travel on roads that are for Jews only, while Palestinians are stopped at checkpoints, and a 10-mile commute might take seven hours. Another example is discrimination in water supply<http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Living-Green/2008/0721/israel-hamas-standoff-deepens-water-woes>: Israel pumps drinking water from occupied territory (in violation of international law). Israelis use as much as four times more water than Palestinians, while Palestinians are not allowed to dig their own wells and must rely on Israeli supply. Civil freedom is no better: In an effort to break the spirit of Palestinians, Israel conducts sporadic arrests and detentions with no judicial supervision. According to one prisoner support and human rights association, roughly 4 in 10 Palestinian males have spent some time in Israeli prisons. That’s 40 percent of all Palestinian males! And finally, perhaps one of the greatest injustices takes place in the Gaza Strip <http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Gaza+Strip>, where Israel is collectively punishing more than 1.5 million Palestinians by sealing them off in the largest open-air prison on earth. Because of the US’s relationship with Israel, it is important for all Americans to educate themselves about the realities of the conflict. When they do, they will realize that just as much as support for South Africa decades ago was mostly damaging for South Africa itself, contemporary blind support for Israel hurts us Israelis. We must lift the ruthless siege of Gaza, which only breeds more anger and frustration among Gazans, who respond by hurling primitive, homemade rockets at Israeli towns. We must remove travel restrictions from West Bank Palestinians. How can we live in peace with a population where most children cannot visit their grandparents living in the neighboring village, without being stopped and harassed at military checkpoints for hours? Finally, we must give equal rights to all. Regardless of what the final resolution will be – the so-called “one state solution,<http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/0530/p09s02-coop.html>” the “two state solution,” or any other form of governance. Israel governs the lives of 5.5 million Israeli Jews, 1.5 million Israeli Palestinians, and 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. As long as Israel is responsible for all of these people, it must ensure that all have equal rights, the same access to resources, and the same opportunities in education and healthcare. Only through such a platform of basic human rights for all humans can a resolution come to the region. If Americans truly are our friends, they should shake us up and take away the keys, because right now we are driving drunk, and without this wake-up call, we will soon find ourselves in the ditch of an undemocratic, doomed state. *Jonathan Ben-Artzi was one of the spokespeople for the Hadash party in the Israeli general elections in 2006. His parents are professors in Israel, and his extended family includes uncle Benjamin Netanyahu<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Benjamin+Netanyahu>. Mr. Ben-Artzi is a PhD student at Brown University<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Brown+University> in Providence, R.I.<http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Providence+(Rhode+Island)> * --
