Recently, the Movement
for Black Lives announced it would engage in BDS actions against Israel
because, among other reasons, “Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws
on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people.” It
credits Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, as one of
its “organizations currently working on policy.” The movement is an offshoot of
the American organization Black Lives Matter.
Adalah calls itself “an
independent human rights organization,” and thus its statements enjoy some of
the halo effect attached to this self-anointed status. But Adalah has goals far
beyond human rights. It seeks to nullify Israel as a Jewish state – as the
nation state of the Jewish people.
Thus it promotes a
constitution for Israel that would grant citizenship to all Palestinian
refugees and all their descendants, wiping out the Jewish majority in Israel,
and its provisions substitute a bi-national state for the Jewish one, with no
“right of return for Jews” and with mechanisms to eliminate all Jewish symbols.
One of its most
effective tools to delegitimize the Jewish state is the compilation and
dissemination of its list of “more than 50 Israeli laws enacted since 1948 that
directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
This is the list that the Movement for Black Lives found so compelling that
they embraced the BDS goals to work against Israel, which they call the
“apartheid state.”
A basic underlying
presumption used to condemn 21 of the 57 laws, is that any enactment defining
or promoting Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people discriminates
against Arab citizens of Israel (e.g., the flag law and the law to support Yad
Ben Zvi, a prominent institution promoting Zionist study and values). But this
flawed premise would delegitimize the vast majority of the world’s democracies,
which are also nation states – that is, states established by and for a
predominant ethnic or religious majority. As I pointed out in a Wall Street
Journal article, “Most of the more than 60 democracies are built on the ethnic
identity of a predominant group, which molds the character of the state while
affording minorities full civil and religious rights. In this regard the Jewish
state of Israel is a typical democratic country.”
Adalah claims that laws
designed to protect citizens against terrorism are discriminatory because the
predominant majority of terrorists are Arabs. What democratic country would
repeal laws defending against terrorist attacks because the suspected
terrorists caught and charged were predominantly Muslims or Arabs? Laws that
provide equal rights for both majority and minority groups are nevertheless
labeled discriminatory by Adalah. The Law and Administration Ordinance (1948)
that defines the country’s official rest days, and the Law for Using the Hebrew
Date, both explicitly exclude institutions and authorities that serve
non-Jewish populations.
All members of
minorities are guaranteed a day of rest on the day specified by his/her
recognized religious faith or on Saturday, at the employee’s option.
Apparently, Israeli law on Saturday is discriminatory, but not Moslem and Arab
countries with Friday or Christian countries with Sunday (most of which do not
protect minorities’ day of rest). But one thing is for sure, no Jew is
discriminated on his day of rest in most of the Arab countries, because the
Jews were kicked out in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Every single one of the
57 laws listed by Adalah list is proven by the Institute
for Zionist Strategies study to be non-discriminatory. Anyone can read the
laws and the Institute’s conclusions on the IZS site to verify this fact for
him/herself. One can also visit the Adalah site, for many of its claims are
absurd on their face.
Adalah, of course needs
money to compile this list, to draft constitutions, to build attractive
Internet sites in three languages, and to appear all over the world before
international organizations to condemn Israel.
As reported by NGO
Monitor, Adalah received generous funding from: Broederlijk Delen (Belgium),
Bread for the World- EED (Germany), Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
(Switzerland), Oxfam-Novib (Netherlands), Human Rights and International Law
Secretariat (joint funding from Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and the
Netherlands), Christian Aid (UK), European Union, UNDP, and others. From 2012
to 2015, Adalah received direct funding from foreign governmental bodies of NIS
12,719,902. From 2008 to 2014, the New Israel Fund, which tells its donors that
it will not support BDS efforts and that it will support Israel, authorized
grants for Adalah in the amount of $1,874,656.
And this funding
continues.
More on this at https://tinyurl.com/y5kwmr86
2 comments:
Eliminating the law against terrorism would also allow the "Hilltop Youth" to commit acts of retaliation with impunity, as happened when in a "Price Tag" attack, they set fire to a Palestinian home, killing the parents and their toddler son, leaving two other children badly burned. Making the option of committing terrorist acts "non-discriminatory" would not necessarily benefit the Palestinians, but make them more vulnerable to acts of retaliation.
Are they sure that they really want to do this???
There is no defense to the actions of the "Hill Top" youth, they must be held accountable in a court of law. However to use this to justify actions of terrorists which involves indiscriminate targeting of civilians. All UN legislation clearly defines acts of indiscriminate terror as illegal.
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