During a weekend panel at the annual Netroots Nation conference for political progressives, demonstrators interrupted a discussion that included Washington Democrat Rep. Pramila Jayapal and two other members of Congress.
Jayapal got out of her seat to tell them: “I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us.”
She did not retract her statement. Instead, she mixed up a word salad to say, “I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist.” That’s a theoretical comment, potentially implying Israel really is a racist state.
Jayapal has implied in the past that Israel is at fault for there not being a two-state solution. She forgets to mention that the Palestinians rejected every peace plan offered, and that there could have been an independent Palestinian state as far back as 1947. Jayapal omits that Israel has numerous laws in place to ensure equality of all its citizens, including the 21% who are Palestinian Arab.
The facts are that Zionism is deeply rooted in Jewish history and tradition. It is the right to self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the biblical Land of Israel. Eight in 10 American Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them, according to the Pew Research Center.
In November 1975, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism to racism. The resolution was formally repealed in 1991 but the damage was done. “Zionism is racism” was popularized by the Soviet Union, which based its claims on the conspiracist “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a piece of Russian propaganda that sought to blame Jews for the ills of society. As Elie Wiesel put it, “if ever a piece of writing could produce mass hatred, it is this one.” And false claims that Israel is a racist state serve to advance that mass hatred, including right here in Seattle.
On April 16, the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day, Temple De Hirsch Sinai, the region’s largest congregation, was defaced with antisemitic graffiti. Antisemitic incidents across Washington state hit record numbers last year. Jewish places of worship are vandalized, Jewish schools receive bomb threats and Jewish leaders are targeted by extremists. Many of these incidents are directly tied to libelous claims about the state of Israel.
Claiming the existence of Israel is racist ignores the reality of a country comprising a diverse mix of people and backgrounds, many of whom fled institutionalized hatred in their host nations to seek refuge in Israel. It ignores the fact that today more than half of the country’s Jewish population are Mizrahi, or Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent. That nearly 200,000 Black Ethiopian Jews now call Israel home. And it ignores the truth that Palestinian/Arab Israelis with citizenship vote in national elections, serve in the Israeli parliament and the foreign service, and sit on the country’s Supreme Court.
As one Mizrahi Jew wrote, misrepresentations that seek to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of race signal “a dangerous trend that positions Israel as a colonialist aggressor rather than a haven for those fleeing oppression.” In doing so, it erases the experience of millions.
In her remarks, Jayapal also declared that “the Palestinian people deserve self-determination.” On that point, she is correct. Palestinian self-determination is not disputed by the Israeli government. The fact that the right to Jewish self-determination is disputed and undermined by the very same policymakers in the United States and elsewhere who advocate for Palestinian self-determination is deeply disingenuous.
In doing so, these policymakers also flirt with antisemitic double standards, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a definition adopted by more than 1,000 entities worldwide, including the U.S. Department of State, over 40 countries, 31 states and the District of Columbia, and cities and counties, including Bellevue, Mill Creek, Des Moines, the Port of Seattle and Snohomish County.
Calling Israel a “racist state” advances a dangerous falsehood, and only pushes a long overdue negotiated settlement and two-state solution even further out of reach.
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