Like a zombie in a bad movie, the Israel divestment resolution that was defeated in 2010 at U.C. Berkeley has awakened once again. We all remember the angry hate speech and anti-Semitic actions (swastikas on dorm walls, etc.) that accompanied this resolution last time. Why do it all over again? The answer is that a single-issue group, Students for Justice in Palestine, is passionately devoted to the boycott campaign against Israel. (The student who introduced the new resolution is an SJP member.)
Let’s look at what this organization stands for. At its national meeting in 2011, the SJP delegates endorsed the following “Point of Unity”: “Students for Justice in Palestine … is committed to ending Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands.” The phrase “all Arab lands” does not refer only to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It refers also to the land of Israel inside the Green Line, including Haifa, Tel Aviv, West Jerusalem — the whole shebang. This is why the Berkeley SJP website calls for a “struggle against the apartheid regime that has consolidated itself in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and 1967 Israel” (my italics).
The SJP regards all of Israel as illegitimate, since it rests on “Arab land.” The idea that land has ethnicity may seem absurd, but that’s the SJP position. This seems to be a secularized version of the idea popular among militant Islamists that any land once occupied by Muslims (the Dar al-Islam, “House of Islam”) is perpetually Muslim land.
This means that the SJP is opposed to peace talks and a two-state solution. But peace talks leading to the peaceful coexistence of Israel and Palestine is the official policy of the Palestinian Authority, Israel, the U.S. and the European Union. Of the major parties, only Hamas is opposed to this plan. So the SJP commitment aligns it with Hamas and against the Palestinian Authority. The SJP is committed to nonviolence, but it seeks the same strategic end — the demise of the State of Israel.
Let’s be clear about the goal of this resolution. It doesn’t seek to promote human rights in the Middle East, or it would condemn Syria for mass-murdering its own people. Its bogeyman is solely Israel.
Maybe we should heed the advice of President Obama, who says: “It is time to marginalize those who, even when not resorting to violence, use hatred of America, or the West, or Israel as the central principle of politics. For that only gives cover, and sometimes makes excuses, for those who do resort to violence.”
We should be wary of supporting a platform that promotes hate and opposes the path to peace.
Ronald Hendel is the Norma and Sam Dabby professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at U.C. Berkeley.