Do Human Rights Matter to Anti-Zionists?

I’ve wondered if it matters to Israel haters, “anti-Zionists” if you will, that the modern State of Israel is an oasis of liberal Western values among the repressive Muslim nations of the Middle East. I don’t believe it does. In fact, I believe this factual reality is widely ignored when Israel is criticized for allegedly “oppressing” the indigenous Arab Muslim population who are seeking to realize their “national identity” as Palestinians. A few years ago, I tried to show my college students that Israel, which many of them disdain, embraces their liberal Western values much more than its Muslim neighbors.

In the spring of 2016, I taught Jewish Life and Thought at Rollins College, a private liberal arts school in the Orlando suburbs. Two of my students were taking, concurrently, a Middle Eastern Studies course taught by a female Muslim who wore a head scarf. One day in class they told me that their professor had shown that class a video on “the Israel lobby in the US.” I immediately responded with my belief that Israel needs a lobby to defend itself in a hostile world. (I also consider it arguable whether a video on the “Israel lobby” in the US even belongs in a Middle Eastern Studies course.)

Not satisfied to leave the matter there, I thought about how to appeal to the sensibilities of today’s liberal arts students. I created a spreadsheet, pictured below, in which I listed various categories of human rights that are well-known to be present in Israel but mostly do not exist in many neighboring countries. I’m grouping them here by categories:

Religious: Mosques, churches, and synagogues can be built.

Sexual: female sexual freedom, LGBTQ people live openly (most places)

Women’s Rights: college attendance, business ownership, elective office

Politics: people of all faiths (or none) hold office, independent judiciary

Speech: anti-government opinions published, full access to the internet

At the next class session, I distributed copies with “Yes” next to every category in the Israel column. I left the columns for Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen blank. I said “I know a lot about Israel. I don’t know as much about these other countries. Please take this sheet to someone whom you consider an expert on them, ask for help filling it in, and return it for extra credit.” I didn’t get any returned.

The next time I taught the Rollins class, and when I taught modern Jewish history online for the University of Central Florida (UCF), I offered students an opportunity to fill in the spreadsheet in lieu of one of several assigned essays during the semester. I required them to submit references and use “reasonably” objective sources: The Economist, Foreign Affairs Magazine, the US State Department, and major daily newspapers. Many students took this opportunity, and I believe I opened some eyes. I don’t know, however, if I changed any minds with respect to ha-matzav “the situation” with the Palestinians.

Many of the positions of the neighboring countries on these issues would be abhorrent in a rational world, based on a Western understanding of fundamental human rights. I believe that the opposition of many people in the neighboring countries to Israel’s very existence, while primarily religious, is amplified by their opposition to its liberal Western values. So how can we change the conversation? Why do American “progressives,” of all ages, persist in refusing to recognize that Israel mostly shares their values while its Muslim neighbors mostly don’t, and a Palestinian State probably wouldn’t.

Today, the false narrative that Israelis are European colonizers, rather than returnees from exile to an ancestral homeland, seems to outweigh the differences in human rights between Israel and its neighbors. How can we get through to the “Gays for Palestine” and “progressive” students who chant “From the River to the Sea,” whether they know which river and which sea? My wife says that wearing a keffiyeh on college campuses today is like wearing a Che Guevera t-shirt on campus in the 1970’s. How can we offset that and build admiration for Israel and the human rights which are lived there daily?

(to be continued)