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Sadie Hilf

In the Offense of the State of Israel Part 2

Lookout from Karmiel, Israel

In the Defense…

Growing up, I attended numerous Christian schools and received a phenomenal education. One of the classes I took in high school was called “Apologetics”. If you are unfamiliar with what apologetics is, it comes from a verse in the Christian Bible, 1 Peter 3:15: “… Always be prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have. But respond with gentleness and respect”. 

I have always been someone who has enjoyed debate and logic, so I was actually very excited to hear the logical arguments for why Christian religious scholars believed what they did. However, I was deeply dissatisfied by the answers that we were taught. They relied highly on circular reasoning; this is not due to a lack of understanding of logic but due to the subject matter. After all, we have no way to prove whether creationism, intelligent design, evolution, any other theory, or any combination of them are responsible for the beginning of the world. It comes down to an element of faith. However, what about the things in life that are not based on faith, but rather facts we can see with our own eyes? 

I am heavily involved in the pro-Israel advocacy world and have been involved for about 5 years now. I have seen the different methods that we have attempted to use to demonstrate that Israel has the right to exist and is not an evil endeavor. I have been disappointed in all of the arguments and methods that have been presented and taught to me. Because at the end of the day, the goal of the Israel Advocacy and Education movement for the past 77 years has been to practice “hasbara”. For those unfamiliar with the term, “hasbara” comes from the root “lehasber” which means “to explain”. We have been attempting to explain away much of the anti-Israel hate that students have come face to face with on campus. 

I recently led a delegation of 37 pro-Israel college students from over 30 American and Canadian college campuses who have been on the front lines of the campus battle. Our team surveyed the students on the accusations they are facing on college campuses of racism, apartheid, proportionality of war, terrorism, and more. Like how my high school had attempted to prepare the students to give a defense for their faith when they went out into the “real world”, I also wanted to prepare these students to have a defense for their Zionism. I heavily valued the attempt at gentleness and respect that had always been present in Christian apologetics because Christians are attempting to proselytize through apologetics to persuade others. So, I also wanted to provide them with communication tactics that would allow them to utilize the information I had shared with them so they could proselytize people to the pro-Israel cause. The following essay is an adaptation of the 2 hour long presentation I gave these students.

The students asked so many amazing questions that I cannot replicate here, however, something that they shared after the session struck me. Many students, like me, have spent years hearing the various formats of hasbara in the past. They were thrilled with the content of the session as they now felt more equipped. But not equipped to defend. No. They felt equipped to go “On the Offensive” on their campuses with the information.

So this is my attempt to be “In the Offense of the State of Israel”.

 

A Note on Structure

When our team surveyed the students on the information they needed to combat the awful things they were hearing on campus, we provided them with legal definitions for things such as apartheid, genocide, occupation, ethnic cleansing and more. We then asked students to explain a bit more about what they hear about these terms/arguments on their campuses. Finally, we asked students what information they felt they needed to learn more about in order to be confident in addressing the concerns being raised on campus. 

Our team then spent over 20 hours compiling resources and information regarding the topics, and divided the concerns along the timeline of modern Israeli history in an attempt to give the session some structure. We were unable to answer every single question/argument, but did our best to combine/address concerns to be able to best empower students.

The major timeline points we decided to address were: The British Mandate, 1948, 1967, The Intifadas, 2005, and finally 2023. These are not entirely exact years, but more framing time reference points to major events in Israeli history that give rise to some of the more controversial claims made against Israel. If you have not read part 1, you can do so here: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/in-the-offense-of-the-state-of-israel-part-1.

1948

Britain withdrew from the mandate on May 14, 1948 and The Israeli Declaration of Independence was signed/read in the evening, and at this point, the civil war that had been happening in the Mandate turned into a war between Israel and a 7 nation Arab Army, consisting of forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

During the war, there was fighting between Israeli forces and the Arab armies, occasionally even within Arab villages. In cases where the Arab population was neutral or receptive to Israeli forces, they were permitted to stay. In some cases, the local Arab population was combative with the Israeli forces and were therefore removed from their homes. These actions led to many people accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing from the time of the war. But what even is ethnic cleansing?

According to the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977, Article 51, Paragraphs 1-3:

  1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.
  2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
  3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.

A note on the binding status of this in regards to Israel. Israel is not a signatory to Protocol 1. So what does that mean? As Israel has not agreed to the rules set forth in the agreement, it cannot be held to the standards articulated by it. So, even if Israel had done something against the agreement, there is not much the international community can do about the lack of compliance. Additionally, the Protocol was only passed in 1977, which is famously after 1948. However, arguments can be made that before its treaty based articulation, the premise was found in customary international law.

That being said, it is important to note the 3rd paragraph in article 51: “civilians shall enjoy the protection… unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities”. What does it mean to take a direct part in hostilities? The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued interpretive guidance on the subject that is the guiding principle behind the international law. The ICRC defines “Direct participation in hostilities consists of specific acts carried out by individuals as part of the conduct of hostilities between parties to an armed conflict. Constitutive elements of direction participation in hostilities: In order to qualify as direct participation in hostilities, a specific act must meet the following cumulative criteria:

  1. the act must be likely to adversely affect the military operations or military capacity of a party to an armed conflict or, alternatively, to inflict death, injury, or destruction on persons or objects protected against direct attack (threshold of harm);
  2. there must be a direct causal link between the act and the harm likely to result either from that act, or from a coordinated military operation of which that act constitutes an integral part (direct causation); and
  3. the act must be specifically designed to directly cause the required threshold of harm in support of a party to the conflict and to the detriment of another (belligerent nexus).”

It can be interpreted from this that those who are assisting an enemy force can therefore be considered combatants. 

People who are active advocates against Israel will likely bring up Plan Dalet at this point. Plan Dalet is largely not discussed in the pro-Israel community, so it is important to me to do so here as there are many sources with conflicting and biased information. Plan Dalet was a plan that was requested by the Jewish Agency and future Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion and devised by the Haganah, the major pre-state Israeli military group. The plan makes two mentions of expulsion of the local Arab population, in sections 3b and 3c. They read as follows:

“Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search7 inside it. In the event of resistance, the. armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

And 

“Occupation and control of all isolated Arab neighborhoods located between our municipal center and the Arab municipal center, especially those neighborhoods which control the city’s exit and entry roads. These neighborhoods will be controlled according to the guidelines set for searching villages. In case of resistance, the population will be expelled to the area of the Arab municipal center.”

This plan was by and large not implemented, however large it looms in the anti-Israel psyche. The major notable operations can be found on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet#Implementation. If you note the implementation section, most of the operations classed under this plan involve driving out a hostile force, or breaking the Arab siege on the Jews of Jerusalem, which famously, is not against International Law. 

There were select cases where irregular Jewish forces removed Palestinians from their homes such as Operations Hiram and Yoav. What is important to make the distinction was this was not the broad military standard at the time.

I can almost hear you saying “Sadie, but what about the Palestinians who voluntarily left their homes?” I want you to think for a few minutes about where that fits into the argument here. Yea, it doesn’t. Moving on. 

The loss of the 1948 War and the flight of, and in select cases removal of, Palestinians led to the rise of the term “Nakba” to describe the Jewish Victory. Nakba means “catastrophe”. I will leave you on this topic with a quote from Yossi Klein HaLevi’s Book, Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor:

“There is, of course, another anniversary that will follow our Independence Day: your day of mourning, Nakba Day. The Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. Not of 1967, not of the occupation and the West Bank settlements, but of the founding of Israel. That is the heart of the Palestinian grievance against me. My national existence.”

Switching to the topic of sovereignty- Israel becomes a sovereign nation through the process of the 1948 war. But what does sovereignty mean? In International Relations, the term includes four “sub types” of sovereignty that comprise overall sovereignty. These include domestic sovereignty or the actual control over a state exercised by an authority organized within the state, interdependence sovereignty or the actual control of movement across the state’s borders, international legal sovereignty or the formal recognition by other sovereign states, and westphalian sovereignty meaning there is no other authority in the state aside from the domestically sovereign authority. 

So within what boundaries is Israel sovereign? The armistice lines, which become Israel’s de facto 1948 borders are negotiated between Israel and the surrounding states with the help of UN mediation. In this armistice agreement, the Jordanian army’s front is demarcated with a green pen, creating the “green line” and the West Bank as a geographical division. This greenline divided villages such as Barta’a causing chaos for families separated by the division. The armistice line also creates the Gaza Strip as a distinct geographical area as the final front of the Egyptian army as they were advancing to attack Tel Aviv. 

Within Israel’s sovereign territory (sometimes referred to as “Israel proper”), there is still a population of Arabs who are offered citizenship. Some Arabs take the opportunity and receive passports and full equal rights, and some refuse citizenship. The Arabs who refuse Israeli citizenship are therefore stateless which creates a problem for the International Order. 

Additionally, there is a significant grouping of Arabs who identify as Palestinian who are outside the boundaries of the State of Israel and have no country of citizenship. These two problems lead to the creation of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA. UNRWA defines a Palestinian refugee as follows: 

Palestine refugees are defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” This refugee status is also inheritable based on the male line, and is not forfeited if an additional nationality is acquired.

Interestingly enough, the UN has a refugee agency due to the numerous international conflicts that created refugee problems. This agency is known as UNHCR and has a different definition of refugee as defined in the 1951 Refugee Convention Article 1 Section A as someone who “as a result of events occurring…. And owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” The UNHCR also has criteria of losing refugee status as follows:

  1. This Convention shall cease to apply to any person falling under the terms of section A if:
  1. He has voluntarily re-availed himself of the protection of the country of his nationality; or
  2. Having lost his nationality, he has voluntarily re-acquired it; or
  3. He has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality; or
  4. He has voluntarily re-established himself in the country which he left or outside which he remained owing to fear of persecution; or
  5. He can no longer, because the circumstances in connection with which he has been recognized as a refugee have ceased to exist, continue to refuse to avail himself of the protection of the country of his nationality; Provided that this paragprah shall not apply to a refugee falling under section A(I) of this article who is able to invoke compelling reasons arising out of previous persecution for refusing to avail himself of the protection of the country of nationality
  6. Being a person who has no nationality he is, because of the circumstances in conexion with which he has been recognized as a refugee have ceased to exist, able to return to the country of his former habitual residence;

As you may have noticed the UNHCR refugee definition has a clause that states that people lose their refugee status when they acquire citizenship in a different country. This trait is not present in the UNRWA definition of a refugee meaning that Palestinians categorically have a different set of rights as refugees. This is due to Arab League pressure in the UN to not update the UNRWA definition to the UNHCR definition. Weird, right?

Thank You

Thank you for being willing to read this multi-part blog post of a longer essay I have written and am interested in having people consume and critique. I hope to create more content on topics such as this and provide Israel advocacy advice and recommendations. If this is something that interests you, please engage with my content and feel free to reach out to discuss anything I have written here!

I will hopefully be going on the road soon to speak on this exact topic with American College and University students, and if that interests you, please send me a message.

About the Author
Sadie Hilf is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins SAIS studying International Relations with a focus on Security and Governance in the Middle East. Originally hailing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she has lived in Bat Yam, Israel, and Bologna, Italy, before settling most recently in the Washington, D.C. area. She works as a Campus Advocacy Advisor at Hasbara Fellowships working to build pro-Israel student leaders into increasingly effective advocates for the Jewish People and the State of Israel. She was recently featured as a Contributing Author in "Young Zionist Voices"; a book comprised of essays from 31 rising leaders looking to shape the future of Medinat Israel in Eretz Israel for Am Israel.
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