Public Comment

Matthew Taylor’s recent op-ed blaming Israel for just about everything is filled with every manner of distortion, falsehood, reliance on dubious and partisan sources, and a very selective reading of history. Here are just a few examples: 

“Sharon was a fervent supporter of Israel’s illegal colonies during his entire career.” Sharon, the hawk, indeed was a key driver of the settlement movement throughout much of his career, but certainly not for his “entire” career. In 1982, Sharon personally oversaw the dismantling of the large Sinai settlement of Yamit when this became a necessary precursor to a peace deal with Egypt. This foreshadowed his most recent action when he ordered and oversaw the complete uprooting and eradication of each and every Jewish settlement in Gaza, making Gaza judenrein. Sharon then founded a new political party, Kadima, which swept the Israeli elections on the promise that it would similarly uproot Jewish settlements on the West Bank. That promise has not yet been fulfilled largely because the Israeli public has now been twice burned, and has every reason to be triply cautious when it comes to unilaterally abandoning its positions. In exchange for its unilateral withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, carried out by then prime minister, Ehud Barak, Israel had to look on helplessly at the steady buildup of Hizbollah on its border. In response to its complete withdrawal from Gaza, Israel has withered under a ceaseless missile bombardment of its nearby town, Sderot, and surrounding villages. Taylor mentions none of these inconvenient truths. 

“Gaza is now the world’s largest open-air prison.” Gaza has three borders. One with Israel, the second with Egypt, and the third with the open sea. I fail to see how that makes it a prison. Goods flow in both directions over all borders. Is there a border fence between Israel and Gaza? Sure. I recently crossed the U.S./Mexican border at Tijuana and saw a high fence there also. And the Mexicans aren’t even lobbing missiles into San Diego, or attempting to send suicide bombers across the border. 

“Hamas appears inclined to recognize Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal to the 1967 borders.” Really? Hamas has never said anything of the sort. True there have been some transparent efforts to massage the subject linguistically, when one or another Hamas official says in effect that “Israel exists as a fact.” But Hamas has always meant this in the same way that one would say that AIDS or malaria exist as a fact. Exist, yes, but only until the day of their eradication. 

Israel has built roads on the West Bank that are only open to settlers, as Taylor says. But Taylor conveniently neglects to mention that those roads were only built in response to the intifada, since Israelis were routinely shot dead while traveling on roads shared with Palestinians. This is the far left’s shabby definition of apartheid: kill Israelis, then accuse them of apartheid when they put up a defensive shield to prevent more killing. I would suggest that it is the Palestinians who are practicing apartheid when they insist that not one Jew shall be permitted to live amongst them. And Christians aren’t much welcome either. Just ask your local Palestinian grocers whether they are Christian or Muslim. I’ll bet they’re Christian Arabs. Then have a real heart to heart with them about just why it is they have come to America. Dig a bit deeper than the usual anti-Israel slogans. Or, better yet, visit Bethlehem or other towns or villages in Palestine that until recently were majority Christian Arab. They are almost all majority Muslim now, the Christian inhabitants having fled for their lives since the advent of Palestinian self-rule under the PA and that flight has accelerated now that they have come under the rule of Hamas.  

There has been much talk of recent about the “new anti-Semitism,” as evidenced by mono-maniacal condemnation of every manner of imagined or real Israeli misbehavior. I have seen the arguments back and forth, and think that much of it misses an essential point. As a lot, the DP’s many anti-Israel contributors are not anti-Semities, they are racists. DP editor, Becky O’Malley, expressed this best when she once told me that she doesn’t hate Israel, but rather expects more of Jews. Let’s follow this reasoning to its conclusion. When the far left relentlessly condemns Israel, while almost completely ignoring Arab behavior, they are in effect saying that while they expect human perfection from Israelis, they expect nothing whatsoever that might resemble even minimally acceptable human behavior from their little brown brothers, the Arabs. Are they not in effect arguing that Arabs are barbarians and animals from which so little can be expected that to even bother writing articles in the DP about the Arab slaughter of blacks in Darfur, the Sunni/Shiite Civil War, the Palestinian Civil War, the murder of homosexuals, the “honor killing” of women, suicide bombings, al Qaeda, Middle East kleptocracies, Middle East theocracies, and so forth and so on, would be pointless. While I am left unsure whether Berkeley’s far left is classically anti-Semitic, I am increasingly sure that their sub-human expectations of Arabs amounts to blatant racism. 

John Gertz is a Berkeley resident.