17^th December 2013
by Alexander Ryvchin,
Public Affairs Officer,
Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry
WHEN Norman Finkel­stein, an icon of the anti-Israel movement, blasted the boycott, divest­ment and sanctions campaign as a “dupli­cit­ous, disin­genu­ous cult”, his words were met with a great sense of betrayal among the cam­paign’s adherents. After all, Finkel­stein was once revered as a veteran cam­paign­er who, among many other things, called Israel a “satanic state”.
Finkel­stein had exper­i­enced no great awakening. At the centre of his dis­as­so­ci­ation with the BDS movement, which has hijacked the Palestini­an cause, is what he calls a “delib­er­ate ambiguity” on Israel’s basic right to exist. In Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, Australia has its own long­stand­ing supporter of the anti-Israel movement. Unfor­tu­nately, the leaders of BDS in Australia have yet to heed Finkel­stein’s advice to be open about their aims and to cease their selective applic­a­tion of inter­na­tion­al law.
During a typically vitriolic and hateful speech in the Senate earlier this month, Rhiannon urged Australia “to cease military co-operation and trade with Israel … as a small but sig­ni­fic­ant step”. In a new and bizarre line of attack, Rhiannon justifies this call on the basis that Israel per­petu­ates war and conflict to battle-test its weapons for “public marketing by the Israeli arms industry” as a means of boosting its sale of weapons to countries like Australia.
In her latest alleg­a­tions, one detects a near patho­lo­gic­al aversion to the Jewish state. As one would expect from Rhiannon, nowhere does she recognise that Israel has a very real and genuine need to defend itself. Nor does she entertain the idea that the Israeli army could have any legit­im­ate defence function what­so­ever.
To be sure, Israel exists only because it has defended itself from three invasions, two intifada, Iranian proxy campaigns, numerous border incur­sions, and the constant threat of war from enemies who do not bother to veil their desires to destroy Israel in the mis­ap­pro­pri­ated language of human rights. This is the function of the Israeli army.
While presented as a paci­fist’s rebuke to mil­it­ar­ism, Rhi­an­non’s argument is steeped in double standards. If she opposes mil­it­ar­ism in all its forms, why is Israel the only country with which Australia should sever military ties? If indeed her message is one of peace and demil­it­ar­isa­tion, one could have expected her to start by calling for the disarming of a state less vul­ner­able than Israel.
There is also an uncom­fort­able incon­sist­ency between Rhi­an­non’s assault on Israel’s means of defence and her history of support for the Soviet Union, which built and main­tained an empire through force and coercion and whose arms exports had a uniquely dele­ter­i­ous impact on the world, not least in the Middle East. In the 1980s, shortly after Rhiannon led solid­ar­ity del­eg­a­tions to the Soviet Union, Moscow was respons­ible for 34 per cent of the world’s arms trade, and supplied such states as Libya, Syria and Iraq. This is precisely the sort of hypocrisy to which Finkel­stein refers.
While the anti-Israel movement goes to great lengths to demon­strate that its hatred of the Jewish state should not be mistaken for a hatred of the Jewish people, it is deeply troubling that Rhi­an­non’s latest assault casts the Jewish state in a his­tor­ic­ally dubious and familiar light. The image of the Jew as a war profiteer, con­spir­at­or and driven solely by money is steeped in anti-Jewish tradition and it is alarming that such accus­a­tions have now been evoked and trans­ferred to the Jewish col­lect­ive, the state of Israel. Senator Rhiannon and her peers in the anti-Israel movement should recognise that advancing Palestini­an rights does not need the denial of Israel’s right to exist as a national home for the Jewish people.