This opin­ion piece by ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the Hobart Mer­cury on 9 August 2024.

Peter Boy­er (‘Pro­claim­ing busi­ness as usu­al is just a state of denial’, Talk­ing Point, August 6) makes a fair point when he observes how self-destruc­tive it can be to wil­ful­ly deny real­i­ty and refuse to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s own actions.

He is also wise to acknowl­edge that most of us have been deniers on occa­sions when con­front­ed with an awk­ward real­i­ty. His high­ly selec­tive ren­der­ing of the his­to­ry of the Israel-Pales­tin­ian con­flict is a case in point. The fol­low­ing are some of the key facts which weren’t includ­ed in his piece.

While the Jew­ish reli­gion, the Land of Israel and Jerusalem (Zion) are intrin­si­cal­ly inter­con­nect­ed, Mr Boy­er is wrong to sug­gest that mod­ern Zion­ism as a polit­i­cal move­ment depends on reli­gious claims. Rather, it is based on the col­lec­tive right of nation­al self-deter­mi­na­tion of the Jew­ish peo­ple in their his­toric home­land, Israel, where the Jew­ish peo­ple have had an endur­ing pres­ence for more than 3000 years, includ­ing more than 1000 years of nation­al self-gov­ern­ment.

After the destruc­tion of the Jew­ish com­mon­wealth by the Romans 2000 years ago, the land was ruled by a suc­ces­sion of for­eign impe­r­i­al rulers. Until the restora­tion of Jew­ish sov­er­eign­ty in 1948, the local inhab­i­tants at no time had any form of self-gov­ern­ment.

The right of self-deter­mi­na­tion of peo­ples, includ­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple, has been recog­nised in res­o­lu­tions of the Unit­ed Nations and its pre­de­ces­sor the League of Nations, and is enshrined in the UN Char­ter, the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights and the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Eco­nom­ic, Social and Cul­tur­al Rights.

For the vast major­i­ty of Jews, and for many oth­er peo­ple, the attempt to deny this basic, uni­ver­sal right to the Jew­ish peo­ple is self-evi­dent­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry against, and dehu­man­is­ing of, Jews and is there­fore a form of anti-Semi­tism.

Zion­ism does not neces­si­tate any views about the bor­ders of Israel, set­tle­ments, the legal sta­tus of Jerusalem or Pales­tin­ian state­hood. Among Israelis, the Jew­ish peo­ple and oth­ers who accept the valid­i­ty of Zion­ism there is a wide range of views about these issues.

One can be a Zion­ist and also believe in the prin­ci­ple of two states for two peo­ples, mean­ing that with­in the ter­ri­to­ry of the for­mer British Man­date there is room for a Jew­ish state and a Pales­tin­ian Arab state exist­ing side-by-side.

In 1947, the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly vot­ed in favour of this two-state prin­ci­ple (Res­o­lu­tion 181), which the Jew­ish side accept­ed and the Arab side not only reject­ed but com­menced a war to pre­vent. It was this war, start­ed by Pales­tin­ian and oth­er Arab lead­ers, that led to the Nakh­ba – the dis­place­ment of 700,000 Pales­tin­ian Arabs.

Mr Boy­er also omits to men­tion the simul­ta­ne­ous expul­sion of more than 800,000 Jews from their ancient com­mu­ni­ties in Alge­ria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Moroc­co, Syr­ia, and Yemen. They were phys­i­cal­ly per­se­cut­ed, their prop­er­ty and belong­ings were con­fis­cat­ed, and they were sub­ject­ed to severe anti-Jew­ish riots insti­gat­ed by the gov­ern­ments of those coun­tries.

It has since come to light that these mea­sures were tak­en by Arab gov­ern­ments in con­cert in accor­dance with a doc­u­ment enti­tled: “Text of Law Draft­ed by the Polit­i­cal Com­mit­tee of the Arab League”. It was affixed to a 19 Jan­u­ary 1948, mem­o­ran­dum sub­mit­ted to the UN Eco­nom­ic and Social Coun­cil warn­ing that “all Jews resid­ing in the Near and Mid­dle East face extreme and immi­nent dan­ger”. This mem­o­ran­dum was sum­marised in UN Eco­nom­ic and Social Coun­cil Doc­u­ment E/710, released by the Com­mit­tee on Arrange­ments for Con­sul­ta­tion with Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Organ­i­sa­tions. It pro­vid­ed for depriv­ing Jews in Arab coun­tries of cer­tain cit­i­zen­ship rights and the freez­ing and expro­pri­a­tion of their bank accounts.

Since then, the con­flict has erupt­ed in many forms.

Neigh­bour­ing Arab states have tried to erad­i­cate Israel through con­ven­tion­al war­fare (in 1948 and 1967), ter­ror­ism, eco­nom­ic boy­cotts, law­fare and cam­paigns of demon­i­sa­tion.

Despite this, Israel has made at least three offers to the Pales­tini­ans which would have result­ed in the estab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian state cov­er­ing the whole of the Gaza Strip and an area equal in size to the West Bank, togeth­er with a cap­i­tal in east Jerusalem. The offers have gone beg­ging because Pales­tin­ian lead­ers remain in denial about Israel’s exis­tence and its right to exist.

The rejec­tion of the two-state prin­ci­ple and of the Jew­ish peo­ple’s col­lec­tive right of self-deter­mi­na­tion, with­in any bor­ders, per­sists with­in the ide­ol­o­gy of Hamas and oth­er ter­ror­ist groups to this day and helped moti­vate the attacks they car­ried out and the atroc­i­ties they com­mit­ted in Israel on Octo­ber 7, 2023.

Deny it or not, this rejec­tion­ist pos­ture remains the basic dri­ver of the con­flict.