Co-opting social justice won’t erase reality in Israel

I was hoping that in 2016, the Jewish community would find better ways to reach out to millennials. I guess they have, if co-opting social justice, intersectionality, and related ideas counts as outreach.

It started with an op by David Bernstein, the current CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, published Jan. 4 in JTA. Now there’s one by Eric R. Mandel, who serves as the Northeast co-chair of StandWithUs, published yesterday in the Jerusalem Post.

Bernstein argued that intersectional groups commonly align themselves with BDS — notably at Columbia, when No Red Tape, an anti-sexual violence group, declared support for Students for Justice in Palestine — and that the alignment of various campus progressive movements poses a problem for pro-Israel organizations. Bernstein writes, “[The] growing acceptance of intersectionality arguably poses the most significant community relations challenge of our time,” and added that the Jewish community must establish its own intersectionality with the mainstream left rather than publicly attack intersectionality as a concept.

He took to Twitter later to say he was referring only to intersectionality as it relates to BDS, which I have to say I thought was BS. Intersectionality is valuable not because it can make Israel look better. It’s valuable because it can make Israel be better. That’s not necessarily because of BDS, but intersectionality encourages progressives who care about social justice in the United States to care about social justice in Israel.

This brings me to Mandel’s op. I thought I was angry about Bernstein’s. I am furious about Mandel’s.

I should say here that I would not be involved in the Jewish community today, in any capacity, if I didn’t care about social justice. I went through a period as a teenager where I was wholly uninterested in Judaism and Jewishness. In my first year of university, I made friends who were Jewish — secular, not religious, at the time — and I made these friends through my interest in social justice. We kvetched about anti-Semitism we saw coming from the left, the political movement with which we identified, and my rekindled interest in being Jewish led me to minor in Jewish studies at university, which eventually led me to this job.

April Rosenblum’s “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” is a short text that I first read sometime in 2011, probably through another progressive Jewish friend. It changed me. It helped me figure out how I could be a liberal Zionist and still be a progressive, when my gentile leftist friends supported anti-Zionism because of their own leftist ideology. Rosenblum wrote, “Zionism is not an insult. It’s not a catch phrase, a code word for racism or imperialism, or the name for unpleasant things done by Jews. It’s a nationalism, and, as often happens with nationalisms, it has not fully liberated its people and has oppressed others in the process.” These three sentences have guided me for years.

The left has an anti-Semitism problem. I think it’s fair to say that. It’s not quite uncommon to be so anti-Zionist that you veer into anti-Semitic. This isn’t limited to the 21st century, either; anti-Semitism as well as anti-Zionism drove a number of Jews out of the New Left movement of the 1960s and 70s. The Jewish history of social justice is rich and far-reaching, but so too is the Jewish history of being pushed away from social justice movements.

However. As supported by Jews or gentiles, social justice is intended to bring justice and human rights to all individuals in a society. Mandel is correct that social justice seeks “a society based on justice, where there is equal access to the judiciary and rule of law. It is a movement where women, minorities and those of differing sexual orientation are tolerated and do not fear.”

He is absolutely not correct that this is the “very definition of Israel.”

In 2013, 25 percent of the population of Israel — excluding Gaza and the West Bank — were non-Jewish. Most of those 25 percent were Arabs. Compare to this: 75 percent of the population were Jews. This, combined with Israel’s defined character as a Jewish state, makes it clear that Palestinians fit the minority bill. Are they tolerated? Ethiopian Jews, as well as African migrants and refugees, have faced discrimination and violence. Are they tolerated?

Add sexual orientation into this mix, and it becomes even more clear that Israel does not fit Mandel’s assertion that it is a country of social justice. Same-sex couples do not have equal marriage rights in Israel, and adoption by same-sex couples is restricted. LGB and transgender Israelis face violence, including the stabbing at the 2015 Jerusalem Pride parade that left one marcher dead and five wounded. Do they not fear?

Women? Gender segregation still exists in Israel. Among OECD member countries, Israel has the fourth highest wage gap. 35 to 40 percent of women are sexually harassed at work. Women who pray at the Western Wall are harassed, and “modesty patrols” have publicly harassed and attacked women in ultra-Orthodox communities. Do they not fear?

I could go on. I could also add that none of this takes away from the laws and qualities of Israel that do align with social justice. It’s true that it doesn’t. But Israel is not a paradise for social justice, and it’s not the very definition of it. Israel is a state like, essentially, any other: with good qualities and deep, bloody flaws. I am leaving aside, too, the state of human rights in Palestine, because that isn’t the issue. The comparison of rights in Israel as designated by Jews versus rights in Gaza and the West Bank as designated by Palestinians is not the issue, because under the former, the latter is still subjugated.

Mandel asks, “Are you in favor of women’s rights? Are you in favor of freedom of the press? Are you in favor of religious tolerance? Are you in favor of gay rights? Are you in favor of freedom of speech? Are you in favor of democracy? Then you should be a supporter of Israel.”

I am in favor of all of these things. I am in favor of social justice. That is why I add the liberal to liberal Zionist — and it is why I would never say that I “support” Israel except with many, many caveats. Mandel conveniently ignores the violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and the legal inequality that bars Palestinians from accessing full civil and human rights.

Social justice and intersectionality are not enemies of Israel. They are not tools for convincing college students to fight BDS or become Zionists. They are not types of public relations. And the youth are not stupid; anyone who already cares about social justice can see that Israel is not a fully democratic state when all its residents are not granted the opportunity to live just lives by the state, and the Israeli government does not try to improve this.

Mandel wants Israel’s positive qualities to blind young people to the fact that a large segment of its population lives without full rights and the full and just protection of the state. Acknowledge the negatives, but only enough to back up your fully-realized vision of Israel’s greatness — this is what he wants for young Jews.

He’s missing something when he writes, “Israel needs to be seen by these young people as the miracle it is, something to be proud of, an experiment in developing a democratic, pluralistic, liberal, free nation in a Middle Eastern desert where nothing like that has ever taken root before.” He’s missing large chunks of historical memory, to be sure, but he’s also missing that we have the ability to love a country for what it could be, not for what it is. I “support” Israel because it could be a miracle, could be a democratic, pluralistic, liberal, free nation for everyone within it. But it’s not there yet.

Young Jewish social justice activists know that. I suppose that’s why he wants to co-opt it.

 

Chloe Sobel graduated from Queen’s University and is editor in chief of New Voices.