On Friday, November 5, 2022, Princeton Committee on Palestine (PCP) released a statement calling on the University to boycott Israel TigerTrek, a student-led winter break trip that brings a Princeton cohort to Israel to meet with key players in the nation’s high-tech startup industry.
PCP, led by Eric Periman ‘23, has a history of being embroiled in antisemitic controversy, and its newest statement is no different. The statement, emailed out to all Residential College listservs via HoagieMail, declares that “travel to Israel…normalizes apartheid,” stating that advertising such an act “so casually is shameful.”
The apartheid equivalency is an oft-trotted out falsehood used by Israel’s detractors. In truth, Israeli law protects all, no matter their “religion, race or sex.” Unlike Apartheid South Africa, in which Blacks were officially second-class citizens stripped of equal rights, Israel’s Declaration of Independence ensures “complete equality of social and political rights” to each and every citizen and equal access to the courts to prevent infringements on their rights.
Israeli Arabs are living, breathing evidence of the fulfillment of this; they are represented in Israel’s police forces, diplomatic corps, courts, and parliament. In a study conducted by Harvard University, 77% of Israeli Arab respondents reported that they would rather live in Israel than in any other country in the world. In stark contrast, Black South Africans had separate public facilities and were unable to vote, let alone stand for election.
Turning to the West Bank, it must be recalled that most of the Arab territory is not under Israeli jurisdiction, but rather subject to the rule of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Meanwhile, Gaza is completely under the control of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Schools, courts, laws, and other decision-making functions are outside Israel’s jurisdiction and have been for the past 17 years.
It’s also important to note that even during Israeli-Palestinian flare-ups, Palestinians are given treatment in Israeli hospitals, despite lacking Israeli citizenship. Blacks in Apartheid South Africa, on the other hand, had extremely limited healthcare.
I could compose volumes about the popular falsehoods of the South Africa-Israel apartheid analogy, but I won’t. The key point here is that PCP makes the analogy with malice of forethought and without consideration for the basic incomparability of the two circumstances, for their end goal is to defame Israel at whatever the price; they declare Israel racist and “illegitimate” and call it a day.
The statement also accuses the Jewish state of “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” The United Nations defines ethnic cleansing as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.” The crux of the assertion is that Israel is attempting to create a homogenous society and rid its territory of Palestinians.
Setting aside the equal citizenship rights granted to Israeli Arabs and focusing solely on the West Bank and Gaza, one can debate the wisdom or rationale behind checkpoints and limitations on movement for Palestinians between zones controlled by the Palestinian Authority and those under the purview of Israel. However, Israel is in no way attempting to eliminate them via extermination or expulsion; given the natural increase in population of both Palestinian Territories and Arab citizens of Israel proper, if this were indeed Israel’s goal, it has failed miserably.
In fact, it is actually Hamas that does, attacking civilians with the end goal of destroying the Jewish nation. Hamas’ very own charter rejects any and all attempts at peaceful negotiation and says it must “fight Jews and kill them” — note: “Jews,” not “Israelis” — and “obliterate” Israel.
The statement declared that “on October 7, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a group of children in the West Bank as they were playing in a grove near the border wall and invaded al-Mazra al-Gharbiyeh,” linking an article from The Electronic Intifada (El), an outlet that has been called “anti-Semitic” for its comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany.
Ali Abunimah, the co-founder and executive director of the outlet, has made similar antisemitic statements, going so far as to call Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel a “fraud and huckster” in a 2015 tweet.
What PCP failed to mention is that the deceased youths discussed in the El article hurled Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers, to which they responded by opening fire. The soldiers were in the area for an operation to detain a member of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who the IDF suspected of being behind attacks on Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
The IDF soldiers involved did not pre-emptively target civilian children innocently “playing in a grove” as the article and PCP statement attempt to convince readers; the soldiers were responding to use of explosives and other dangerous weapons.
PCP made a similar misrepresentation when it reported that “Israeli soldiers invaded Jenin and killed four teenagers in Shuafat refugee camp.” The teenagers in question launched explosives at IDF soldiers who were in the area during the IDF operation discussed above.
The blatant misrepresentation made by PCP exhibits ignorance of the facts at best and antisemitism at worst. It declares the aforementioned clashes between Palestinians and the IDF to be “human rights” violations on the part of Israel, charging TigerTrek with being “a blatant violation of international human rights and therefore our community values.” The real violation of our community values is the deep-seated antisemitism of PCP’s statement and its falsities.
The above is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
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