Australian singer/song writer Deborah Conway in a recent interview was asked why her support for Zionism increased. ‘I hate bullies and I feel the world is bullying Israel’ she replied adding that the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycotts Divestments and Sanctions) movement to end Israel’s occupation and ongoing human rights violations is ‘horrendous antisemitism.’
For years, I was a member of Potlucks for Peace, a Jewish-Arab dialogue group in Canada. One afternoon, we gathered with our competing hummus, couscous and fattoush salads to discuss the topic of the day: the Jewish fear. Jewish members of the group spoke of personal and collective experiences of growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust. I listened with my ears and wept with my heart. What they and their families experienced was unimaginable horror that seemed to continue to haunt them and riddle them with insecurity and fear. Afterwards, the discussion was centred on the way this Jewish fear compels many in the Diaspora to lend their support to Israel, a state that they feel offers them a sense of security. Their support for Israel is often blind and unequivocal. Israel can do no wrong.
I thought of this as I read Ms. Conway’s interview and reflected on her family history and her connections to the Holocaust. Could the Jewish fear explain in any way her skewed vision of reality? Is it that much easier to repeat Israel’s talking points about being ‘bullied’ regardless of the facts, than to face the reality that a state that makes her feel secure as a Jew living in Melbourne, is one that is responsible for stripping millions of Palestinians their right to security, human rights and freedom?
Does Ms. Conway not see that bullying is when you make an entire population invisible, propagating the claim of a land without a people for a people without a land? Bullying is wiping out more than four hundred Palestinian villages and towns, forcing two thirds of the Palestinian population into exile, denying them the right to compensation or return.
Bullying is systematic discrimination that gives all rights and privileges to Jewish citizens and institutes more than 52 laws that discriminate against non-Jewish Palestinian citizens, most recently passing theNation-state bill, defining Israel as a national homeland of the Jewish people, at the determined of the civil rights and liberties of its non-Jewish citizens.
Read the article by Samah Sabawi on the AJDS website.