Op-Ed: A Defense of Israel

Written by Alex Alpert.

 

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has once again decided to bombard our campus with a barrage of false claims in order to fulfill their mission of delegitimizing Israel.  Unfortunately SJP’s quest to misinform preys upon vulnerable students who are unaware of the complex nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; attempting to convince these students that Israel is at fault for all the problems in the middle east.

Students for Justice in Palestine uses a dangerously clever marketing campaign that lays all the blame upon Israel for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without holding the Palestinian leadership responsible for any of its history of violence, disorder, and corruption.  SJP at Boston University has joined a global campaign that they hope will have the world closely monitor any slip or imperfection by the State of Israel, but will never criticize the Palestinian government. Why is that? Because if they somehow get people to associate the word Apartheid with Israel, who in their right mind will have the audacity to say one bad thing against the Palestinian government? In reality SJP wants to stop any conversation about Israel on campus, because they realize that given a true picture with facts in context it becomes evident that Israel is willing to make painful sacrifices for peace and that the Palestinian government is in many cases at fault for not controlling the use of violence against Israel and forcing Israel to use the proper security measures necessary to protect its citizens.

This week Students For Justice In Palestine is holding three speaking events. One of the events “Native America and Palestine: Indigeneity and Settler-Colonialism” tries to compare, once again, the story of white imperialists and their territorial conquest of Hawaii & Native America to the struggle of the Jewish people to return to the Jewish homeland. If you have ever heard of destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem, if you have ever heard of Abraham or Moses, if you have ever heard of Jesus, you might realize that Jews are in fact indigenous to land of Israel.  So although the lecture title makes an absurd comparison that is inherently false, it does attempt once again to rewrite history in a way that erases Jews historical connection to their land. The other two events, including “Human Rights and LGBTQ Subjectivity in Israel-Palestine,” will pick out specific examples where Israel was not as perfect as we all wished it to be. Sadly, neither is the United States perfect, nor any other democratic country in the world.

I hope for the day when Students for Justice in Palestine will stop polluting the minds of the Boston University Community with false analogies, and instead work on philanthropically events to actually improve the lives of the Palestinian people.

Alex Alpert is a student at Boston University and a member of Boston University Students for Israel. His views do not necessarily represent the views of The Quad or its writers.  We accept Op-Ed submissions at buquad.com

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15 Comments on “Op-Ed: A Defense of Israel”

  1. Really great article. When students learn all the facts, its impossible to ignore that Israel has done so much for peace and has never had a true partner. Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, and the sooner people accept that Israel is here to stay, the sooner there will be peace.

  2. I completely agree with this piece. I am not saying that either side is perfect- but exactly as this said there are TWO sides. SJP upsets me because they boil it down to one simple equation in which Israel is terrible and the cause of all suffering.

    In reality, there is equal suffering and strife on both sides and there are numerous complexities. Yes, there are Palestinians who experience hardships. However, many of those hardships come from their leaderships. Yes, there are Israelis that experience hardship due to consistent missiles into Israel and terrorism. Both sides sufferings need to be acknowledged and both sides need to be involved in order to accomplish peace. We can’t just boil this down to “Israel is the one and only oppressor.”

    I just learned that when Yasser Arafat died his family moved to France with millions of dollars. Yet, during his lifetime Palestinians in Gaza were living in extreme poverty. Many individuals lived on less than a dollar a day. I think we need to examine Palestinian leadership as well.
    The Palestinian people deserve better leadership and deserve leaders that don’t consistently perpetuate terrorist attacks and then leave their people in harms way once there is a response to that terror. I wish SJP recognized this and the many complexities involved instead of simply and naively writing Israel off as an “Apartheid” state.

    1. How can a country be a democracy when the majority of its native inhabitants have been forcefully evicted beginning since March 30th 1948.

      Not only have they been evicted, the remaining Arab population within the State of Israel are second-class citizens subject to the abuse, humiliation, and discretion of the Israeli government.

      If BUSI and other zionist organizations really cared about Israel so much they would realize that what Israel needs now is peace and cooperation with their neighbors. Not enemies.

      The ENTIRE WORLD backs the Palestinian people. Just look at the UN votes at any resolution dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict. A two state solution will be achieved. And it will be on 1948 lines. The ICJ backs this claim as well as over 100 nations within the UN. So please, do the world a favor and give in.

      SJP tries to give voice to the voiceless. And they, and other organizations, will not stop fighting until equality is reached.

    1. Why don’t Students for “Justice” in Palestine stop blaming Israel for everything, and instead actually teach us about Palestinians. Maybe Students for Israel would learn something from you if you took a moment to speak about Palestinian culture instead of bashing Israel every two seconds.

  3. Yea, a bunch or lighter skinned people telling a bunch or darker skinned people to get off their land is absolutely nothing like the struggle of Indigenous people in America.
    I was totally convinced when the author cited Jesus Christ to Prove that Palestine was actually meant to be a homeland exclusively for Jewish settlers.

  4. Why is there not more intellectual dialogue from both sides? Palestine claims that Israel will not concede to its demands and Israel claims that Palestine will not concede to its demands… well guess what? Religious fundamentalism is a plague on any nation. The fact that either Israel nor Palestine refuses to acknowledge this or make a serious and lasting attempt to break away from and ostracize the factions of their so called ‘sovereign nations’ that profess superiority over another is disconcerting to say the least. I have both Jewish and Arab friends and both are sickened by the lack of true altruism present in today’s world. Do we not all have Mothers??? Do we not all love our Fathers????? So to you, my brothers and sisters I say Salaam, Shalom, Peace

  5. The narrow minded “Jews are Indigenous to Israel” statement, while historically accurate, completely negates the fact that Palestinians are native to the area as well–dipping dangerously close to the “invented people” defense propounded most recently by Newt Gingrich–which makes systematic exclusion from government, citizenship, and civil rights, apartheid. Learn to think from a compassionate standpoint rather than from what they taught you on your Birthright trip.

    1. I never went on Birthright, I lived in Israel. Also I acknowledge that Palestinians are (in addition to Jewish people) native inhabitants of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

      I don’t appreciate groups ahem SJP calling me a colonist. When I am simply a native inhabitant who is returning to my homeland.

  6. Thats funny, I think the Serbs said the same thing about Kosovo.

    So what 750k people were expelled for your family to “return to its homeland”… so what they created separate and terribly unequal laws which targeted palestinians?

    its called settler colonialism because:
    1) settlements were created to take all the best available resources
    2) they pushed the palestinians off land they had been living on for generations.
    3) it created a government which used laws from the british colonial period (such as administrative detention)
    4) it made use of palestinian labor while being in the process of making them dissapear from their land. In israel for example there has not been 1 single new arab town built since 48 while many ones containing Israeli jews were created. In the West Bank, Palesitnians have become particularly compartmentalized to area A areas, preserving the largest amount of the territory for settlement and army use. Once Palestinians labor was no longer needed, it was replaced with short term migrant labor (which is then forced out of the country)

    The difference between the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Israel is that Israel is still in the process of settling, while the others have been established for a while.

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