People who fight for Palestinian rights are not anti-Semitic
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writers.
By Brooke Hotez and Margaret A. Waskow
SPECIAL TO THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR
As Tucson Jews who support Palestinian human rights, we are deeply troubled by state Sen. Karen Fann and state Rep. Alma Hernandez's recent op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star that accuses the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement of 'encouraging anti-Jewish bigotry.' Hernandez and Fann are right that anti-Semitism is a serious issue that is on the rise in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world. But we disagree with the way they confuse Palestinian rights advocacy with anti-Semitism. We are also troubled by the statistics that Hernandez and Fann use without reference to any polls or studies. Hernandez and Fann wrote: 'The number of Jewish students witnessing or experiencing anti-Semitism on college campuses across the country has spiked to nearly 75%.'
This is shocking considering that in her 2018 article in The Forward, Linda Maizels wrote: 'Two recent reports (one from Stanford and one from Brandeis) found that, by and large, Jewish students do not feel threatened on campus.'
Also reporting on the Brandeis study, Sara Weissman with JWeekly wrote: 'The majority of Jewish students polled said they hadn't experienced anti-Semitism on campus and didn't see their campus as 'hostile to Jews.' Over 95% of Jewish students polled say they feel safe on campus.'
Given the context of these studies about anti-Semitism on college campuses, it is notable that bills such as those sponsored by Hernandez and Fann do, in fact, target college campuses, where Palestinian rights advocacy is on the rise. In this conflation, Hernandez, Fann and others, such as President Trump with his recent executive order on combating anti-Semitism, make dangerous equations that Palestinian rights advocacy is anti-Israel and thus anti-Jewish.
For example, there is a difference between boycotting Jewish businesses because they are Jewish as opposed to boycotting Israeli businesses and multinational corporations that profit off daily and egregious Palestinian human rights abuses under an illegal military occupation.
These abuses are systematically documented by groups such as B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories; Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; and Breaking the Silence, an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military.
Palestine Legal, an independent organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the U.S. who speak out for Palestinian freedom, argues that Israel- backed lobby groups 'devote considerable resources to monitoring the speech and activities of Palestinian rights advocates and falsely accusing them of anti-Semitism, based solely on their criticism of Israeli policy, in order to undermine their advocacy.'
For instance,+972 Magazine reported that U.S. Reps. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., were targets of vicious attack ads by the Israel lobby group AIPAC because they speak out against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
McCollum has introduced the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, H.R. 2407, which would prohibit funding for the military detention of children in any country, including Israel. Since 2000, Addameer has documented that more than 12,000 Palestinian children have been detained in Israeli military courts and prisons.
We are grateful to U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., for signing on to and supporting this bill.
Palestinian rights advocacy is about protecting the basic freedoms of Palestinians, and there is solidarity between Palestinian rights, Black Lives Matter, indigenous groups, Latinx groups and others. Our struggle for safety and self-determination as Jews is tied to the freedom of all oppressed peoples.
Brooke E. Hotez is a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Margaret A. Waskow is a biosystems analytics and technology major at the University of Arizona and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Brooke Hotez
Margaret A. Waskow
