Phyllis Chesler is a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East
The Palestinianization of reality continues to escalate. Wherever one turns, Israel is being demonized, boycotted and isolated. This is certainly true in the Islamic world which, under Iran’s Amadinejad, has turned nuclear, and among Palestinians who have just freely elected a terrorist group to lead them. But it is also true internationally and in the West.
For example, certain kinds of “accidents” keep happening. At the recent World Economic Forum at Davos, Divest-in-Israel literature, penned by Mazem Quimseyeh, was “accidentally” disseminated. The American Association of University Professors who were about to meet at Bellagio, Italy to focus on academic boycotts, also “accidentally” disseminated Nazi-like Holocaust denial literature to their invitees, nearly half of whom were academic-activists in favor of boycotting Israeli academics.
Another example is that of the murderous rioting of Muslim mobs who were well organized and funded by both Iran and Syria, and possibly by Saudi Arabia as well and were mightily offended by the Danish cartoons, whose three most incendiary examples were never published in Denmark but were “accidentally” slipped into the mix by a Muslim mullah. The fact that both Jews and Christians are routinely cartoonized as apes, pigs, lice and blood-drinking fiends in the Islamic media does not seem to count, nor does the fact that Jews and Christians do not go on anti-Muslim rampages when their sensibilities are similarly offended. The Arab world’s sleight-of-hand media tricks (fake massacres in Jenin, fake deaths of Palestinian children at Israeli hands) still seem to work. And the Western world, especially its intelligentsia, keep falling for them.
Now, even the British architects want to divest in Israel! And the British Anglican Chuch has just resolved to do so. In addition, Georgetown is proceeding with its decision to host the fifth annual Palestinian Solidarity conference. Perhaps this too is only “accidentally” related to the fact that a Saudi Prince has just donated twenty million dollars to Georgetown as well as to Harvard.
In addition, anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda continues to permeate professional organizations and campus life in both North America and Europe. Websites, conferences, media coverage and daily life at the United Nations all continue to romanticize and defend Palestine, a country that does not exist, and to focus on only one group of refugees in the world – the Palestinians. Such purposeful nonthinking has infected billions of people in the Islamic world and millions in the West who, in a protest against reason, continue to call for a boycott against Israel.
On February 3rd, in these pages, I published a piece about the U.S. Green Party’s resolution 190 to boycott Israel. The resolution was strongly lobbied for by Mohammed Abed of the Wisconsin Green Party, among others. Abed is, either “accidentally” or coincidentally, one of the featured speakers at the upcoming Palestine Solidarity Conference at Georgetown.
Since my piece, some people have begun to fight back.
Two Green Party activists, Lorna Salzman and Gary Acheatel, launched a serious campaign within the Green Party itself against Resolution 190. Acheatel may be reached through his website www.advocatesforisrael.org. As important, the Israeli Green Party issued a “Response.” Pe’er Visner, the Israeli Green Party chairman, who is also the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, “strongly opposed” the resolution. He wrote: “We are disappointed that our sister party in the U.S. did not consult with the Israeli Green Party before passing this resolution” and “hope that this breach in trust will be remedied with an apology and appropriate action.” The Israel Green Party statement agrees with Salzman and Acheatel that the “U.S. Green Party has been hijacked by elements of a hidden agenda to undermine the right of Israel to exist.” Visner describes the excessive human rights violations perpetrated by Palestinians and the nature of Israeli self defense and concludes that the “US Green Party…is making unfair and unbalanced decisions based on partial information.”
I think it is significant that a progressive group in Israel has taken such a sane and “politically incorrect” stand. I am similarly impressed by the recent statement issued by the Anglicans in Israel which “speaks out against the February 6, 2006 decision of the General Synod of the Church of England to divest in Israel. Like the Israeli Green Party, the Anglicans in Israel (Christ Church
Jerusalem), are offended that they were not consulted or “allowed to respond.” On February 9, 2006, they described the Anglican divestment decision to be “one sided,” “anti-Semitic” and “naive.” The Anglicans in Israel have been in Jerusalem since the late eighteenth century. They stated that “the decision will do nothing to promote genuine reconciliation between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.”
I congratulate activists of conscience like Lorna Saltzman and Gary Acheatel, as well as the Israeli Green Party and the Anglicans in Israel. I wish them all Godspeed as they resist the Palestinianization of their communities. We need many more like them for it is 1939 all over again and a strong resistance to the alliance of Western Marxists and totalitarian Islamists will prove essential in the war of civilizations that is upon us.
