Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] PALESTINIAN RIGHTS AND ISRAELI WRONGS 121
who had hired them and would potentially rehire them told them to do: find
the fence illegal. They reasoned that the fence went through territory that
the Palestinian leadership claims would or should be theirs after a peace
treaty (which they refuse to negotiate without preconditions) is settled. 22
The international community has done nothing similar for similar
fences through contested territory. India has a fence through Kashmiri territory
claimed by Pakistan; Saudi Arabia has a fence through territory
claimed by Yemen; Turkey has a fence through territory claimed by
Syria. 23 This wrong of building a fence to keep out suicide bombers, tendentiously
called a wall—though it is 97% fence and only 3% wall—
through territory claimed by others is a wrong attributed to Israel and no
other state.
Apartheid. Similarly, claimed discrimination against Arabs is inflated into a
claim that Israel is an apartheid state. Some of the components of the claim,
like the claimed wrong of the fence, are decontextualizations of anti-terrorist
security initiatives. Others are overblown rhetoric.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that nothing straight can be
constructed from the warped wood that makes up humanity. When it comes
to respect for human rights, no state can claim 100% compliance. Human
rights is an ideal. Humanity is imperfect.
International human rights advocacy needs to focus on those egregious
wrongs that merit international concern or so risky for locals to attempt to
remedy internally that external help is needed. Claimed Israeli wrongs fit
neither of these categories. Israel has an independent judiciary, a free
media, and a democratically elected government. There is a host of internal
remedies constantly invoked for claimed Israeli wrongs. Any external effort
to protest Israeli wrongs is a diversion from violations where external help
is really needed.
Take, for instance, the claim that Israel is an apartheid state in part
because Arabs cannot buy land owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
The JNF owns 13% of the land of Israel. 24 In 1960, the JNF signed a treaty
with the State of Israel agreeing to lease JNF land to Jewish people only.
This distinction was arguably justifiable even by equality standards as
territory through which it runs is occupied Palestinian territory. The issue the court
considered it has to address was not whether these assumptions were true but what
were the legal consequences of these assumptions, true or not.
22. International Court of Justice, Advisory Proceedings, “Legal Consequences
of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
23. David Makovsky and Ben Thein, “Unilaterally Constructed Barriers in Contested
Areas,” Peacewatch, No. 465, July 8, 2004, www.washingtoninstitute.org.
24. “Israel Lands: Privatization or National Ownership,” Jewish Virtual Library.