For more information, visit Facing the Nakba. Although Palestinian citizens of Israel are entitled to vote and participate in Israeli political life, and several Palestinians are members of the Knesset the Israeli parliament , they do not receive the same treatment as the Jewish citizens at the hands of the government. For example, the Law of Return grants automatic citizenship rights to Jews from anywhere in the world upon request, while denying that same right to Palestinians.
Government resources, meanwhile, are disproportionately directed to Jews and not to Arabs, one factor in causing the Palestinians of Israel to suffer the lowest living standards in Israeli society by all economic indicators. In a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups issued a call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions BDS against Israel until it complies with international law.
The Palestinian BDS call asks international civil society groups and individuals to use boycott, divestment, and sanction tactics until Israel meets its obligations under international law to:. American Jewish leaders of organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as well as all major Israeli parties with the exception of the Arab Joint List , are not committed to equality and Palestinian self-determination.
To begin with, unlike the U. Indeed, 20 percent of Israeli citizens are not Jewish, and there are nearly five million Palestinians living under Israeli military rule in the West Bank and Gaza. Whereas Americans of all persuasions can rally around the principles of equality and freedom of speech guaranteed by the American constitution and the First Amendment, in Israel there is no such binding legal text that declares all citizens to have equal rights and guarantees self-expression without restrictions.
In Israel passed the law of return, which guarantees citizenship to anyone that has Jewish ancestors, while Palestinian refugees who fled during the war two years earlier were barred from returning and their lands and homes appropriated. While the founders of Israel and many of its current leaders are not religious, they have used religion in an opportunistic way, including in their engagement with Christian fundamentalists.
This has produced a dangerous messianic settler movement that insists that their presence in the occupied territories is based on the idea that Jews have an unassailable, even God-given right to the land that others, including the indigenous inhabitants of the country, who had been living on their lands for centuries, do not have.
To be fair, small groups of Israelis sometimes visit the occupied territories and even protest for an hour or two before returning to the safety of their homes in Tel Aviv or Netanya. The courageous Israeli journalist Amira Hass is treated as an aberration in Israeli society because at one time she lived in Gaza and Ramallah. Lonely voices like Hass and Gideon Levy are drowned out by the vast majority of Israeli print and electronic media, which rarely recognize that Palestinians exist, let alone that they are suffering under a decades-long military occupation maintained by brute force.
The powerful Zionist narrative that ignores the rights of non-Jews and dehumanizes them is not so different than the way white supremacists in the U. Systemic racism in the U. While Americans have at long last begun to recognize the racism in their police forces and move toward taking action, in Israel the racism is institutionalized, legalized, and internalized to a degree that the majority of Israelis do not even acknowledge that there is anything wrong going on.
Maybe they are afraid that if they admitted the systemic racism, it would undercut the very existence of their state, which is built on the land and rights of another people. While there are differences between the U. Gaza is controlled by Hamas, an Islamist fundamentalist party, and is under Israeli blockade but not ground troop occupation. Though the two-state plan is clear in theory, the two sides are still deeply divided over how to make it work in practice.
Most observers think this would cause more problems than it would solve, but this outcome is becoming more likely over time for political and demographic reasons.
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Many Arab residents of the region had to flee the country. The seventy-year history of the State of Israel is characterised by the struggle with the Palestinians. They see Israel as the occupying force. Back to the question. So a Zionist is someone who strives for an independent Jewish state. To many religious Jews, Israel is 'the promised land'.
But many non-religious Jews, too, value the fact that there is a country where Jews can live in freedom and safety. Nowadays, the word Zionist is often used as a swearword.
As a negative label. Many Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause no longer distinguish between the words 'Jew', 'Israeli' and 'Zionist'.
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