Dear Editor,
With Town Meeting Day around the corner on Tuesday, March 3, many of us will be asked to weigh in on pledges concerning Israel and Palestine.
I want the ongoing Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and the soul-shattering violence in Gaza to end. Yet I find the Apartheid-Free Communities (AFC) pledge — which urges organizations to boycott and divest from Israel over its policies toward Palestinians — circulating in Vermont towns deeply problematic.
It is incredibly painful and frightening to see, right here in the United States, the gap widen between our nation’s pluralistic and democratic principles and the government’s actions, both domestically and internationally.
As a Jewish person deeply connected to my Jewish heritage and its moral principles, and with family in Israel, it is likewise horrifying to see the gap widen between Israel’s pluralistic and democratic ideals and the Israeli government’s actions — both within Israel’s internationally recognized borders and in what many consider the illegally occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
Ultimately, though, I cannot support the AFC pledge. Is it meant to send the message that a Jewish state with freedom of religion, as supported by the 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, is, in its very foundation, racist?
In its lack of distinction between the internationally recognized borders of the State of Israel and the occupied territories, is it meant to imply that Israel, in its entirety, is simply a project of settler colonialism? Consider this statement from Israel’s Declaration of Independence:
“The State of Israel … will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
The current problem is not with the State of Israel as some kind of static, timeless entity; the problem is that the current government of Israel is not living up to the peaceful, pluralistic promise of the nation when it was first founded in the wake of the Holocaust.
Rather than supporting this pledge, I am pledging to support groups like Standing Together, a joint Jewish-Arab grassroots movement, which promotes a vision of peaceful coexistence and is actively working to uphold the democratic principles of the State of Israel as stated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.
Anya Schwartz,
Bristol, Vt.
