Last weekend, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal told a group of protestors that Israel is a racist state. Although she quickly walked back her comments, she was giving voice to a widespread belief on the American Left. Yet the claim that Israel is a racist or apartheid state isn't merely untrue—it's the exact opposite of the truth. When confronted with this irrefutable fact, many of Israel's critics amend their complaint and insist they're not talking about Israel proper but about Israel's presence in the West Bank and on the Gaza border. This claim is every bit as weak as the first.
Let's start with Israel proper. The State of Israel is among the most multiracial and multicultural countries in the world. Anyone landing in Israel is confronted with a rich pageant of humanity of different colors, cultures, and religions. Contrary to the tired stereotype, most Israeli Jews are not white Europeans but the descendants of Jewish refugees from the Muslim Middle East. And many Israelis are not Jewish at all.
The largest of these minorities are Israeli Arabs, who comprise a full 20 percent of Israel's population. Israeli Arabs are full citizens who enjoy equal rights and equal protection under the law. They are well represented in Israel's top universities and professions, from medicine to law to engineering.
It's true that there are some disparities between Israel's Jews and Arabs. But Israel is actively pursuing affirmative action and other policies to achieve full equality between its majority and minority populations. In this effort, Israel has achieved far greater success than most other western democracies.
Simply put, Israel's Arabs are the freest and most prosperous Arabs in the Middle East. There is no other country in the region, Arab or otherwise, where Arabs enjoy greater rights, protections and upward mobility.
When confronted with these facts, those calling Israel "racist" will typically shift gears. They'll claim they're actually talking about the disparities between Israeli citizens and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza who live under Israeli "occupation" without the rights of citizens.
And yet, Israel won control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 after a war of self-defense. And when it offered this land to the Palestinians so they could build a state of their own—repeatedly, in 2000 and 2008 and multiple times prior—the Palestinians turned down every single one of these offers, often quite violently. The Palestinian side claimed that Israel's offers of 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, including the Arabs neighborhoods of Jerusalem, were insufficient. And then, instead of making counter offers, they launched attacks and waves of suicide bombings. This convinced most Israelis that their Palestinian interlocutors weren't truly interested in peace.
These facts force some of Israel's critics to make the most ridiculous demand of all: Israel should immediately withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza without a peace deal and let the Palestinians do what they will. But Israel actually tried this, too: In 2005, Israel removed every last civilian and soldier from Gaza as a "downpayment on peace." Did it bring peace? Hardly. Hamas quickly took over the Gaza Strip and turned it into a base for terror against Israel. Missile fire from Gaza into Israel grew exponentially after Israel withdrew.
The West Bank is not Gaza. It is far more important. If Israel repeated the error of Gaza here, Hamas or worse would soon control the elevated hill country that dominates Israel's narrow coastal plain, which contains over 70 percent of Israel's population and economic infrastructure. From those heights, even the crudest Kassam missile could be lobbed into any corner of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, shutting Israel down. This would be a disaster for all Israelis, Jewish and Arab, and a recipe for escalated conflict.
Americans often make the mistake of viewing a complex world through our own binaries and obsessions. This imperialistic tendency has caused us to misjudge the world around us and make tragic errors abroad.
Rep. Jayapal and others would be well advised to recognize that Israel doesn't fit the black and white dichotomy through which they judge all things. When they remove their blinders, they will see they actually have much to learn from the Jewish State.
David Brog is the executive director of the Maccabee Task Force and the author of Reclaiming Israel's History: Roots, Rights and the Struggle for Peace (Regnery, 2017).
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
