Removing West Bank Israeli settlements is ethnic cleansing? Nonsense.
Some opponents of President Barack Obama’s call for an Israeli settlement construction freeze argue that his policy amounts to “ethnic cleansing” or that, in a more extreme turn of phrase, that the President is attempting to make the West Bank “Juderein.” [1]
These talking points are meant to terrify – and to obscure the facts of the situation. In fact, evacuating many Israeli settlements from the West Bank is the only way that Israel will ever know real security as a Jewish, democratic homeland.
Let’s start with the definition of ethnic cleansing:
Ethnic cleansing is the forcible removal of members of a minority ethnic group from their home territory by a state or paramilitaries controlled by another ethnic group. Serb paramilitary forces ethnically cleansed Croats, Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs during the 1990’s Bosnian war. They engaged in systematic acts of murder, violence, intimidation and rape to terrorize the targeted population into fleeing or succumbing to forcible deportation. The Nazis drove out Jews using persecution and mass murder, and then called the area Judenrein — “cleansed of Jews.”
By accusing the Israeli government of “ethnic cleansing” of Jewish settlers from areas that could become a Palestinian state, critics are charging Israel with committing a crime against humanity (as the Nazis did to the Jews and the Serbs did to the Croats and Bosnian Muslims) when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon evacuated Jewish settlers from Gaza. [2] What’s more, using a term like “Judenrein” to make the same case is even more outrageous. That’s like saying Israelis are Nazis – and that’s incredibly offensive.
Furthermore, Israeli settlers are Jewish citizens of Israel, living under the jurisdiction of a Jewish-majority government. When the Israeli government votes — through a democratic process in which settlers and their representatives participate fully — and decides to remove Jewish settlers to promote a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that’s Israeli democracy at work. That’s what happened when the Israeli government and the Knesset voted to remove the settlers from Gaza. When a law is passed in a democratic government and some decide to act against that government’s decision, they are breaking the law — and the government is morally and legally justified in using coercion to ensure that they follow the law.
Many Israelis and American Jews now recognize that by building Jewish settlements in the West Bank – where millions of Palestinians live and hope to build their own state – it is sabotaging the chances for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The use of the term ethnic cleansing to describe the Israeli governments prior actions and the widely accepted path to a two-state solution is inaccurate and unnecessarily inflammatory.
The situation demands an honest debate how best to secure Israel’s future as a Jewish, democratic homeland – not more cheap talking points and inflammatory slogans.
[1] The term Judenrein was used by the Nazis to describe areas of Europe that had been “cleansed” of Jews during their murderous rampage.
[2] “Change the Policy, or Change the Subject?” by Douglas Bloomfield. New Jersey Jewish News, July 9, 2009.