ATHENS-A group of morally confused Brattleboro citizens have petitioned onto the March 4 Town Meeting ballot an article asking that Israel be tarred an "apartheid state."
While claiming to oppose racism and discrimination, the article's sponsors are blind to the hypocrisy of their choosing to single out only the Jewish state for censure.
Context matters. I am confident that most Americans understand the difference between black South Africans, who were segregated from whites based solely upon race, and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, who suffer because they and their leaders continue to choose terrorism and war over coexistence and peace.
I also believe that most Americans would expect their leaders to respond with devastating force if rockets were raining down on Brattleboro, or if Burlington were invaded by cross-border terrorists, as has been Israel's reality ever since it withdrew from Gaza 20 years ago and left the Palestinians to build their own future. Rather than raising liberal institutions, they built the infrastructure of a terrorist state under the sands of Gaza. Choosing war has its consequences.
As a non-resident, I cannot vote against Article II. However, I would ask that Brattleboro residents with moral clarity reject it and commit themselves to this modified version:
"We affirm our commitment to freedom, justice and equality of all people ... including (a) to the freedom of Israelis to live in their homes, to eat in pizzerias and university cafeterias, and to ride on public buses and trains without being murdered, raped, blown up, and taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, (b) to the absolute justice of rooting out the wickedness of taking and hiding hostages among Palestinian civilians who are thus complicit in their leaders' violence, and (c) to the equality of Israeli lives with the lives of Vermonters who do not live with the constant threat of ballistic missiles, rocket fire, and terrorist attacks from their neighbors;
"We oppose all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression ... including the antisemitism implicit in Brattleboro Annual Town Meeting (Australian ballot) Article II, which singles out the Jewish state for censure while ignoring persecutions and atrocities committed by Christian (Russia, Central African Republic), Muslim (Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Sudan), Buddhist (Myanmar), and atheist countries (China), and the oppression by the vocal minority of Brattleboro residents who weep for those who would murder and rape Jews in their homes, while denying the Jewish people the right to defend themselves, as well as their indigenousness to the Land of Israel;
"We declare ... that those calling Israel an apartheid state display both their ignorance of the rights of Israel's Palestinian citizens and disrespect toward those who suffered through actual apartheid in South Africa; and
"We pledge to join others in continuing to support the only liberal democracy in the Middle East so that it might one day have peace-loving neighbors, and to work to end support for people and organizations - whether in a tunnel in Gaza or in rural Vermont - who would continue to see Jews herded like sheep to the slaughter."
Mark A. Berman
Athens
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