Zionism Mandates Official Discrimination Against Non-Jews

By Sheldon L. Richman

By calling on the United Nations General Assembly to rescind the 1975 resolution condemning Zionism as racism, President Bush has reopened discussion of an emotionally explosive issue. Unfortunately, the discussion has taken place at a predictably low level. The commentators praising Bush's initiative have spent most of their words analyzing how Resolution 3379 was passed.

"The campaign on behalf of the resolution occurred when the Arab states routinely received support from numerous Third World nations as well as from the Soviet Union and its former Eastern Bloc allies," wrote Stephen Green of the Copley News Service. Christopher Gacek of the Heritage Foundation pointed out that 1975 was "a time when the United Nations served only as a battleground for Cold War tensions and Third World hostilities." Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in The Washington Post that the resolution was not even an Arab idea; it was cooked up by the Soviet Union.

These commentators note that, with the Cold War over and the United States the only surviving superpower, it is opportune to ask the General Assembly to erase the resolution from its record.

Conspicuous by its absence in these and other commentaries, however, is any evaluation of the resolution's content.

Instead, it is taken for granted that the charge—that Zionism is a form of racism—is absurd, and thus the only issue is the invidious motive of the sponsors and those who supported it.

Two Separate Matters

Motive, however, is a separate matter from merit. The moral character of a speaker does not necessarily determine the truth of his words. Although it was hypocritical for governments that do not respect the freedom of their own citizens to condemn Israel for discriminating against some of its citizens, that does not absolve Israel of the charge. Righteous indignation is no substitute for rational scrutiny.

The question is whether under Zionism Israel's guiding ideology, people are being treated differently on the basis of race, or, more precisely, ethnic or national origin. Can there be any serious doubt that they are?

The first law enacted by the Israeli Knesset was the Law of Return, part of the Basic Law, the closest thing Israel has to a constitution. Under the Law of Return, a Diaspora Jew, no matter where he was born or where he lives, may "return" to Israel as a full Israeli national. But an Arab (or other non-Jew) born in Palestine but who fled or was driven out, may not. The criterion is simple: One is a Jew, the other is not.

"National," not citizen, is the operative word in this case. Unlike other countries, Israel distinguishes nationality from citizenship. Non-Jews can be citizens of Israel. But they cannot be nationals. Only Jews can be nationals. And in Israel, many rights proceed from nationality rather than citizenship.

As an Israeli court has declared, "There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people. The Jewish people is composed not only of those residing in Israel, but also of Diaspora Jewry." Writer Roselle Tekiner has commented, "Israel is the only nation in the world to grant privileges to some foreigners that are denied to some native born citizens."

This matter is not purely academic. It affects the way people are treated day to day in Israel. Since the government dominates the economic life of Israel, the distribution of many goods and services is directly affected by the basic discrimination against non-Jews.

This is most obvious in the case of land. Nearly 93 percent of the surface of pre- 1967 Israel is owned by the state or the quasi-governmental Jewish National Fund. In the early 1960s the Knesset adopted the JNF's principles governing the land. Among these are the principles that the land is owned by the Jewish people, that it is inalienable, that it is to be worked only by Jews, and that it is to be leased to Jews only. (This is spelled out in Walter Lehn and Uri Davis's book The Jewish National Fund, available from the AET Book Club)

Some land has been leased short term to Arabs; nevertheless Arabs are barred from most of the land and from long-term leases. As Lehn and Davis write, "Thus we are unaware of a single instance of a large tract of land, whether zoned for agriculture or industry, or for housing development, under a long-term lease to a non-Jewish lessee. Such leases are much more likely to be for small tracts and for relatively short periods, sometimes for only one year, or if agricultural land, for one crop season. . . In short, leases of Israel-land to non-Jews appear to be exceptional in one way or another, not typical, and relatively few in number."

A Special "Zone of Residence"

Professor Uzi Ornan of Hebrew University has written that land controlled by the Israel Lands Administration cannot be leased to non-Jews "unless the apartment or plot of land is located in the special 'zone of residence' assigned to non-Jews, and where non-Jews are permitted to apply for an apartment or land." Ornan has compared Israeli treatment of Arabs to South Africa's treatment of Blacks.

Unsurprisingly, Jewish lessees are not permitted to sublet land to Arabs or to subject it to other "non-conforming uses." Lehn and Davis write that "a Jewish farmer lost his leased land for having violated this [1967] law by selling his crop of tomatoes in the field to an Arab; this was held by the court to be a non-conforming use of Israel-land.'' They add that in 1974, a year before the UN resolution, Israel's minister of agriculture "denounced the continuing presence of Arabs on Israel-land as agricultural laborers and share-croppers. In his words, 'The domination of Jewish agriculture by Arab laborers is a cancer on our body."'

What is true of land is also true of water and other services dominated by the state, for example electricity and education. Arabs do not have the access to necessities that Jews do. Nor can representation in the Knesset, which fs allowed to Arabs, change the fundamental laws that make that discrimination possible.

The ideology that mandates official, governmental discrimination against non-Jews is Zionism. Without it, Israel could not be a Jewish state. Nearly 30 years ago, the United Nations defined racial discrimination to include invidious distinctions based on ethnic or national origin as well as race. If the reconsideration, therefore, is based not on the motives of the original sponsors of the resolution, but simply on whether or not Zionism is a form of racism, UN members, and readers of this article, should have no trouble arriving at the correct answer.

Sheldon L Richman is the senior editor at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC