In "Justice for Some," Professor Noura Erakat delivers an anti-Israel tirade in the antiquated terms of Marxism.
The main target of Professor Erakat’s assault is the 1922 British Mandate for Palestine (the BMP), the League of Nations law that enabled the creation of the State of Israel. The professor declares that the BMP institutionalized a “racist,” “settler-colonial,” “Apartheid regime” of “oppression” dedicated to the “juridical erasure” of the Palestinian people. Equally extreme is her view of the Oslo Accords, the set of agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990’s to resolve their longstanding feud. She condemns the Oslo peace process as a continuation of oppressive “colonial practices.”
To combat the alleged colonial oppression, Professor Erakat recommends worldwide “resistance,” described as a blend of economic and legal activism against Israel. These “coercive pressures,” she contends, would reverse the legal injustices of the past, “dismantle” Israel’s “illegal … colonial infrastructure,” and “liberate” Palestine.
Erakat champions two related forms of resistance: the BDS movement, a boycott campaign “aimed at isolating and shaming Israel;” and “lawfare,” the use of legal tactics to damage a political enemy. She agrees with BDS leaders that all Palestinians should be allowed to relocate to Israel under a supposed “right of return.” Regrettably, she omits the fact that such a novel population shift would make Israel a majority-Arab state. Even more disturbing, she enjoys hinting at the prospect of “Palestinian sovereignty” over Israel. Although the professor maintains that “armed struggle” is available to Palestinians “as a matter of legal right,” she considers BDS and lawfare more effective.
Professor Erakat is not the first Palestinian to assail Israel with the debunked Marxist rhetoric of oppression and resistance. The Palestine Liberation Organization has been spewing the same hate-filled jargon since its founding in 1964. The only difference between the two manifestos is that one would annihilate Israel through terrorism while the other would do the job through the cynical weaponization of economics and law.
Mainstream scholarship on the BMP confirms the mandate reflected a valid recognition of Jewish self-determination, not an act of colonial oppression. The law was approved unanimously by a vote of all League of Nations members, not just the “colonial powers.” The great powers did not even share a common political goal, let alone a scheme of oppression. They competed shrewdly for influence over the territories subject to the League’s mandate system. Great Britain, the empire that most actively prepared the Jews for statehood, soon became the movement’s most powerful opponent. Moreover, the Jews could not participate in the League’s BMP vote because they lacked membership in the world body.
Far from serving as agents of any colonial hegemons, the early Zionists immigrated to Palestine to escape the persecution of those regimes. Another 800,000 Jewish immigrants came to Palestine from the Arab world, including the Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem and West Bank, where they had suffered a brutal ethnic cleansing. Jews from all hemispheres migrated to the “Land of Israel” because that was their ancestral home. There, they supplemented indigenous Jewish communities much older than the region’s first Arab dwellings.
Middle East Arabs won the greatest share of mandatory bequests. They gained four large new states: Lebanon; Syria; Iraq; and Transjordan (present day Jordan). By contrast, their Jewish neighbors had to settle for a much smaller tract because Great Britain reallocated 77% of their League-designated territory to create Transjordan. The Arabs could have celebrated their vast, newfound sovereignty. But instead, in 1948 they waged a five-state military jihad against Israel and grabbed portions of the Jewish foothold for themselves. That illegal offensive was the real “oppression” that turned the BMP border-drawing exercise into perpetual ethnic strife.
As an international lawyer, Professor Erakat must realize that expunging Israel through terrorism or any other manner would violate the animating principle of the United Nations. Article 2 of the UN Charter requires nations to settle their differences “by peaceful means” without harming the “sovereign equality,” “security,” “territorial integrity,” or “political independence” of any state.
As a human rights lawyer, Erakat should know better than to portray the existence of Israel as a racist endeavor. That unfounded charge constitutes antisemitism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and officially recognized by the US, Canada, 24 EU member states, and five other state signatories. She compounds the human rights affront by endorsing the BDS movement. A September 23, 2019 UN report titled “Elimination of all Forms of Religious Intolerance” determined that BDS is a form of antisemitism.
A less biased study of legal claims in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have considered both sides of the debate. The author would have acknowledged Israel’s indigenous rights, self-determination rights, and sovereign rights to the territories in dispute. She would have weighed possible remedies for the Jewish refugees from East Jerusalem and the West Bank. And she would have backed at least one legal measure to curb terrorism. Sadly, “Justice for Some” demands justice only for Palestinians.
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
