By Morton A. Klein

(MAY 24, 2023 / JNS) This month’s issue of Foreign Affairs included a disgraceful, antisemitic, Israelophobic article entitled “Israel’s One-State Reality.” It calls Israel libelous names without a shred of evidence and then urges the U.S. government to adopt a Jew-haters’ wish list of 14 anti-Israel policies aimed at crushing, weakening, leaving defenseless and annihilating the sole Jewish state.

The article is a frightening example of the antisemitic, anti-Israel blood libels and policy prescriptions that have infested the media and too many college political science departments and left-wing think tanks.

The article’s authors are three George Washington University professors—Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown and Marc Lynch—and University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami, who is also a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

In a remarkable feat of verbosity, these antisemitic professors spend most of their article’s 5,512 words (10 single-spaced pages) falsely calling Israel the following 16 words: An apartheid-like Jewish supremacist colonialist state and occupier of Palestinian land with a radical extremist government.

Israel is, of course, none of the above. Israel is the ancient and modern Jewish homeland, all of which (including Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem) was designated for the Jewish people under binding international law, including the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations Covenant, the British Mandate for Palestine and the U.N. Charter.

Israel is not and cannot be an “occupier” because there was never a “Palestinian state” to occupy. Israel is not “Palestinian” Arab land. Indeed, the term “Palestinian” used to refer to Jews and is based on a term used by the ancient Romans to negate the Jewish character of the Land of Israel. 99% of Palestinian Arabs live in Gaza and the 40% of Judea and Samaria that is under Palestinian Authority control.

There is nothing “supremacist” about a Jewish state. Over 80 countries have some religious designation and about half of those have official religions. Islam is the official state religion in 27 countries. By contrast, Israel has no official state religion.

Israeli citizens of all faiths enjoy equal rights in Israel. Anyone who has been to an Israeli hospital and sat in the waiting room next to an Israeli Arab, been treated by an Arab doctor or nurse, had an Israeli court case adjudicated by an Arab judge or visited the Israeli Knesset, where even anti-Israel Arab parties are full-fledged members, knows that Israeli reality is nothing like the Foreign Affairs article’s invented “apartheid-like reality.”

Elliot Abrams’s recent blog post, aptly entitled “As Israel Turns 75, ‘Foreign Affairs’ Publishes a Call to Eliminate It,” debunks the Foreign Affairs article’s “apartheid” falsehoods. He notes that polls taken by the left-leaning Israel Democracy Institute show that large percentages of Arab Israelis are comfortable with Israel’s designation as a Jewish state. Moreover, in Israel, “which is about 20% Arab, 48% of pharmacists are Arab, as are 24% of nurses, 47% of new doctors and 18% of undergraduates.”

The Foreign Affairs article also absurdly claims that Israel is an “apartheid-like state” because Israel is somehow in charge of Arabs who are living in Gaza under full Hamas control and in areas ruled by the P.A.

The only real apartheid in these P.A. and Hamas areas is the fact that Jews cannot enter these areas without risking their lives. Throughout Judea and Samaria, big red signs warn: “This road leads to Area ‘A’ under the Palestinian Authority. Entrance for Israeli citizens is forbidden, dangerous to your lives and against Israeli law.” 

The Foreign Affairs article further urges the U.S. government to adopt policies that will weaken and ultimately destroy Israel.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration (and the previous Obama administration) has already adopted quite a few of the policies on this list of horrors.

For example, the article urges the U.S. not to try to expand the Abraham Accords or help normalize relations between Israel and Arab countries. Recently, the Biden administration threatened not to mediate an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal if Israel adopts judicial reforms that would improve Israeli democracy and the rule of law.

The Foreign Affairs article also urges the U.S. to denounce Israel for violating international law (when Israel has not violated anything); condemn Israel the same way the U.S. condemned the Russian invaders of Ukraine; not veto anti-Israel U.N. Security Council resolutions; support NGOs that defame Israel; not oppose attacks on Israel in international courts (even though those courts have no legitimate jurisdiction over Israel); allow anti-Israel boycotts (designed to destroy Israel’s economy); consider imposing sanctions on Israel; “sharply reduce” aid to Israel; condition “military and economic aid” to Israel (there is no U.S. economic aid to Israel); end the weapons blockade of Gaza (thereby allowing Iran to give Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad more rockets and guidance systems for murdering Israeli citizens); and stop saying that Israel and the U.S. have “shared values” and “unbreakable bonds.”

In addition, the Foreign Affairs article demands that Israel somehow provide equality among Israelis and all Palestinians—meaning Palestinians who are living in the areas governed by Hamas and the P.A.

The article’s authors provide no explanation as to how to do this. Do they want Israel to go into Gaza and Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria to wipe out Hamas and the P.A.? Obviously not. This “equality” demand is simply another baseless libel of Israel, blaming it for the policies of Hamas and the P.A.

Finally, the Foreign Affairs article urges the U.S. to oppose arrests of Palestinians who “offer a popular resistance,” which means terrorism incited by the P.A., paid for by the P.A.’s “pay to slay” financial rewards for murdering Jews and carried out by Palestinian Arab terrorists and terror organizations.

In sum, the Foreign Affairs article is a libelous, antisemitic, anti-Israel hate-fest; a study in “what not to do” if one cares about Middle East peace and the survival of American’s greatest ally, Israel. It is also deeply worrisome that the article’s authors are now indoctrinating a generation of university students to hate, damage and endanger Israel.

Morton A. Klein is the national president of the Zionist Organization of America.

This op-ed was originally published in JNS and can be viewed here.