The Mission and Social Witness Working Group recommends that the Presbytery of New Brunswick concur with the Synod of the Covenant on their overture to the 223rd General Assembly (2018) of the Presbyterian Church (USA), designated Ovt 021, to:
Ovt 21
On Advocating for the Human Rights of All Citizens of Israel—From the Synod of the Covenant.
The Synod of the Covenant overtures the 223rd General Assembly (2018) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to do the following:
1) Affirm the support of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights as expressed in the 210 General Assembly (1998).
2) Direct the Office of the General Assembly, through its Stated Clerk, to write to the United States President and Secretary of State urging them to seek United States Government suspension of all economic and military aid to Israel until the latter is in full compliance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (of which Israel is a signatory) by changing its laws, policies and practices that favor its Jewish citizens and discriminate against its Christian and Muslim citizens and other ethnic minorities.
3) Direct the Stated Clerk to write to the US President and Secretary of State, urging them to advocate with their Israeli counterparts to cease all actions that block equal access of all citizens in Israel’s:
a) legal system;
b) citizenship privileges;
c) income and employment;
d) distribution of resources and social welfare;
e) accessibility to land;
f) educational resources;
g) availability of health resources; and
h) political participation.
4) Direct the Presbyterian Mission Agency, through the Office of Public Witness, and the Presbyterian UN Office to advocate for and witness to the human rights of all Israeli citizens regardless of their religious or ethnic minority status until Israel is in compliance with international humanitarian laws, specifically the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In particular, these offices should advocate for equal access for all people in Israel’s:
a) legal system;
b) citizenship privileges;
c) income and employment;
d) distribution of resources and social safety welfare;
e) accessibility to land;
f) educational resources;
g) availability of health resources; and
h) political participation.
5) Direct the Office of the General Assembly and Presbyterian Mission Agency, through its program units, to study, and inform all Presbyterians regarding the discriminatory practices in Israel today and to advocate for equal rights for all citizens who live in Israel, regardless of their religious and ethnic identity.
Rationale
How did events develop so that Christians and Muslim citizens of Israel are experiencing discrimination as outlined in this overture? In answer to this question, consider a brief historical background.
Historically, Palestine was part of a larger geographic region known as the land of the ancient Canaanites, which comprised the area now known as modern Palestine/Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, coastal Syria, and southern inland Syria. Careful examination of the archaeological evidence demonstrates that “there was population continuity through successive millennia” in the land of Canaan.1 Archaeological evidence of human habitation dates from the twelfth millennium BC to the present, constituting fourteen millennia. The estimated existence of the geographic entities of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah constitutes but a small sliver of time – less than five hundred years.
Israeli government accounts frequently assert that Palestinians are desert people who recently came in from the East (Arabia). There is no reason to doubt that Palestinians are descendants of the original inhabitants of Canaan as there is no archaeological evidence whatsoever for a complete disappearance of a people from Palestine and their replacement by outsiders.2 The one exception is the attempt (though only partially successful) by the Government of Israel to transplant a European Jewish population into Palestine in an attempt to replace its indigenous people and their culture.
During most of the first two decades of the twentieth century, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, which had controlled Palestine for 400 years, beginning in 1516. After the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire was dismantled, England and France divided the Middle East into separate mandates, and on June 22, 1922, Great Britain became the mandatory for Palestine3. At this time, the census of Palestine4 showed that Jews constituted 7.9% of the population.
Ignoring the human rights of the Palestinian people, Great Britain facilitated the mass immigration of Jews from Europe into Palestine and by 1946, the population consisted of 32.96 percent Jews and 67.04 percent Christians and Muslims.5 Therefore, in spite of the great influx of European Jews into Palestine, the Jewish population continued to be a minority population.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly (Resolution 181) voted to recommend partition6 of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Palestinian. The territories designated to the Jewish and Palestinian states would be 56 percent and 43 percent of Palestine, respectively. Jerusalem and Bethlehem were to become an international zone.7 At the end of 1946, Jews had acquired by purchase 6 to 8 percent of the total land area of Palestine and comprised approximately one third of its population. In other words, the recommended plan in effect would take land owned by Palestinians and proposed to give it to a new Jewish state. Israel uses UN GA resolution 181 as a justification for the right of Israel to exist as a country when in fact the United Nations does not have the legal right to partition a country. Israel as a state was won at the point of a gun, and its recognition by the Truman Administration8 gave it instant “legitimacy.”
The Zionist Israeli leadership wanted to have the land of Palestine without a people – free of all non-Jewish Palestinians whether Christian or Muslim. This wish has been expressed in various forms early from the founding of Zionism to this day. Nur Masalha in his book The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem,9 describes in detail the theme of “population transfer” or “ethnic cleansing” in the thinking and action of the Zionist movement in Palestine-Israel. His work is largely based on Hebrew and Israeli archival sources; it represents some of the most original work in this area and is frequently cited by later authors.
As early as 1891, a leading liberal Russian Jewish thinker, Ahad Ha’Am (Asher Zvi Ginsberg) observed that the Zionist “pioneers” believed that:
“. . . the only language that the Arabs understand is that of force. ... [The Zionist ‘pioneers’] behave towards the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly upon their boundaries, beat them shamefully without reason and even brag about it, and nobody stands to check this contemptible and dangerous tendency.”10
Masalha documents with meticulous detail the Zionist leaders’ early plans that the “transfer” of the Palestinian people was a necessary prelude to the founding of the state of Israel. Tactics for such a transfer evolved with time. In the beginning there was hope through negotiations with colonial powers such as Italy, England, and Turkey that these powers would co-operate with the voluntary or forced transfer of the Palestinian population. When these tactics failed, purchase of land was the attempted device; however by late 1947, the Jewish National Fund and others had acquired by purchase only 6 to 8 percent of the land. Clearly other tactics were necessary if the Zionist leaders were to achieve their goal of taking possession of the land. After the United Nations General Assembly voted to recommend partition of Palestine in 1947, civil war erupted. The Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) armed forces, the Hagana, Irgun Tzavi Leumi, and Lehi groups, were fully armed,
largely provided by the British, and on the offensive against largely unarmed (who were systematically disarmed by the British mandatory administration), disorganized, and powerless Palestinian groups. Both force and psychological intimidation were tactics used to initiate and implement the mass exodus of 750,000 to 800,000 Palestinians. After the cessation of hostilities, the massacre of villagers was used as a successful device of intimidation that resulted in the mass exodus11. This relentless campaign of terror and expulsion continues unabated but in muted form to this day
Palestinians who remained in Israel but driven from their villages became “internally displaced persons.” Indeed, rather than allowing these displaced Palestinians to return to their lands and villages, the Israeli government declared them to be “present absentees” under the Absentee Property Law and denied them return to their homes and communities.
Americans hold dear Thomas Jefferson’s assertion in the United States Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
And the 210th General Assembly (1998) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to “Request pastors and sessions to find ways within the life of congregations to participate in the commemoration of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through worship, Bible study, intercessory prayer, and utilization of the annual General Assembly Human Rights Update, which calls special attention to Human Rights Day each year on December 10; and in making available for every member a copy of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" for study and understanding. (25.0409, p. 478) Encourage middle governing bodies, sessions, and individual members to pray for all victims of human rights abuse and for those who persecute them, also seeking ways to act on behalf of these victims. (25.0433, p. 481)”12
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)13 has 30 articles. Of these articles, this overture focuses on the 10 articles listed below that the Israeli government14, even though it has ratified this declaration, has particularly violated in the case of its minority Palestinian citizens:
Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.
Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 13. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 15. Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 17. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 21. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
Article 23. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
According to Adalah, an independent human rights organization and legal center staffed by Jewish and non- Jewish Israelis and based in Israel, there exists, in Israel laws and practices, a structural system of inequalities for Israeli citizens of minority ethnicities and faiths. The following demonstrate how each of these articles are violated in some or all of the eight areas of discrimination covered by this overture.
a) Legal system. According to Adalah, “the definition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state makes inequality and discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel a reality . . . and impedes the realization of full equality. Direct and indirect discrimination against Arab (Israel uses the term ‘Arab’ to denote those Christians and Muslims of Palestinian heritage) citizens of Israel is ingrained in the legal system and in governmental practice” and has existed since the creation of the State of Israel. This discrimination occurs “on the basis of both their national belonging15 as Arabs/Palestinians and their membership in one or more other distinct subgroups, such as women. . . . More than 50 main laws discriminate, directly or indirectly, against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the current government coalition has proposed a flood of new racist and discriminatory bills, which are at various stages in the legislative process.16 This legal framework of inequality is in violation of the UDHR articles 1 and 7.
b) Citizenship privileges. The “Law of Return (1950) and the Citizenship Law (1952) privilege Jews and Jewish immigration”17. These laws grant citizenship to any Jew living anywhere in the world who wishes to live in Israel. However, Palestinians who were born in Israel/Palestine, who trace their ancestry for millennia in Palestine, and were forced into exile by Israel and its Jewish predecessors in 1948 and after are not allowed to return to their stolen homes and lands in Palestine/Israel even though this is a personal right guaranteed under international law. Furthermore, “a new law makes it possible to strip Israeli citizenship for various reasons related to alleged ‘disloyalty’ to the state or ‘breach of trust’, indirectly targeting the citizenship rights of Palestinian citizens”’.18 These citizenship laws are in violation of UDHR articles 13 and 15.
c) Income and employment. “Gaps in income and poverty rates are directly related to institutional discrimination against Arab (Palestinian) citizens in Israel. . . . Palestinian citizens of Israel often face discrimination in work opportunities, pay, and conditions, both because of the inadequate implementation of equal-opportunity legislation and because of entrenched structural barriers, which particularly affect women, and include poor or non-existent public transportation, a lack of industrial zones, and a shortage of state-run daycare centers. Palestinian citizens are also excluded from the labor force by the use of the (Israeli) military-service criterion (which excludes Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens) as a condition for acceptance for employment, often when there is no connection between the nature of the work and military experience”19. Gaps in income/poverty are in direct violationof UDHR articles 1 and 7 and discrimination in employment is in violation of UDHR article 23.
d) Distribution of resources and social welfare. “Although the right to equality demands that states take positive steps to bridge the gaps between e the various population groups, the State of Israel actively seeks to promote and direct resources to Jewish citizens as a privileged majority within the ‘Jewish State’.” Furthermore, through “the use of the military-service criterion to allocate resources, the state actively preserves and perpetuates inequalities between Arab (Palestinian) and Jewish citizens of Israel. Direct state policy measures to reduce poverty disproportionately target Jewish citizens”20. Inequality of resources and social welfare are in violation of UDHR article 7.