With George Bisharat Op-Ed, Los Angeles Times Lends Hand to Resurgent Antisemitism

Updated identity politics terminology aside (Israel is a “homeland privileging Jews”), UC Hastings’ George Bisharat has been consistent for the last 15 years, smearing Israel in The Los Angeles Times as a pariah state which should be dismantled. His campaign for the elimination of the Jewish state, trendy political language notwithstanding, qualifies as antisemitism under the widely accepted definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The IHRA definition includes:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
In his Op-Ed last Thursday openly arguing for the end of the Jewish state (“The case for a single-state solution in Israel,” May 23), Bisharat writes about Israel’s allegedly racist character:
Of course, an Israel founded on equal rights for all will no longer be a “Jewish state” — just as South Africa, after the fall of apartheid, was no longer a state that institutionalized white supremacy.
Moreover, the working definition of antisemitism also includes: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Bisharat has done just that, falsely equating property lost in the 1948, which the Arabs started in an effort to annihilate the nascent Jewish state, to Jewish property lost in the Nazi genocide of Jews. He wrote:
My family, like survivors of the Nazi Holocaust seeking return of their seized works of art, insists that ownership of our grandfather’s Villa Harun ar-Rashid in West Jerusalem should be restored to us.

But if editors aren’t troubled that, barely a month after Poway synagogue shooting victim Lori Gilbert-Kaye was laid to rest, they are enabling the spread of antisemitism, perhaps Bisharat’s contempt for the facts may be of concern.

“It’s time to face some undeniable facts,” says the law professor, who goes on to make the entirely fallacious statement:

First, despite Israel’s every effort to establish and maintain a Jewish majority, the two peoples living under Israeli rule hover at near parity, at approximately 6.5 million Jews and 6.5 million Palestinians.

Bisharat grossly overstates the number of Palestinians living under Israeli rule.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2017 there were 2.88 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 1.9 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (“On the Occasion of the International Population Day,” 11/7/2018).
Gaza Strip Palestinians do not live under Israeli rule; they live strictly under Hamas (Palestinian rule.) As the State Department reported on the rule of the Gaza Strip:
In 2007 Hamas staged a violent takeover of PA government installations in Gaza and has since been the de facto authority in the territory, which it governs with a combination of PA laws and Hamas decrees. Hamas maintained control of security forces in Gaza.
Of the West Bank Palestinians, the vast majority live in Area A; that is, under Palestinian civil and security rule. 
Israel’s Arab population is 1,890,000. 
The total number of Arab Israelis combined with West Bank Palestinians (including the vast majority living in Area A, ie under Palestinian rule) total  4,770,000. This compares to Israel’s Jewish population, including in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, of 6,697,000.
The aforementioned figures are weighted in Bisharat’s figure, as they include all West Bank Palestinians as living under Israeli rule, although the vast majority are residents of Area A, and therefore live under full Palestinian rule. Moreover, although CAMERA’s analysis uses Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics figures, although Israeli scholars dispute these figures, claiming they are significantly inflated.
Thus, even by the most generous measure, in no way does the figure of Palestinians living under Israeli rule reach 6.5 million. Bisharat reaches this unfounded figure by falsely claiming that residents of the Gaza Strip live under Israeli rule, a fabrication contradicted by The Los Angeles Times’ own coverage. As Noga Tarnopolsy noted January 27, 2019: “Hamas, the militant organization which rules the Gaza Strip. . . “
 

 

Comments are closed.