opinion
“T he right of people to self-determination is
something I believe in … but we are opposed
to the idea that Israel should be preserved as a state
for the Jewish people.”
Amnesty’s blinkered anti-Zionism is a recipe for
disaster. Paul O’Brien, the non-Jewish executive
director of Amnesty International USA, stirred
up a storm of protest with this self-contradictory
statement, despite attempts to walk it back. There
was a good reason for this: O’Brien appears to
believe that all peoples are entitled to self-de-
termination — except the Jews. There’s a name
for that kind of double standard — antisemitism.

For this alone, O’Brien deserves the opprobrium
heaped upon him.

With what would O’Brien replace a Jewish state?
“Jewish people want to know that there’s a
sanctuary that is a safe and sustainable place
that the Jewish people can call home,” he told
a Women’s National Democratic Club audience.

“The key to sustainability is to adhere to what I
see as core Jewish values, which are to be princi-
pled and fair and just in creating that space.”
It could be argued that Jews enjoy a place of
safety in the United States. Although, if you are
an ultra-Orthodox Jew in New Jersey, for exam-
ple, your sense of safety might be fraying at the
edges. But to project the values of a pluralistic
democracy on to the Middle East, as O’Brien
does, smacks of mind-blowing naiveté.

BY IDIT KLEIN AND IS PERLMAN | JTA
the ruler of the day and paid him the jizya tax, i.e.

protection money. Under a benevolent ruler, the
Jews could thrive.

At other times, they could not escape violence
and oppression. They might have exercised infl u-
ence as courtiers or advisers, but they never
exercised power. To them, the “core Jewish val-
ues” evoked by O’Brien meant powerlessness —
knowing your place, keeping your head down and
accepting “dhimmitude,” which was, again, apart-
heid according to Amnesty itself. For all intents and
purposes, O’Brien is advocating that Jews revert to
their former status as a vulnerable minority.

It is likely that the Jews Paul O’Brien meets are
the type who belong to Jewish Voice for Peace,
delusional liberals who are willing to trade in
Jewish sovereignty for his “core Jewish values.”
These individuals aim “to promote Jewish pow-
erlessness once again, in an eff ort to restore
the apparent moral purity of a Jewish powerless
existence,” as the Israeli academic and former
politician Einat Wilf puts it.

Holocaust survivors, Ethiopian Jews, Soviet
Jews, Middle Eastern and North African Jews and
now Ukrainian Jews have found an unconditional
haven in a sovereign Jewish state that is committed
to defending them. They all know that Jewish pow-
erlessness is a luxury that liberal American Jews
may aspire to, but most Israeli Jews can ill aff ord. JE
Lyn Julius is the author of “Uprooted: How 3,000
Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World
Vanished Overnight” (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018).

Bills Attacking LGBTQ Rights
Are an Assault on Jewish Values
W e are alarmed by the surge of legislative
attacks on the rights, safety and dignity of
LGBTQ youth across the nation.

Among over 100 pending anti-LGBTQ bills are
the recently passed “Don’t Say Gay Bill” in Florida
and the terrifying equation of trans-affi rming health
care with child abuse by the governor of Texas.

18 In O’Brien’s dystopian scenario for a de-Judaized
Israel, the Law of Return that grants all diaspora
Jews Israeli citizenship would be abrogated, giv-
ing them nowhere to fl ee if necessary. “Hatikvah”
would cease to be the national anthem. And, very
quickly, Israel would become a majority-Arab state.

The Arab world is full of failed and authoritarian
states. Its record on democracy and pluralism
is disastrous. And tellingly, with the exception
of tiny communities in the Gulf and Morocco,
the Arab world is now judenrein. In the wake
of the Jewish exodus from the Middle East and
North Africa (MENA) in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s,
Yazidis, Maronites, Baha’is, Copts, Assyrians and
Chaldeans have streamed out as well. The Arab
world’s failure to establish a society respectful of
dissent, of minority and women’s rights, promises
a bleak future of subjugation and intolerance.

Ironically, the million Jews who fl ed the MENA
region they had inhabited since 1,000 years before
the rise of Islam were victims of “apartheid” by
Amnesty International’s own defi nition: “depriva-
tion, segregation, fragmentation and disposses-
sion.” Amnesty’s silence on this massive injustice
is deafening. And, needless to say, the 650,000
Jews who sought a haven in Israel from Arab and
Muslim countries and now form a majority of Israeli
Jews did not escape in order to fi nd themselves
once more under Arab-Muslim domination.

Until the colonial era granted them greater
security, Jews occupied a space in the Muslim
polity — “the Jewish quarter in an Arab town.”
They lived as inferior “dhimmis” at the mercy of
MARCH 24, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
We are a queer Jewish communal professional
and a nonbinary Jewish college student. We
recognize that now is a time when we must fi ght
for ourselves, and we call on our beloved Jewish
community to join us in our fi ght for the rights of
LGBTQ people everywhere.

One of us, Is Perlman, grew up in Florida and was
blessed with parents who supported the start of their
medical transition there. Despite that love and affi r-
mation, Is endured years of self-loathing and shame
due to the onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric in their local
communities and the broader world. Indeed, Is was
one of the 40% of trans and nonbinary young people
who attempt suicide by age 24. They’ve shared that it
was only when they met other LGBTQ Jewish teens
and adult mentors through a Shabbaton organized by
Keshet — a national organization working for LGBTQ
equality in the Jewish community — that they came
to understand themselves as not just worthy of basic
dignity, but as a holy person who is made in the image
Klein: Courtesy via JTA; Perlman: Courtesy via JTA
BY LYN JULIUS
Amnesty’s Blinkered Anti-Zionism
Is a Recipe for Disaster