Explanation

Resolved, that in light of the passage in 2018 of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, which grants self-determination exclusively to the Jewish people, and Israel’s on-going, accelerating dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians, the 184th Convention of the Diocese of Chicago submit the following resolution to the 80th General Convention of The Episcopal Church:​

Explnation:

The enjoinder in the Hebrew Scriptures, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev.19:18), is repeated by Jesus in the Gospels (Mt.19:19, 22:39; Mk. 12:31; Lk. 10:27) and reinforced in the Epistles (Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; Jas. 2:8). As Christians mindful of our Judaic heritage, we are guided by this commandment as we confront systemic discrimination against any group of people.​

​The term “apartheid” is an Afrikaans word that means ”separateness.” Practices constituting apartheid take distinct forms in different societies. The crime of apartheid is defined in international law. Article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid summarizes apartheid as “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” (https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%201015/volume-1015-i-14861-english.pdf)  This definition is essentially repeated in Article 7 of the 2002?Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. (https://legal.un.org/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm)​

​By this definition, the system of Jim Crow that evolved in the United States after Reconstruction would be termed “apartheid.” As U.S. citizens aware of systemic racism here, we cannot fail to recognize it in Israeli treatment of Palestinians. ​

When Palestine was partitioned by the United Nations in 1947 to establish a Jewish and an Arab state, Palestinian Arabs made up two-thirds of the total population of Palestine and owned 90 percent of the land. Nonetheless, the Partition Plan allocated 54 percent of the land to the new Jewish state. By the time the armistice was decreed in 1949, the State of Israel had assumed possession of 78 percent of the original Mandate Palestine. Some 750,000 Palestinians had fled or been driven from their land, many carrying keys to the homes to which they expected to return. ​

​​Palestinians who remained within the boundaries of the new state after the ethnic cleansing of 1948 were eventually allowed to become citizens. Almost immediately, the Knesset, the new Israeli legislative body, began to pass a series of laws that ensured a continuing Jewish majority and legalized discrimination against non-Jewish citizens, particularly Palestinians. These included the Law of Return, the ban on family unification, and more than fifty laws regarding marriage, housing, security, land and planning, citizenship, political representation in the Knesset, education and culture. Most recently in 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the Nation-State Bill, which states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people,” establishes Hebrew as Israel’s only official language, and establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” which the state “will labor to encourage and promote.”(https://knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/BasicLawNationState.pdf) Because Israel has no constitution, this so-called Basic Law has the status of a constitutional provision. ​

​The system of control that Israel operates in the occupied West Bank privileges Israeli settlers and discriminates against Palestinians. Israeli Jews residing in the settlements live under Israeli civil law. Palestinians are subjected to an arbitrary and discriminatory military regime distinguished by the West Bank barrier fence/wall; an electronic ID system; Israeli-only settlements reached by roads segregated for use only by Israelis; permanent and “flying” checkpoints; a racist marriage law; and inequities between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers in infrastructure, legal rights, and access to land, water, and other resources. Some two-thirds of Palestinian men have been detained in Israeli prisons where torture, lack of access to lawyers, and detention without charge or trial are standard practice. Yearly some 500 to 700 Palestinian children under the age of 18 are ripped from their homes in the middle of the night, detained by the Israeli military, denied legal counsel and contact with their parents, physically and psychologically abused, and often forced to sign confessions in Hebrew, a language most do not understand. The Israeli blockade of Gaza involves the total suffocation of a people in an open-air prison where UN offices report that conditions are now unlivable. The bombing raids in May 2021 caused huge loss of civilian life and infrastructure. ​

​During the pandemic, Israel has been lauded for effective vaccination of its Jewish citizens. However, Palestinian neighborhoods within Israel have been under-served. Delivery of vaccines to the West Bank has been limited and deterred by Israeli assertions that, despite the clear stipulations of the Geneva Conventions, it refuses its responsibility for ensuring public health in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli strangle-hold on Gaza has blocked the arrival of desperately needed doses, and on May 18, 2021, an Israeli airstrike damaged Gaza’s only lab for processing coronavirus tests. Observers have termed these policies “vaccine apartheid.”  ​

​The Episcopal Church has a history of opposing racial and ethnic separation and discrimination in South Africa. In 1976 the 65th General Convention called upon the U.S. government to persuade the government of South Africa to repeal racist laws and work for a democratic society. Six years later the 67th?General Convention requested that the Committee on Social Responsibility in Investments take further affirmative action to eliminate holdings that supported racism and apartheid. In 1985 the 68th General Convention called on the U.S. government to develop a policy in opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Three years later the 69th?General Convention called for diplomatic and economic sanctions.​

​On March 10, 2014, The Jerusalem Post quoted Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu as he compared the conditions of Palestinians with those of South Africans under apartheid: ​

I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces…Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government. (https://www.jpost.com/diplomacy-and-politics/desmond-tutu-israel-guilty-of-apartheid-in-treatment-of-palestinians-344874)​

​In the last year four respected human rights organizations, three of them Israeli, have issued unflinching reports arguing that Israeli policies towards the Palestinians constitute forms of apartheid. B’Tselem, Israel’s premier human rights group, entitled its work A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid. (https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid) Yesh Din issued a report in September 2020 which affirmed that “the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank. The perpetrators are Israelis, and the victims are Palestinians.” (https://www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/)  Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, posted in December 2020 this comment on the Nation-State Basic Law: “The law has distinct apartheid characteristics and requires racist acts as a constitutional value.” (https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/9569)  In April 2021 Human Rights Watch released its report A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.  (https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution)​

In July this year the General Synod of the United Church of Christ adopted by a vote of 83 percent a Declaration affirming that the oppression of the Palestinian people is a “sin” and rejecting “Israel’s apartheid system of laws and legal procedures.” (https://www.globalministries.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/General-Synod-2021-Resolution-I-P.pdf)​

​For centuries, Christendom has given rise to anti-Jewish prejudice and crimes. As Christians we thus have a special responsibility to stand with Jews against bigotry and discrimination. We likewise have a moral duty to support Palestinians facing apartheid.​

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