Those of us who believe in Israel’s right to exist in peace, under international law, have had a rough few years, as you know. And we keep making things worse for ourselves. 

Recently, my social media has been flooded with Israel supporters making this argument: Why aren’t the pro-Palestinian protestors (at Columbia University, for example) protesting against Iran?

As evidence of their hypocrisy, they post images of Columbia University empty of protestors.

This is meant to be some kind of slam-dunk that proves the hypocrisy of the anti-Israel forces and shifts public opinion over to our side.

It’s a strategically counterproductive argument. We should stop. Here’s why: 

Whataboutism is an implicit concession: it shifts the argument from denial to comparison and comes close to assuming the truth of one’s opponent’s view.

The logic behind whataboutism, which was perfected by the Soviets during the 1970s, is that if you’ve done something bad, there is someone in the world just as bad as you who your [opponent] isn’t criticizing, and until she criticizes all the other bad people, she shouldn’t criticize you. Or (and this is the crux of the Israel advocates’ position) there is some ulterior motive for critiquing you rather than someone else. 

Let’s imagine, for example, that you kick someone’s dog. I say, “Tina, I don’t think you should have kicked that dog.” You can reply, “That dog was about to attack a baby, and I had to save the baby.” I would then say, “Oh, Tina, I didn’t realize that. I’m sorry that I criticized you.” Or you could say, “Well, Steven, what about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? Why aren’t you criticizing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi? He’s just as bad as I am! I think I know why: because I’m Latvian and he’s not! You must be racist against Latvians!”

The first argument would work. The second argument would piss me off, because you’ve called me a racist, when I didn’t even know that you’re Latvian. Also, it puts the idea into my head that you’re somehow in some way just as bad as the murderer Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which hadn’t occurred to me before. And anyone else who hears that argument thinks it too. 

When we defend Israel by pointing out that Iran is bad too, we lump Israel in with Iran; we argue, implicitly, that the Jewish people have the same right to a homeland in Israel as the Ayatollahs have to rule Iran (that is, none at all); and that Jewish governance of Israel is as oppressive as the Ayatollah’s tyranny over the Persian people. If our goal is persuasion rather than emotional satisfaction, we need arguments that strengthen Israel’s case, not arguments that weaken it by implication.

Proving that the Anti-Israel Camp is Hypocritical Doesn’t Prove that They’re Wrong 

The anti-Israel crowd condemn Israel; the anti-Israel  crowd are bad; therefore, Israel is right. 

Does that make sense? 

Devoting a ton of energy to discrediting the anti-Israel camp is ultimately less productive than pushing for better education that would highlight both sides of the dispute. In my view, the anti-Israel protestors are as far from being “pro-Palestinian” as one can get, but it simply is not the case that the Palestinians have no rights and should have no rights. One can devote all of our resources to showing how awful the “pro-Palestinian” protestors are, and at the end of the day, most of the world will believe that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances that should be addressed. 

A dishonest person can tell the truth. If a bad person says the sky is blue, that doesn’t make the sky green. Even people we dislike can be right about something. Their character doesn’t determine whether the claim is true.

The Anti-Israel Protestors are Wrong, but They Are Not Hypocrites

I was not a big activist in the divestment movement at Columbia when I was a student there in the 1980s, but I was sympathetic and agreed with it. The Apartheid system was terrible, and Columbia’s investments (along with the rest of the Western world) helped prop it up. Columbia’s divestments alone would not cripple the South African tyranny, but in concert with other universities, governments and financial institutions, Columbia could help change things. 

The opponents of our movement argued that we weren’t protesting the USSR, which made us hypocrites.  Why no divestment campaign against the Soviets? 

The answer was really easy: Columbia didn’t invest in South Africa. There was nothing to divest. The Soviets were already on their last legs (with just a few years left before collapse) because of a concerted U.S. effort to weaken them; not only through a general embargo of business with the Communist state, but through sanctions on their allies, such as Cuba, and even covert military aid to their opponents, like the contras in Nicaragua or the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. There was simply no reason to protest the Soviet Union on college campuses in the 1980s. 

The same is true for Iran. The anti-Israel protestors want their government to stop providing military aid to Israel and they want their university to stop investing. Since U.S. universities don’t invest in Iranian businesses, and the U.S. government don’t provide military aid to Iran, there is nothing for the protestors to demand; campus protest movements usually organize around leverage — investment, partnerships, or government aid — not general moral condemnation. 

Do We Really Want Israel Treated Like Iran? 

It is true that the United Nations devotes a lot of time and energy investigating and condemning Israel, and it does not spend nearly as much time and energy investigating and condemning Iran (or any other bad actors). The same is true of the U.S. human rights protestors. Part of this is simply because colonizing someone else’s land by force (which many critics claim Israel is doing in the territories) is seen as morally different from a government oppressing its own people. Still, supporters of Israel could make the argument, if we wished, that they are equally bad, and should be condemned equally. 

But for supporters of Israel to demand equal treatment is a crazy mistake. Iran is so heavily sanctioned that it is on the verge of collapse; arguably, its days are numbered. At best, it staggers along with a sclerotic economy and an oppressed populace. 

Israel, on the other hand, does a robust business with most of the Western world. Your local food co-op may boycott Israeli hummus, but Israel’s economy is one of the world’s success stories. 

Do we really, truly honestly want the world to treat Israel the way it treats Iran? 

What should Israel advocates say instead?

Israel has right to exist as a Jewish state under international law. This is not a dispute between indigenous peoples and white colonizers; it is a dispute between two groups of indigenous peoples. The United Nations recognized two states, one for Jews, one for Arabs, with defined borders, living in peace. The Arab side of the dispute took a while to agree but ultimately acquiesced in 1993 when the PLO signed the Oslo Accords. When the anti-Israel crowd opposes the Oslo Accords, which the Palestinian Authority supports, in favor of armed struggle, which Hamas supports, they’re taking the side of Iran over the side of the Palestinian people, who would prefer peace and a decent life. Is that really what they want their movement to be about? 

So the “pro-Palestinian” movement can criticize the Netanyahu government all one wants (and I am right there with them) but calls for eliminating Israel as a state would amount to endorsing ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion under international law. 

Furthermore, an effort to destroy Israel through violence is also very unlikely to succeed; it is more likely to result in the deaths of many, many more Palestinians. Do they want what is best for Palestinians, do they want to support Palestinians, or do they want to kill Israelis? 

None of this means Israeli government policy is beyond criticism — far from it. Settlement expansion, civilian harm, and political corruption deserve scrutiny and debate. But criticism must be directed at policy and leadership, not the legitimacy of the state itself. Not because critics are required to accept Israel’s legitimacy — they’re free to hold their own views — but because trying to destroy Israel militarily has been catastrophic for Palestinians. 

Rather than pontificating from their luxurious dormitory suites in East Campus far removed from daily life in Gaza, talk to a few Palestinians who actually live there and ask them what they want. This struggle isn’t about American college students, it’s about Palestinians. 

^^^

Steven S. Drachman is a writer, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly and many other outlets.

Image: Monirul Islam / Pexels