Background

  • On February 19, 2014, Hassan Jabareen, founder and General/Legal Director of Adalah, gave a lecture at Columbia Law School presented by the Center for Palestine Studies, Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School, Columbia Journal for Race and Law, and Columbia Middle East Institute. At the lecture, “Through the Lens of the Law: The ‘Jewish and Democratic State’,” Jabareen was introduced by Katherine Franke, a professor at Columbia Law School and anti-Israel activist.1
  • The speech was part of a week-long trip in the U.S. by Adalah officials – including Jabareen, Rina Rosenberg, and Suhad Bishara. The trip also marked the U.S. premiere of Adalah’s family reunification exhibit, “Families Interrupted,”“2 funded by the UNDP in cooperation with Society of St. Yves and Sidreh Nissaa Alnagab, a Bedouin women’s initiative.
  • Bishara also spoke on “Securing Land Rights for Palestinian Citizens of Israel” at NYU.3

Highlights of Jabareen’s lecture/Q&A:

  • Boycotting Israel: “Let us imagine that there is no occupation, and tomorrow we have a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and I can bring you many scenarios that justify politically to call for boycott.”
  • Definition of Israel as a Jewish state: “Palestinian will never recognize this issue.”
  • Misleading statements on Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (see below).
  • Bedouin soldiers: We “cannot support them. Like to be proud as Israeli soldiers.”
  • Offensive comments about Druze citizens of Israel.
  • “Every state in the Middle East, whatever you can say, fanatic or not, whatever you can say about Iran, all of us knows that Iran manage a rational foreign policy. Because they have this normal political mentality.”
  • Hebrew language: “Because in ‘48 we lost everything, and we became Hebrew speakers because the demography and the language was changed at that time.”

Israel as a Jewish State

  • Discussing cultural characteristics of a Jewish State and Hebrew language, “Because in ‘48 we lost everything, and we became Hebrew speakers because the demography and the language was changed at that time.”
  • “Palestinian will never recognize this issue.”
  • Jabareen cannot accept Israel as a “Jewish state” because of “controlling laws and because it negates the Nakba.”

Boycotting Israel

  • When discussing the “Boycott Law” before the Supreme Court, the Justices asked, “But what about calling for boycott on matters that has nothing to do with occupation? Isn’t that a part of delegitimizing Israel as a state and you will reach anti-Semitism or not?”
    • Jabareen responded, “Honor, yes. Let us imagine that there is no occupation and tomorrow we have a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and I can bring you many scenarios that justify politically to call for boycott and we have to see it as part of freedom of expression.”
    • Example: “The Foreign Minister of Israel asks to transfer the Palestinian citizens in the Triangle to other area. I think the leadership of the Palestinian citizens allowed to say, politically, to call for boycotting Israel government and to say ‘All the world must boycott this government because this government include racist ministers.’”
  • Justifying academic boycott: If “I am professor at NYU or Columbia University, I don’t want to give the privilege to people who has privilege because of the occupation. So this why I am boycotting. Not because I am racist person, in fact because I am against colonialism, I am against occupation.”
  • Summarizing State of Israel’s position: “They say, we as State facing serious problem from the BDS…Their main argument that boycott cause serious damages to Israel and this is why the state has the right, despite the right of freedom of expression, to defend itself.”

“Breaking” the Law of Return

  • In order to argue and imagine equality in family reunification, “I have to break the Law of Return. And I have to say that the Law of Return discriminate between Arab and Jews, and if I break that it will be trouble. Because this Law of Return is like, holy.”

Misleading statements on Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law

  • “Now that means that if I meet American woman she was born in America, but originally her parents from Lebanon…we cannot live together in Israel as family.”
    • Jabareen does not discuss the reason for the temporary law – preventing terrorists from entering Israel. Twenty-three terrorist attacks, including a March 2002 suicide bombing in Haifa that killed 15, were carried out by individuals who exploited their marriage to an Israeli citizen to enter Israel. Eighty-six percent of all terror injuries occurred in such attacks. For instance, in 2012, “a West Bank Palestinian naturalized through a family reunification procedure some 15 years ago” planted a bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv. The resulting explosion injured 28; there were no fatalities.4
    • The temporary law restricts the right to automatic citizenship for peoples from “enemy states.” Families may still apply for citizenship/residency. Restrictions do not apply to men over 35 or women over 25. Nothing in the amended legislation prevents an Israeli/Palestinian couple from living with their spouse in the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, the law contains exceptions for humanitarian reasons such as medical cases or for family reunification. Temporary residence permits may also be granted.
    • Decisions based on the law are appealable directly to the Israeli Supreme Court.
    • In each case, a panel meets to discuss the merits of the allowing the other party to live in Israel. An American citizen, born in the U.S., as in Jabareen’s example, barring any personal security concerns, would not be rejected out of hand.
    • Adalah’s own website notes: “In 3/07, the Knesset passed the new law which…adds the more stringent denial of family unification where one spouse is a resident or citizen of Lebanon, Syria, Iran or Iraq – states all defined by Israeli law as ‘enemy states’ – and/or is an individual defined by the Israeli security forces as residing in an area where activity is occurring that is liable to endanger Israeli security.” (emphasis added)

“Palestinian” Druze & Bedouins

  • “Now the question, if they serve in the army and they are soldiers in the army, can their serving in the army give them the privilege of not being Palestinians in the aspect of citizenship and territoriality? No.”
  • “The Syrian Druze under occupation [i.e. in the Golan Heights], they have richer cultural life than the Palestinian Druze that serve in the army.”
  • “If you are Bedouin, also some of the Bedouins serve in the army in Israel – a few…And all of their campaign they are saying ‘but we are serving the state, we are in the army…why are we living in unrecognized village?’ So now they found that this campaign and this advocacy of them they are not gaining the Israeli public and they are losing their people. So they stopped using this terminology. Because by this terminology, me and Suhad cannot support them. Like to be proud as Israeli soldiers.”

Israel’s imagined defeat

  • “The Israelis don’t reach the question of what if we will be defeated in a war with the Arabs… This question they don’t reach. And I say if you reach this question and you change your imagination, it will easy to think rationally – I mean politically, like to find [a] solution. But you cannot imagine that. This is not part – the defeat is not part of the imagination.”

Iran’s rational foreign policy

  • “Every state in the Middle East, whatever you can say, fanatic or not, whatever you can say about Iran, all of us knows that Iran manage a rational foreign policy. Because they have this normal political mentality.”