OPINION | Jayapal Was Right — Of Course Israel Is a Racist State, and So Is the U.S.

by Guy Oron

In responding to Palestine solidarity protestors at a July 15 panel event in the Netroots Nation conference, U.S. Congress member Pramila Jayapal (a Democrat from Seattle) attempted to assuage the demonstrators by affirming that Israel was a "racist state."

Almost immediately after, Jayapal walked back the overly candid remarks, issuing a statement that clarified she was referring to racism within the reigning far-right Netanyahu government, not Israel as whole.

Yet the political damage was already done, leaving mainstream media inundated for days with lousy rebukes from Republicans and right-leaning Democrats. On July 18, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to condemn Jayapal's remarks 412 to 9. Even local Seattle leaders have engaged in the opportunistic pile-on.

While Jayapal's comments were politically unpopular, they were entirely accurate. Israel is a racist state — at least to the extent such a term has any utility.

Americans are the last people who should be astounded about the idea of a state being racist. After all, this country was literally built upon slavery and genocide.

From Jim Crow to Chinese Exclusion to Mexican repatriation to mass incarceration, U.S. history is replete with examples of racist policies. Just last month, the Supreme Court nullified affirmative action in higher education in what was widely regarded as an anti-Black decision. Living in a racist country is not an unfamiliar concept for us.

The state of Israel shares many parallels with the United States and other Anglo settler colonies, such as Australia and Canada. All these political projects were built on the expulsion, subjugation, and massacre of those country's Indigenous inhabitants and held together through a shared exclusionary identity.

In the case of the U.S., this is whiteness. For Israel, it is an idea of Jewish nationhood, i.e., Zionism.

Every aspect of the state of Israel and its military occupation of Palestine is built off this simple logic: that people with Jewish identity should have more individual and collective rights than those who are deemed non-Jews.

This logic has manifested itself in countless ways, including policies like the demolition of Palestinian homes, restrictions on Palestinians' freedom of travel, and systematic denial of asylum to Eritrean refugees. Even Palestinian citizens of Israel face legal discrimination in areas such as family unification and residential segregation.

These are facts that are widely recognized by Palestinians and nearly every reputable outside observer — including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem — all of whom have accused the state of Israel of engaging in the crime of apartheid.

A brief look into Israeli politics reveals how deeply racism undergirds every Zionist party, whether it be liberal, right-wing, or openly fascist.

On July 25, the day after Netanyahu's government pushed through its authoritarian judicial reform, garnering worldwide attention and condemnation, the Israeli Knesset passed a bill to allow more towns to block Palestinian residents from moving in. Liberal Zionist politicians, who boycotted the legislature just 24 hours earlier, were more than happy to collaborate with the government to discriminate against Arabs. For them, there is no opposition when it comes to racism; maintaining supremacy over Palestinians is "above politics."

Insofar as the term "racist state" refers to a sovereign political entity that structurally and institutionally discriminates against one group for the purposes of privileging another, then, yes, Israel is indeed a racist state. All the empirical facts point to this conclusion.

So if the evidence is on Jayapal's side, and her comment was not actually exceptional, what explains the strong political backlash against it?

Much like how calling a person a racist has become a moral harbinger of shame rather than a mere factual description, these labels could threaten the same moral weight against the state of Israel. Israel's powerful backers have personified the country, arguing that it has a "right to exist," despite the fact that no polity has such a right under international law; rights are for people, not political entities.

The fragility around Israel being labeled racist is primarily intended for white American audiences who live in fear of being called the same. Ultimately, this is a bad way to interpret racism, because racism is primarily structural, not personal.

For Zionists, understanding the facts on the ground, i.e., the ongoing persecution, ethnic cleansing, and violent repression committed against Palestinians, is antithetical to maintaining their political project. This racist state discourse is meant to distract from those facts.

By admonishing Jayapal, supporters of Israel are trying to demarcate what is and isn't acceptable speech, a tried-and-true tactic sometimes called the "electric fence" approach to public relations. The point is to give politicians and media outlets who criticize Israel such a headache that they stop doing it.

Anyone who actually cares about the emancipation of all people must fight back against this type of intimidation and tone policing.

Understanding that Israel is a racist, ethnonationalist, apartheid state is just the bare minimum. The next step is to win the struggle for freedom.

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