“Apartheid-free” pledge is political theatre
Hartford recently declared itself an “apartheid-free community,” targeting Israel with a symbolic boycott pledge on Town Meeting Day. The optics are hard to ignore; a small, overwhelmingly white New England town choosing the world’s only Jewish state as the focus of its moral condemnation. That puts Hartford in the company of movements that became myopically obsessed with the tiny Jewish minority, including medieval England, the Spanish Inquisition, Tsarist Russia, and of course, Nazi Germany. This rarely ages well.
Supporters of these resolutions argue that Israel is uniquely illegitimate because it is an “ethnostate.” But that standard would implicate much of the world. Countries such as Armenia, Greece, Poland, and South Korea ground national identity in shared culture and ancestry. Japan maintains highly restrictive naturalization policies, while Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE make citizenship for outsiders extraordinarily difficult. Yet none of these nations are the subject of boycott campaigns at Vermont town meetings. Israel, by contrast, includes a substantial Arab citizenry who vote, serve in parliament, and sit on the Supreme Court. Like any democracy, Israel has flaws worth debating, but when discussion devolves into sweeping slogans like “apartheid,” it stops being about policy and becomes a campaign to single out the only Jewish nation as a political scapegoat.
What does Hartford’s resolution accomplish; a small town with no influence over Israeli policy nor the trajectory over the Middle East? It will not change the law in Jerusalem nor improve conditions for Palestinians. What it does is send a message to Jewish and Israeli residents of Hartford, neighbors with deep personal and cultural ties to Israel, that their connection is open to denunciation. For a place that prides itself on tolerance, choosing this topic as an object of political protest is a strange way to show it.
Criticism of Israel is legitimate, as it is for all democracies, but targeting the one Jewish state for boycott while ignoring global issues raises questions regarding true motivations. History has shown where isolation of Jews through boycotts and public indictments lead; they create conditions that excuse discrimination and violence. Will Hartford repeat those patterns?