This article was originally published by the Minnesota Spokesman Recorder on December 30, 2021.
The Israeli Consulate in Chicago announced Social Impact grants to three Minneapolis-based organizations, and held a ceremony on Thursday, December 9 to distribute the $5,000 checks to A Mother’s Love, Mr. Basketball Academy, and Minnesota STEM Partnership.
The irony of awarding “Social Impact” grants is astounding. This has been a year when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has killed hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, many of them children, demolished homes in Jerusalem and in the Naqab (Negev) desert, denied Palestinians the COVID vaccine, denied them freedom of movement, education, health care, water, livelihood, and arrested dozens of children from their beds at night.
In October, Israel declared that six human rights organizations are “terrorist” organizations, severely restricting their operations and funding.
What could motivate Israel to give American human rights organizations grants? Israel is suffering a public relations setback, which was exacerbated by their bombing of Gaza in May. Human rights abuses within Israel and the occupied territories have only intensified since then. Israel used to be able to apply oppression with impunity, but now there is increased awareness of the situation in the United States.
A growing number of US citizens are becoming sympathetic to Palestinians, and even favorable opinions of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are increasing. (The BDS movement attempts to compel Israel to comply with international law through economic, cultural, and educational boycotts and divestment.)
Clearly, Israel feels the need to counter this growing sentiment in the US by showing its support for “social justice”–everywhere except in Israel.
Make no mistake: Israel targets Palestinians simply because they are Palestinians. The 2018 “Nation State Law,” one of the Basic Laws which substitute for Israel’s constitution, clearly states that non-Jews do not have the same rights in Israel as Jews. This law is Israel’s admission that it practices apartheid, as two human rights organizations (B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch) laid out in separate reports in 2021.
Do the three organizations receiving grants from Israel really want to accept money from an apartheid state? Do they want to do public relations work for a country whose laws enshrine Jewish supremacy?
In my world, social justice means equality. These Minneapolis organizations are working towards equality, healing from past and present injustices, and community uplifting. But those values are contradictory to all that Israel stands for–ethnic supremacy, settler colonialism, and apartheid.
Organizations working for social justice should not accept money from countries working for injustice and inequality. The three community organizations that received grants should return the money. This should be done publicly and loudly, proclaiming that, n the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”