IDF Order Allows for Expulsion of Thousands of Palestinians from West Bank

Rabbi Joey Wolf

“Is the plunderer not himself plundered?”
(Isaiah 33:1)

    As the prophet proclaimed centuries ago in an era of obfuscation, when fundamental rights are trampled, it is inconceivable that the ones who participate in the crime will themselves be unscathed by it.  Still today, those who promote democracy for people at the margins have witnessed it being undermined at the core of their own justice system.

    In adapting an old legal strategy, the Israeli Defense Forces has given itself a new tool to delegitimatize, and thereby expel, Palestinians living in the West Bank.  By stipulating that they are “infiltrators”, whomsoever is deemed unacceptable may be deported.  The trouble with this, as Yehouda Shenhav has pointed out in The Time of the Green Line: A Jewish Political Essay, as far back as the early 1950’s the Israeli government employed the term “infiltrators” to designate Palestinian refugees wandering back and forth from Israel.  Back then it was across the Green Line, which demarcated the limits of the new state’s grip.  Today it’s the West Bank.  What’s important is that the shaky ground on which people were uprooted is once again threatening yet another generation that longs to reunite in a place it calls home.  The fact that we call it home too should reconcile us to behaving more hospitably.

    A lead editorial in today’s Ha’aretz sounds the alarm.  We should too.  By resorting to a policy that plunders the inhabitants of a territory under our control, we make it all too abundantly clear that this has been our intent from the beginning.