Never Mind the South African Whites: Let the U.S. Open Its Doors to Palestinians and Israeli Jews

Donald Trump’s offer of U.S. sanctuary to white South Africans is rightly considered a racist gesture not justified by any serious discrimination or persecution, much less the “genocide” referred to by the Fabulist-in-Chief.  Many other groups are far more entitled to of asylum than the farmers who still own most of South Africa’s land. But there are two groups who should be considered prime candidates for admission to the Land of the Free: Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

Admitting the Palestinians who wish to live here is a no-brainer. This is a people who are in danger of genocide or who are being murdered as we talk; if anyone deserves asylum, they do. Moreover, those who supplied the weapons used by Israel to maim and kill them, as well as providing political and ideological support for their partial extermination, obviously owe the survivors compensation. Most Palestinians would probably prefer to live in a free, peaceful, autonomous Palestine, but Americans should welcome those who want to join us here for however long they want to stay.

Less obviously, but with clear justification, we should open the Golden Door to Israeli Jews as well. Last year, some sixty thousand Israelis left their country – a record emigration – and forty percent of those presently resident in the Jewish State admit to thinking about leaving. This is not hard to understand.  I have many friends in that country who are deeply troubled by their government’s complicity in genocide, and who don’t see things improving significantly in the future. The U.S. government that, in league with Israeli ethno-nationalists, has made Israel’s foreign and domestic policies an affront to Jewish values and a source of rising antisemitism, owes the Jews as well as the Palestinians a right of sanctuary.

Both Palestinians and Israeli Jews tend to be highly skilled, family-centered, socially responsible people whose presence in America would enrich this country in every way.  Why not admit those who wish to live with us, while giving all of them the choice to remain in the Holy Land or to emigrate?  No doubt, some Israeli and American Jewish leaders will brand this proposal outrageously anti-Israel, a disguised form of antisemitism, yada yada. Their predecessors made the same noises after World War II, when Jews and progressives averse to displacing the Arab population of Palestine recommended the mass admission of Jewish refugees to the U.S.A.  But it’s still a fine idea.

 In the destruction of Gaza, we see the execrable results of a political Zionism based on Jewish supremacy over the Palestinians and an imperialism based on U.S. supremacy over all the peoples of the Middle East. Inviting the victims of these oppressive policies to share the relative wealth and freedom of the United States seems the least that we can do.

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