Black Lives Matter Echoes Prominent Critics in Its Statement on Israel

Alan Dershowitz’s Aug. 15 op-ed “Black Lives Matter must rescind anti-Israel declaration” argues that Israel is a democratic state that should not be compared with apartheid South Africa. Actually, Israel affords full rights only to its Jewish citizens, and its non-Jewish citizens experience discrimination in areas ranging from national service to housing. The rights of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are severely restricted, and virtually no rights are afforded to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Nobel Peace laureates Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have repeatedly stated that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is similar to or even worse than apartheid.

In 2014 Tutu said, “In South Africa, we could not have achieved our democracy without the help of people around the world, who through the use of nonviolent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the apartheid regime. The same issues of inequality and injustice today motivate the divestment movement trying to end Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory and the unfair and prejudicial treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government ruling over them.”

Like Tutu, members of the Black Lives Matter movement are empathetic to the struggles of other oppressed people. They are not satisfied to merely liberate themselves. Far from the bigots with whom Dershowitz would like to lump them, the members of Black Lives Matter who condemn Israeli oppression echo Tutu’s words: “We are members of one family, the human family, God’s family.”

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy is affiliated with the Saints Francis & Therese Catholic Worker community. This article is a reprint from the Boston Globe's Letters page.