This is a short follow-up to "Obscuring the Roots of Conflict in Palestine-Israel".
I was talking with a friend about Jewish Voice for Peace and how they represent a pernicious presence in the American peace movement and it occurred to me that JVP is guilty of peace malpractice.
If you went to the doctor with a serious cough and s/he told you that you just had a bad cold when in fact you had early-stage lung cancer then that doctor would have done you a grave, perhaps even deadly, disservice if you failed to get necessary treatment because of the misdiagnosis. The matter would be even more egregious if it turned out that your doctor knew you had cancer and deliberately misled you.
Jewish Voice for Peace is guilty of peace malpractice because they promote a narrative or diagnosis that they know or should know is false regarding one of the pivotal conflicts of our time. JVP's position is that "the occupation" refers only to territory captured by Israeli forces in the 1967 war. and this they claim is the "root cause" of the conflict in Palestine-Israel.
The malady or root cause of the conflict is Jewish supremacism just as the cause of conflict in South Africa and the Jim Crow south was White supremacism. As I wrote on Saturday: For nineteen years, from 1948 until 1967, Israel did not control East Jerusalem, Gaza, or the West Bank. So, what then was the "root cause" of the assassination of UN envoy Folke Bernadotte by Jewish terrorists, Israel's "border wars" in the 1940s and 1950s, the Lavon affair, the Suez crisis, and the 1967 war?
To be generous, JVP's diagnosis is a bad case of pneumonia in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem but in reality the problem is the cancer of Jewish supremacism in Palestine. Until we get the diagnosis correct we won't be able to treat the problem.
See also: "
The Concept of 'Jewish Supremacism' "