"One can fully support even Israel's hard-line Likud position of no land before total security and still concede and regret that the IDF has committed human rights violations."
Every army has committed human rights violations. Israel requires its citizens to serve in the military.
This is clearly the expression of a dislike for a people. To boot, it's also a showy form of political correctness in a country where it's very popular to take pro-Palestinian positions.
"I have a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they (the Palestinians) wish to live in their own country."
So it's not just that Amit served in the army, it's that the Israelis object to the holocaust while having an army that commits human rights abuses. (With which Amit must agree because he's Israeli, right?)
-Magik
Every army has committed human rights violations.
And Wilkie would be fully within his rights to refuse to take on a member of any such army.
Israel requires its citizens to serve in the military.
Yes, and still some of them refuse to do so, because they (expressing what exactly? a clear dislike for a people?) find its activities reprehensible.
And how "showy" is an email sent to exactly one person?
There's no hint that he refuses to accept any grad students who has been in any army, and that's not at all what he says.
What he does say makes a clear linkage between "take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust" and "then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians". This is damning. He's not talking about human rights abuses; he's talking about human rights abuses by JEWS.
The obvious question in this case is: is it the human rights abuses he's objecting to, or the Israel part. It's hard to read that linkage he makes without concluding that it's the Israel part. (If not the implicit "Jewish" component.)
"Showy" was the wrong word. I should have said maliciously self-righteous.
I think it's fundamentally wrong to refuse to consider someone for employment primarily because you don't like their nationality. Candidates should be judged on their merits, not on the merits of their government.
Ogged: if you're agreeing that all armies sometimes commit human rights abuses, are you seriously suggesting that Wilkie would be within his rights to refuse to consider any candidate who had been in anyone's army? That doesn't seem like a very tenable position.
I think it's fundamentally wrong to refuse to consider someone for employment primarily because you don't like their nationality.
I agree with you completely. But Wilkie doesn't say he won't take Israeli's, just that he won't take people who served in the Israeli army. If that seems like a distinction without a difference, ask yourself whether you think Wilkie would take someone who, on his CV, wrote that he had been a refusenik. I think he would.
As for your second question, and Magik's point that Wilkie is carving a special category for service in the IDF, I have to say I conceded too much earlier. I do think Wilkie has a particular problem with the IDF, but I absolutely reject the inference that that means he has a problem with Jews. Again, I think there is a very good (or, at least, quite reasonable) case to be made that service in the IDF is particularly morally troubling. Without making the case in full here, I'll say it would include points such as: there is an illegitimate occupation that the IDF makes possible and the routine duties of IDF soldiers include human rights violations in a way that the routine duties of other countries' soldiers do not (such as house demolitions, for instance). I am NOT saying that I buy that argument (I'm not saying I don't buy it either), but simply that it's a reasonable case to make and Wilkie is entitled to reject someone based on it.
I very well may have missed it, but last I looked, the Israeli Supreme Court (a fairly liberal body) said there was, in fact, no right to refuse to serve in the army or refuse to serve in the occupied territories. I may be mistaken, but I thought some folks had been sent to prison for for attempting to declare such a right.
I may be wrong. Do you have any cites regarding such a right being declared? I'd be most interested. If such a right, however just (and I think it should be, but that's me), is not in Israeli law, the distinction you are thoughtfully and reasonably attempting to draw would seem to, nonetheless, fail on the facts. If it exists, of course, you are correct.
I think you're right Gary, they have been sent to prision. There is no "right." There is, of course, the option to go to jail, but that substantially weakens my argument, doesn't it?
I had a fairly lengthy conversation about this post with someone last night and I've been convinced that much more suspicion of Wilkie is warranted than I showed in the original post. Specifically, as Magik has pointed out, his linkage of the holocaust with the current Israeli/Palestinian situation is troublesome. Not because the Holocaust is unique in world history, but because it is nonetheless so much more horrible than anything the Israelis have even been accused of doing, that drawing on the implicit comparison between the two is tendentious and likely motivated by, shall we say, suspicious feelings.
So, if I were to revise my claim, I'd say that 1) as an advisor, Wilkie does have and should have discretion to reject anyone 2) his reasoning nevertheless merits condemnation 3) one could still make a more theoretical case, divorced from Wilkie's motives, that membership in some groups--with perhaps the IDF among them--is deserving of moral censure.
Thanks to the three of you for helping me sort that out.