People accuse Jews of weaponizing antisemitism to absolve the Israeli government of responsibility for its treatment of Palestinians. Yet more often than not, the criticism levied at Israel supporters (ie people who don’t want the country destroyed) has very little to do with the Israeli state but ends up being an emotional attack on the person’s “don’t destroy Israel” position. I realized it wasn’t enough for me to point to the antisemitism of anti-Israel critiques if I didn’t also have examples of what honest criticism looks like.

Enter The Absentee Property Law. Passed in 1950, the APL dictates how the Israeli government deals with property left behind by Palestinians who left, fled, or were deported before September 1, 1948. This law made it so any property under this definition could be expropriated by the state without providing compensation to the original owners.

To put this law in context, the world was still recovering from the ravages of WWII, and in its wake the world saw one of the largest migrations of people in recent history — from soldiers returning home to POWs being resettled. Throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, absentee property was a common problem and a variety of state mechanisms were enacted to deal with it throughout the world.

That being said, the APL is not only still active in Israel, according to its dictates it will remain active until Israel is no longer in a state of emergency. Guess who is still in a state of emergency?

The Absentee Property Law’s open ended bounds continues to be used today, particularly in East Jerusalem where Jews had been forbidden from visiting by numerous Arab majorities in the past. In response to this fear, the state uses the APL to unfairly transfer private Arab property to the state as a means of insuring Jews won’t lose access to the area. For example, if your family owned a home, and the person named on the deed dies, if the next of kin isn’t currently living in Israel, the property could become absentee property.

Like everything in Israel that touches on a right to exist in the homeland, the APL is a contentious subject among two peoples used to losing all they own.

So when someone calls you a Zionist shill, you can tell them that you’re not being paid by AIPAC, all peoples have a right to self-determination, and you actually think the APL is a terrible law that has no place in a just land.

A reminder: Deligitimizing Jewish or Palestinian connections to the homeland is a bad look. Peace is the right look. Let’s focus on that.