Tag: apartheide

The discourse about Israel and Palestine has widened, become more honest and aligned with facts rather than ideological positioning and propaganda. Many people around the world are speaking up, no longer willing to stay silent even though the reprisals against them might include branding them as anti-Semitic. Below is a small sampling of recent (except for the first item) statements, reports, and critiques about Israeli abuses that demonstrate the tide is turning. The first one is a video of an Irish MP Richard Boyd Barrett who “speaks truth to power,” in this case to the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland. This video clip is of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade in the Irish parliament, discussing in 2014 the situation in Gaza. But is well worth watching and realizing that until 2021, almost no politician in the U.S. would have dared to speak with such courage and candidness about Israel.

Irish politician condemns Israel and rebukes Israeli ambassador

“Why do you allow it [the expansion of settlements] to happen, if you’re serious about giving this land to the Palestinians. It’s absolutely extraordinary. Are you not just taking us, Ambassador, for idiots that you can say with a straight face ‘we’re serious about peace but while we’re serious about peace we’re going to seize Palestinian land’ and you expect the Palestinians to sit back and do nothing about that…”

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNUp3hGEPHk&width=864&height=648&rel=-1[/embedyt]

Former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa: “…actions in the occupied territories now meet the legal definition of the crime of apartheid under international law”

Two former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa, Ilan Baruch and Alon Liel, wrote an opinion piece published by a South African news site, GroundUp.org. The two former Israeli diplomats state that, based on what they saw in South Africa during their time as ambassadors, Israel operates an apartheid system in the occupied territories. What is newsworthy is that these two are Israelis, former ambassadors to apartheid South Africa. It is worth reading the entire piece but here is a short excerpt:

“The bantustans of South Africa under the apartheid regime and the map of the occupied Palestinian territories today are predicated on the same idea of concentrating the ‘undesirable’ population in as small an area as possible, in a series of non-contiguous enclaves. By gradually driving these populations from their land and concentrating them into dense and fractured pockets, both South Africa then and Israel today worked to thwart political autonomy and true democracy.”

Baruch and Liel go on to state, “This week, we mark the fifty-fifth year since the occupation of the West Bank began. It is clearer than ever that the occupation is not temporary, and there is not the political will in the Israeli government to bring about its end. Human Rights Watch recently concluded that Israel has crossed a threshold and its actions in the occupied territories now meet the legal definition of the crime of apartheid under international law. Israel is the sole sovereign power that operates in this land, and it systematically discriminates on the basis of nationality and ethnicity. Such a reality is, as we saw ourselves, apartheid. It is time for the world to recognize that what we saw in South Africa decades ago is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories too. And just as the world joined the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, it is time for the world to take decisive diplomatic action in our case as well and work towards building a future of equality, dignity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

https://www.groundup.org.za/article/israeli-ambassadors-compare-israel-south-africa/

Human Rights Watch: ‘The Crimes Against Humanity of Apartheid and Persecution’

In a report in April of this year, A Threshold Crossed – Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, Human Rights Watch described Israeli crimes against humanity. HRW is an NGO that refuses all government funding so as to remain independent and non-partisan in its research and advocacy. HRW won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its campaign to ban landmines. The report says in part: “Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

B’Tselem: Israel Promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians

In January of this year, B’Tselem published a report titled A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid. B’Tselem is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. On their website they state that the organization “strives to end Israel’s occupation, recognizing that this is the only way to achieve a future that ensures human rights, democracy, liberty and equality to all people, Palestinian and Israeli alike, living on the bit of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” In the report, they state the following:

“A regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another is an apartheid regime. Israeli apartheid, which promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians, was not born in one day or of a single speech. It is a process that has gradually grown more institutionalized and explicit, with mechanisms introduced over time in law and practice to promote Jewish supremacy. These accumulated measures, their pervasiveness in legislation and political practice, and the public and judicial support they receive – all form the basis for our conclusion that the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met.”

https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

American politicians condemn the recent military assault on Gaza

• Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, spoke at length to the House of Representatives on May 13 about the situation in Palestine. Part of what he told members of Congress is the following: “When serious human rights abuses compound, such as the recent attacks on places of worship, like the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the forced removal of people from their homes, most recently in East Jerusalem, but ongoing in the West Bank for way too long, the jailing and military court trials for Palestinian children, the dehumanization of the lives of the Palestinians by having roads and entrances that are separate for some people–which all too often looks like a former South Africa, the blockade and open-air prison conditions for the people in Gaza, where food and clean water is often scarce…Today, we want to talk about the very long-term problems that have been, for too long, ignored by U.S. policies in the region. Fortunately, now more and more Members of Congress are wanting to address peace in this region in a more forthright way. As human rights giant South African Desmond Tutu said, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’”

• Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) came right out and described Israel as an “apartheid” state.

• Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) told President Biden when he arrived in Detroit in mid-May, “The U.S. cannot continue to give the right-wing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with U.S.-supplied weapons.”

• Ilhan Omar, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL-MN), has stated, “The United States should not stand idly by while crimes against humanity are being committed with our backing.”

• Cori Bush (D-MO) stated explicitly in a speech to Congress, “The fight for Black lives and the fight for Palestinian liberation are interconnected. We oppose our money going to fund militarized policing, occupation, and systems of violent oppression and trauma. We are anti-war. We are anti-occupation. And we are anti-apartheid. Period.”

Mainstream media condemn Israeli assault on Gaza

• MSNBC host Ali Velshi, in mid-May, talked about the situation in Israel and Palestine. He said, “The idea that it is even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable. One look at a current map of Israel, Gaza, and the Occupied Territories conjures up only one other example: apartheid-era South Africa… After more than seven decades of being deprived of land from which they were evicted, Palestinian frustration runs deep. It may be worth going deeper than what you may hear inside your bubble and understanding the depth to which the Palestinian people are subject to apartheid in their own land, deprived of basic necessities and subject to relentless civil right violations.”

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKkjPtleWEU&width=864&height=486&rel=-1[/embedyt]

• HBO’s show Last Week Tonight is hosted by political commentator and comedian John Oliver. During his show on May 17, he talked about the assault on Gaza. He said, “While most of the rockets aimed toward Israeli citizens this week were intercepted, Israel’s airstrikes were not. They hit their targets, including a … 13-story office and apartment building. And while Israel insisted there were military targets in that building, and they destroyed it as humanely as possible — even warning people to evacuate beforehand — for the record, destroying a civilian residence sure seems like a war crime, regardless of whether you send a courtesy ‘Heads up’ text.” He also stated, “Multiple children have been killed this week — eight in a single strike just yesterday — and the U.S. is heavily implicated here, not just by serving as Israel’s diplomatic shield at the U.N. but by constantly refusing to criticize the indefensible…”

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMLiv9jBp0Q&width=864&height=648&rel=-1[/embedyt]

• In an opinion piece in the New York Times on May 19, The ‘Unshakable’ Bonds of Friendship With Israel Are Shaking, senior NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof, wrote, “If you oppose war crimes only by your enemies, it’s not clear that you actually oppose war crimes.” He notes that “…today, especially within the Democratic Party, those bonds [of friendship] are shaking as Netanyahu resisted a cease-fire in Gaza. He leaves us wondering: Why should our tax dollars subsidize a rain of destruction that has killed scores of children, damaged 17 hospitals and clinics and forced 72,000 people to flee their homes?” He writes, “Netanyahu has used American cover to expand settlements and pretty much destroy any hope of a two-state solution. He has winked at domestic extremism, so that at least 100 new WhatsApp groups in Israel (with names like ‘Death to Arabs’) encourage violence against Palestinians. And now he is bombing Gaza and igniting street fighting that President Reuven Rivlin of Israel has called a ‘civil war.’”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/opinion/israel-democrats-united-states.html

Academic labor union passes resolution in support of Palestinian people

On June 10, the Delegate Assembly of the Professional Staff Congress, the academic labor union at CUNY (City University of New York), passed a resolution in support of the Palestinian people and condemning Israel of sponsoring policies of settler colonialism. The resolution also “calls on the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to stop all aid funding human rights violations and an occupation that is illegal under international law.”

https://www.psc-cuny.org/sites/default/files/Final_Resolution_in_Support_of_the_Palestinian_People.pdf

California activists stop Israeli ship from offloading its cargo

The first week in June, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) led a group of activists in a demonstration that prevented an Israeli container ship from offloading its cargo in Oakland, California. Dock workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 made the decision to not cross the protest line to unload the ship’s cargo. AROC organizers state that the “Block the Boat” protests will continue in various cities including Detroit, Philadelphia, Vancouver, and London.

http://araborganizing.org/block-the-boat-declares-decisive-victory-over-apartheid-israel/

From time immemorial, men have constructed dehumanizing systems of exploitation that stagger even the most vivid imagination. Each of these inhumane structures of society share some common characteristics including a self-serving distortion or disregard of divine guidance, creation of racial, ethnic, and/or religious hierarchies, extreme monopolization of resources, and implementation by the dominant class of systematic oppression or even brutality to subdue the subordinate population. The well-documented practices of the Pharaonic system imposed on the populace of Egypt for thousands of years perhaps best epitomizes the extent to which oppression was systematized in societies during antiquity.

Feudalism and Its Caste System

One of the exploitative social systems during the medieval ages, particularly from the 9th to the 15th century, was European feudalism. Feudalism was a tightly structured caste-like social system in which individuals were relegated to exclusive roles in society. At the top of the feudalism pyramid were the nobles or lords whose status came from their receiving lands in perpetuity from the Crown in exchange for their military service. Vassals were tenants of the nobles on land known as a fiefdom. Land was given to vassals in exchange for their support of the lord, and if enough land was accumulated by a vassal, they could become lords themselves. At the bottom of the feudal system were serfs/peasants who lived in mostly wretched conditions as unfree laborers on the lord’s land, giving him homage, labor, and a share of the produce. The institution of feudalism was relatively less barbaric than many other systems of exploitation.

Settler Colonialism and Slavery

One of the most dehumanizing systems to ever exist was that of chattel slavery. Trans-Atlantic settler colonialism of Europeans began with Christopher Columbus in the late 1400s. The centuries-long Trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved Africans ushered in a system of global exploitation whose vile residue of anti-Black and structural racism exist up to this day. Columbus was afforded the backing and financial resources of the Spanish Crown, particularly Queen Isabella, to explore a new mercantile route to China and India. Muslim domination of the Mediterranean and northeastern Atlantic seaboard of the African continent presented a major obstacle to the maritime aspirations of European seafaring countries like Spain and Portugal. Queen Isabella shared Columbus’ anti-Muslim sentiment and dedication to Christianity, making his proposal to sail westward to find an alternate route to the spice-rich orient more appealing to the Spanish Crown. Other European nations like Italy and Portugal flatly denied sponsorship of his ambitious proposal. Columbus, like Isabella, harbored crusading ambitions to recapture Jerusalem from Muslim control. Although never participating in a Crusade to Jerusalem, Columbus fought with Spanish soldiers during the bloody 1492 Christian reconquest of Granada, Spain, the last Muslim stronghold there. Spanish and Portuguese settler colonizers in the Americas were especially averse to the presence of Muslims in the New World due to their religious hatred of Islam after the near 700-year control of Al-Andalus by Muslims.

Racial Segregation and Apartheid

In addition to the oppressive systems of feudalism and slavery is the abhorrent system of apartheid. In 1913, three years after South Africa gained its independence from Britain, racial segregation and White supremacy were institutionalized with the passage of 1913 Land Act. The Land Act forced Black Africans to live in resource-deprived, woefully overcrowded reserves. The Afrikaner National Party won the national election in 1948 on the campaign pledge of Apartheid, Apartness. The new government’s immediate goal was to not only separate non-Whites from Whites, but to also separate non-Whites along tribal lines to decrease any potential unifying political power. In a series of Land Acts passed over the years, 80 percent of South Africa’s land was reserved for the minority White population. Non-Whites were forced to carry passbooks confirming their authorization to be in each area. This practice had historical precedent in chattel slavery in the United States. Apartheid legislated that marriage and sexual relations between Whites and non-Whites was illegal. The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified all South Africans by race — Bantu (Black Africans), Coloured (mixed race), and White. A fourth category of Asian (Indian and Pakistani) was later added. Movement, jobs, housing, and other privileges were assigned based on these categories. Black Africans were at the bottom of the apartheid structure and were most brutally sanctioned, punished, and killed.

The two nations that never wavered in their support of the almost 50-year apartheid regime were the United States and Israel. South Africa was a pariah to most of the nations of the world due to the sheer brutality of the regime and its unapologetic racist practices.

Yet, despite South Africa being backed by the United States, the global movement against apartheid eventually triumphed against seemingly insurmountable odds. Massive global demonstrations against apartheid undoubtedly played a significant role in its eventual demise in South Africa. But, more importantly, the world community sustained an effective boycott of South African companies and their products that proved too high a cost. Even the United States government eventually recognized that apartheid was destined for the trash bins of history much like chattel slavery, feudalism, and the pharaonic system in ancient Egypt.

Apartheid: Israeli Retrogression

Israel adopted its own version of homelands (Bantustans) by appropriating occupied land for Jewish immigrants from primarily Europe and America. Israel, like apartheid South Africa, receives unqualified support from the United States in its racist, inhumane treatment of non-Jewish citizens. It is a racist state that remains unrepentant for its actions against its Palestinian citizens and those who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel acts with impunity due primarily to United States economic and military support and its pressure on other nations to abstain from taking action against Israel.

In mid-May, Israel ended its most brutal 11-day aerial assault on the population of the Gaza Strip after unprecedented worldwide demonstrations and denunciations by citizens and governments. In the United States, the largest pro-Palestinian demonstration ever held in Washington, DC in modern times was held at the Lincoln Memorial on May 29. The Sanction Israel Rally, whose sponsors included American Muslims for Palestine, USCMO, and ICNA CSJ, attracted over 35,000 demonstrators. The Israeli attacks had targeted an already limited number of hospitals and medical facilities, roads leading to standing hospitals like the one in Gaza City, residential buildings, and local infrastructure like a water desalination plant. There is no standing army in Gaza, no jets or armed personnel vehicles, or any other means for the populace to be able to defend themselves against the most heavily armed and deadly military in that part of the world. According to the UN, at least 58,000 Gazans were internally displaced, further exacerbating existing overcrowding and food shortages. The health needs of the people of Gaza were made worse as the World Health Organization estimates that at least 200,000 of the two million Gazans are in dire need of medical attention. Only two percent of Gazans have received Covid-19 vaccinations in a country that boasts one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. The Zionist government of disgraced leader Benjamin Netanyahu imposed a near-complete blockade on Gaza in 2007 after the defeat of the Palestinian Authority and the election of Hamas as the representative government of Gaza. Essentially creating an open-air prison, the blockade is ongoing and Gazans cannot enter or leave Gaza without Israeli permission. This lockdown is nothing short of collective punishment which is prohibited under international humanitarian law. The blockade has been in effect for 14 years and Israel disallows basic food staples, baby formula and diapers, building essentials like concrete, and other items necessary for survival.

Prior to the military assault, Palestinian residents in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem were facing evictions to make way for a Jewish settlement. Based on a District Court ruling, at least 13 families were ordered to vacate their homes. In addition, under the pretext of controlling Palestinian protestors at Masjid al Aqsa, Israeli police and military attacked unarmed demonstrators and otherwise created havoc on worshippers at the sacred site.

The current BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement attempts to end international support for Israel’s maltreatment and oppression of Palestinians and force the government to comply with international law. The BDS movement is not an anti-Jewish effort nor is it an attempt to dismantle the state of Israel. It is an effort to halt genocidal actions against Palestinian people just as the anti-apartheid movement was never intended to drive all Whites out of South Africa or destroy that nation. We must avail ourselves of all legal, effective methods to stop the genocidal assaults on the Palestinian people by the state of Israel. BDS is a growing global movement that offers a realistic path to end the abominations committed against the Palestinian people since 1948.