Activist Adam Horowitz visited Israel/Palestine last month. He reports:
One of the most interesting conversations I had on my recent trip was with Ali Haider, co-director with the Palestinian/Jewish organization Sikkuy in Haifa. He was very interested in talking about Obama (this was a few weeks before the election) and said he drew many lessons from American history for Palestinian citizens of Israel. He talked about the Or Commission which was a governmental commission set up after the beginning of the second Intifada when 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by the police during a demonstration. Among other things, the commission found that:
Haider explained that this was an important moment in Israeli history: an official acknowledgement of the "separate and unequal" nature of Israeli society. He said it was Israel's Emancipation Proclamation, and pointed out that in the US there was over 100 years between Lincoln's proclamation and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. That's where Palestinians inside Israel are now, and how far they have to go; and yet he was inspired by the example and by the fact that Obama could now be running for President.
Related posts:
- Cry the beloved country: Israeli civil rights org says 4 million Arabs have no right to life, right to work, right of movement, right to speak
- Obama administration supports equal rights for all Israeli citizens, even in a ‘Jewish state’
- Israeli City Underwrites Program to Stop Israeli Girls From Dating Israeli Arabs
- The New Republic Raises Dual Loyalty Issue, Re Israeli Arabs
- Samuel Huntington dies–freethinking scholar who inspired ‘Israel Lobby’ book
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Actually, Phil, reading the first paragraph of the summation, I see a situation similar to April/May of 1947, and 1921 and 1929: Arab mobs blocking roads, pulling Jews from vehicles to lynch them, attacks on the Jewish quarters of mixed towns, using firearms, molotov cocktails, pipe bombs and farm implements. Massive use of deadly force would have been justified by any Western law code and in fact the Israel Police's flexible (or disorganized and incompetent, more likely) response probably lowered the overall number of dead and wounded perpetrators: while unjustified homicides took place (cf. Asil Asil) appropriate force was also NOT applied in many instances, and somehow the police muddled through their inadequate response without massive Jewish or Arab casualties.
the obama admin will continue to blame arabs, muslims for problems created by jews, hindus, amurderkans. victims receive blame from thieves and liars and murderers and fools.
"US there was over 100 years between Lincoln's proclamation and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. "
Phil-
While this is a long time, this process African-Americans was accelerated by socially conscious Jews. Perhaps for Israel, there needs to be an ethnic outsider to help fund civil rights organizations and promote justice, much in the way that Jewish organizations spearheaded and funded the proud movement of Civil rights in this country.
Unfortunately, outside of the problems Israel had with Russian immigrants with false claims of Jewish heritage, there (effectively) is no immigration policy outside of aliyah. This might be a long time from Lincoln to the '60s, but bear in mind that there was a great deal of work facilitating this social change.
Where are the analogous gentile organizations (effective like the NAACP) and people in Israel pushing for Palestinian social justice? It just might take longer than 100 years without that.
king adrock?
Why the continuous comparisons between Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the the treatment of blacks in the United States? The comparisons don't work.
Blacks were property in the U.S. and were captured in Africa by Africans, and then sold into the worldwide slave trade. Palestinians were thrown off their lands by Zionist invaders.
The comparison between the post-Civil War treatment of blacks in the U.S. and that of Palestinians by Israel doesn't even work. Blacks were not thrown from their land in the U.S., or made refugees, and the government didn't wage war on them with the full might of the national military or even state militias. Blacks in the U.S. were largely second-class citizens, rather than potential non-citizens.
I don't know if Phil makes the comparisons for a specific reason, but Israel should be dealt with on the basis of what happens in Israel. Why make the situation personal to himself or to other Americans?
Journalist Jonathan Cook has been documenting the second-class and discriminatory situation of Palestinians within 1948 Israel in his books and articles. See http://www.jkcook.net/
Another comprehensive and cogent article on the issue, taking off from the recent events in Akka, by Peter Lagerquist:
"Recipe for a Riot: Parsing Israel’s Yom Kippur Upheavals"
http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/lagerquist_interv.html
There is no ethnic outsider with even a glimpse of power in Israel.
Israel was framed from the outset as a unique apple not an orange or even a lemon with potential to becoming lemonade.
There never was an Israeli melting pot theory, or even a mosaic theory. The matrix of Israel's laws in fact insures the contrary.
It's declaration of independence is in fact totally disconnected from
its founding description and parallel purpose, and the heavy weight of its implemented law gaggle.
While its motivating founding is understandable (much more so after the Shoah, which obviously the Christian West acknowledged), a safe haven
for world Jewry, it's founding literal fact on the ground was based on the
conceit that ground was one of "a land for our people on a land without people."
The ultimate truth: The West and the Jews decided the Palestinian Arabs didn't count. True this was power politics–with more than a
whiff of racisim by those who castigated it at Nuremberg.
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