Sam Jadallah writing in the San Jose Mercury News:
Freedom and equality must be centerpieces of American efforts to secure peace in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects this with misleading words and ongoing colonization of Palestinian territory. He offers caveats, limitations and conditions to ensure Palestinians will not realize fundamental aspirations and dreams.
His newest condition demands that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state, despite 20 percent of Israel’s population being Palestinian. This demand is akin to George Wallace insisting Martin Luther King Jr. recognize the U.S. as a white state. Yet, American leaders, who would never support the United States as a white state, uphold this in Israel despite such language implicitly relegating Palestinian citizens to inferior status.
Already, over 20 Israeli laws favor Jewish citizens and discriminate against Palestinians. And in the Israeli-controlled West Bank, Palestinians face segregated roads, unequal distribution of water and a dual system of law.
The question is how to break the impasse. I look to guidance Nelson Mandela offered from his prison cell. He asked, "What freedom am I being offered when I must ask permission to live in an urban area? What freedom am I being offered when I need a stamp in my pass to seek work?"
Read the entire article, "U.S. should stand against apartheid in Israel," here.
yes indeed! until more americans are made aware of the many similarities, it will take a while… having articles like this in more mainstream media is a big help… thanks!
Good luck! When many of the many of the people you are appealing to were fighting Apartheid and Jim Crow, while supporting the dispossesion (by aggressive war), and marginalization of Palestinians, do you really believe that appeals to reason or virtue will get anywhere?
Well, it’s one thing to play divide and conquer in the USA by appeals to equal dignity and equality for all, and another thing to do it where one does not want it. The goal’s the same, the guiding light’s the same, “what’s good for the Jews?” Short-sighted? Yes.
Prevalent? Yes.
Some powerful people always think they are constructing the eternal jewish insurance policy. Problem is, nothing ever repeats itself exactly the same, no? God help us all from the best of good “ethnic” intentions.
” God help us all from the best of good “ethnic” intentions”
Nice to be white, isn’t it, and free from all that “ethnic” victimisation, huh? No Al Sharptons or Jesse Jacksons for white folks.
I mean, if you don’t have a race, how can you be a racist?
Actually, our government, both federal and local, has made me choose my race/ethnic identity in many of its required paper forms throughout my life. You write as if this a choice I had, to ignore being boxed in by the happenstance of my birth. I had to X one of the list of boxes always or the form would be returned to me as inadequate. I am of course not as powerful as my government. Are you praising identity politics and its government
action, Mooser? How exactly am I free from “ethnic” victimization? A charitable
interpretation would be “ethnic” selection. And, what exactly is your definition of “white folks?” Within that definition, are you white folk too? Is your wife? What’s the difference in your mind, and in our government’s mind, state, local, and federal? Are you part of a race, or no? Is that your decision or somebody else’s?
What do you mean by “race?”
Jewish in the sense of Zionism is nationality. Its equivalent to Palestine being both Palestinian AND democratic, offering the right of return to Palestinians.
The double standard being, Witty, that “Palestinian AND democratic” can include Jews, while “Jewish AND democratic” excludes non-Jews.
Not without changing Palestinian law quite fundamentally.
It is illegal to sell land from a Palestinian to a Jew currently in the West Bank.
The current rhetorical standard of what is a Palestinian is by diaspora self-definition, not strictly by geography.
Lots of reform needed in the world.
Witty, that’s only been since 1948, and we all know why. The fact is, Palestinians trusted European Zionists enough to sell land to them the first time around; most of the land that Israel has expropriated from Palestinians formerly living there, was done by military force. It was done by ethnic cleansing.
You can’t talk about why a law like that exists without confronting earlier transgressions and violations of existing laws, international and otherwise, by Zionists.
61 years is a long time.
At some point it becomes something of different character than its original intent.
And, when it becomes something less progressive, generational (Balkan), its up to idealistic democrats to remind of the commitment to democracy, rather than just defensive nationalism.
They’re still trying former Nazi soldiers for the Holocaust, Witty. There is no statute of limitations on war crimes.
“61 years is a long time”
Gosh Richard, I thought the Israeli Occupation had been going on for 40 years!
Don’t be tougher on yourself than you have to, bubele!
Same distortions, same canards, same lies, day after day after day. And the same arrogance apparently, which convinces him he has bought the right of disruption.
Native Americans, and pretty much all other colonized people treated the sale of their land to those colonizing their land as an act of treason.
Sure the rhetoric is extreme, but the colonization of Palestine by Europeans is far more extreme and faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar more brutal. In any case its not like there are many Palestinians willing to sell their land to a group of people that is currently in the process of ethnically cleansing them.
Also lets not forget that Israelis rarely ever buy land from Palestinians… they just take it.
Although sometimes they pretend to have bought it with fake deeds.
link to haaretz.com
Re: James Bradley’s comment:
“You wish to prevent the Indians from doing as we wish them, to unite and let them consider their lands as a common property of the whole. You take the tribes aside and advise them not to come into this measure. You want by your distinctions of Indian tribes, in allotting to each a particular, to make them war with each other. You never see an Indian endeavor to make the white people do this. You are continually driving the red people, when at last you will drive them into the great lake [Lake Michigan], where they can neither stand nor work.
Since my residence at Tippecanoe, we have endeavored to level all distinctions, to destroy village chiefs, by whom all mischiefs are done. It is they who sell the land to the Americans. Brother, this land that was sold, and the goods that was [sic] given for it, was only done by a few. In the future we are prepared to punish those who propose to sell land to the Americans. If you continue to purchase them, it will make war among the different tribes, and, at last I do not know what will be the consequences among the white people.”–Shawnee Chief Tecumseh
Chaos referred to 1948 Mooser, relative to the rationalization for the Palestinian law to prohibit sales from Palestinians to Jews, punishable by death (historically usually by summary judgement).
And I’ll say it again: people who were part of the Nazi regime are still being charged with war crimes. There isn’t a statute of limitations on crimes against humanity, Witty, and that includes ethnic cleansing. So don’t pretend like 61 years was “a long time ago,” Mr. “Never Forget.”
And to say nothing of the fact, Witty, that Zionists are still perpetuating the same crimes that started in 1948. The settlement activity hasn’t stopped. It’s been continuous.
So, work to stop the settlement expansion, in the present.
Actually accomplish something, rather than punish, in the name of “anarchy”.
Better yet, how about actually help to achieve a viable, sovereign Palestine. That would take your support of Fayyad and Abbas though. Not “quislings”, strategists.
You only use soft language because Jews are involved.
No one, upon researching this conflict would take you seriously. No one who has seen how Jewish Nazis treat the indigenous Palestinian Arabs in their homeland.
You’re not motivating anyone, Nazi. You’re just talking to yourself. How does it feel Richard? To know that your Jewish country club is disintegrating slowly? Do you think people will forget what you and other snakes have done to the Palestinians?
You know, as vitriolic as Cliff is, he’s right. Witty’s agenda is merely to try to erode support for the anti-occupation movement specifically, and American progressivism where it is a threat to his beloved vaterland. He’s only trying to breed inaction and confusion by fabricating phony liberal credentials and then slandering actual proponents of modernity and social justice from that convenient sniping position.
“Chaos referred to 1948 Mooser, relative”
Don’t you think I knew that when I wrote the comment, Witty? But then, Ziocaine does play hell with your ability to perceive anything.
Hey, Mooser, what’s your excuse? You constantly sling slurs here and pretend you know all about the commenters here. Who slips the food under your closet door, your wife whom you paint as hell on wheels?
So, you are not motivated to help Palestinians achieve sovereignty, dignity, viability?
So, Richard, you are not motivated to support movement to allow the Palestinians
the same rights you’ve enjoyed since you were born, here in the propositional nation
explicitly not dedicated to any particular “flavor” of democracy?
And when did you stop beating your wife, Witty?
I believe that Palestinians do deserve full civil rights, and full sovereignty in their state.
I don’t abide by vague descriptions of what is “occupation”. (1967 or 1948 or any Jewish settlement), and then therefore vague descriptions of what it means in fact to “oppose occupation”.
Again, I think it is more than reasonable to criticize policy and behavior, and to invoke sympathy for Palestinians’ experience and need to improve that.
I think it is unreasonable to invoke “Zionism is racism”, as Zionism represents a vital assertion, a transition from a people suppressed and murdered, to a people self-governing.
I consistently advocate for “enough” Zionism, and consistently oppose expanisionistic Zionism, EVERYWHERE.
That you don’t see that is a poverty, as you also don’t see it with the majority of liberals that are concerned about this issue, and the majority of Jews.
So, rather than seek to persuade within a democracy, you seek to browbeat within a “mass movement”.
For someone to regard those values and consistent stands as “nazi”, speaks very poorly for you.
I think the part that Cliff and I consider “Nazi” is the part where you believe that white Jews are entitled to lebensraum in the Middle East, actually. Just for clarification.
How can you possibly conclude that rationally from my comments?
Perhaps you are projecting.
Or perhaps you are obtuse, Richard.
How can I possibly have drawn the conclusion that you believe that Israel has every right to expel Palestinians by force at least as far as the 1967 border, wait the survivors out to death and steal the property from their children from your comments, Witty? You tell me.
RE: “I think it is unreasonable to invoke “Zionism is racism”, as Zionism represents a vital assertion, a transition from a people suppressed and murdered, to a people self-governing.”
Why Witty, it’s the factual nature of the transition, the means to the end of it, that is the precise problem lingering on all these scores of years. Nobody cares about your spiritual Zionism–so long as it’s not implemented on the ground as it has been, and continues to be so implemented. You could be a Wicca witch and nobody would care, so long as real people outside your volunteer witch circle are not affected in their daily lives by your incantations, ceremonies, rituals, and myths.
This kind of statement could come from a German Nazi, who were really only trying to create an Aryan self-governing people. The problem with German Nazism was, as is with Zionism, that the chosen “self-governing” entity was oppressing others who were not deemed to be of the same ethnic affinity group. “Self-governing” is not a positive (and certainly not the bright shiny ideal you make it out to be) unless everyone of the governed is accorded the basic human and civil rights. That was the original problem with German Nazism, and it is the same problem that Zionism has.
American Jews are self-governing in the US. They don’t need Israel to “self-govern”. Do you honestly feel that you are not self-governing in the US? If so, why are you not in Israel? And if “self-government” allows for the second and third class citizenship of minorities, and the continual banishment of those who once lived there simply because they don’t belong to the accepted majority, then, seriously, from your viewpoint, what would be wrong with Christians declaring their basic “need” for “self-government” in the US, and banishing some non-Christians from the US, and treating the rest as lesser citizens merely because of their religion? You’ve got lax standards for a Jewish state that would appall you if they were instituted in the US by Christians.
“That you don’t see that is a poverty, as you also don’t see it with the majority of liberals that are concerned about this issue, and the majority of Jews”
You are lieing Richard. “The majority of Jews” have never supported Zionism, and you have absolutely no way of substantiating that statement. Why don’t we just compare the number of Jews who have gone to Israel with the number that has not? Or do you have some more meaningful way of measuring, like, ‘every Jew who ever put a quarter in the Blue Box is a rabid Zionist’.
“oppose expanisionistic Zionism,”
Since they started with no land at all under their rubric, Zionism has been “expansionist” from the beginning.
Reasonableness, whether your definition of it or another’s, is not the goal. Justice is.
Waving your baton and tapping it wildly on your lectern for Reasonableness! Reasonableness! Reasonableness! is not the point and not appropriate. Equality is.
Which is why we had mass movements like the formation of unions to get it, to browbeat those who didn’t want to part with their ideas to realize there were other than themselves on the planet.