Pappe
Ilan Pappe, interviewed by Eric Ruder at Socialist Worker, explains the status of Palestinians inside Israeli society:
Ruder: A chief component of Israel's "fight against delegitimization" is to claim that it's "inappropriate" to refer to Israel as an apartheid state. Israel's defenders assert that Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote and form political parties, so Israel is not at all like South African apartheid. How would you characterize conditions facing Palestinian citizens of Israel?
MY BOOK The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel examines this at length, but there are three levels of discrimination.
First, there's the legal level. And in Israel, this is carried out by separating the community into two kinds--those who serve in the army and those who don't serve in the army. By law, those who don't serve in the army don't have the same property rights, the same rights in terms of national security, insurance, welfare benefits, accommodation in universities and so forth.
Now, you can say it's not racist because it's not based on national identity, but Jews who do not serve in the army are not affected by this law. So in practice, these laws only apply to the Arab citizens of Israel--who, by a tacit agreement with the government, don't serve in the army. So that's a very legal basis, very clear legislation.
Then there is the semi-legalistic, more-gray area of regulations. Israel still has intact a set of mandatory emergency regulations that can be enacted at any given moment. These regulations are enacted every now and then, and then only against the Palestinian community, which gives a military government absolute control over the lives of people.
You can be arrested without trial, you can be distanced by force from your home, you can be expelled, your home can be demolished, the area in which you live can be cordoned off and declared a "militarily closed area" without any outside world intervention. And there, the military government can do whatever it wants.
The last time Israelis used these emergency regulations was when they implemented a newly passed law that Palestinians from Israel who married Palestinians from the West Bank could not live in Israel, they had to live in the West Bank. So they expelled these couples by force by declaring certain Arab villages in the center of Israel literally closed areas. And they used that to remove them.
The third level is the one that regulates daily contact between Palestinian citizens and Israeli authorities--the tax collector, the policeman, the judge. I will just give you one example, but there are many others. Even Israeli research shows that when Palestinians and Jews are brought before a court, Palestinian defendants who committed the same offense as a Jewish defendant will always get a stiffer sentence.
There are hardly any Jews who have ever been shot by the police as petty criminals, but quite a few Palestinians. When it comes to Palestinians, there is a very different posture taken by those who represent the establishment and the government. The most notable circumstance has to do with the airport, public transportation, railways and so on, where Palestinians are subjected to very humiliating searches, and sometimes are not allowed even to board a train or a domestic flight, let alone an international flight, just because they are Palestinian.
So it encompasses all walks of life. You are a second-rate citizen by law, you are a second-rate citizen according to the emergency regulations that can be enacted at any given moment, and if you forget about these two, your contact with whoever represents the official state reminds you of that.
That’s a very useful summary of the situation. Success and riches for some individuals are not ruled out, I suppose.
Is this clear enough for you, Zionists? Gosh, I wonder what would become of our American Jewish elites if this same no-army-no-privilege principle was enforced in the US?
They’d join the Coast Guard
“but Jews who do not serve in the army are not affected by this law. ”
This is false, as the rights are conferred parallel to the US GI bill following WW2. They are veterans’ rights, not ethnic.
I understood that Arabs were allowed to join the Israeli military. Druze and Bedouin do, and rise in the ranks.
“Then there is the semi-legalistic, more-gray area of regulations. Israel still has intact a set of mandatory emergency regulations that can be enacted at any given moment. These regulations are enacted every now and then, and then only against the Palestinian community, which gives a military government absolute control over the lives of people.
You can be arrested without trial, you can be distanced by force from your home, you can be expelled, your home can be demolished, the area in which you live can be cordoned off and declared a “militarily closed area” without any outside world intervention. And there, the military government can do whatever it wants.”
Every country has provisions for military law. In the US, it was used to put Japanese in concentration camps, 70 years ago, not that long ago. Phil’s father was alive when that occurred, and he “let it happen”.
“Even Israeli research shows that when Palestinians and Jews are brought before a court, Palestinian defendants who committed the same offense as a Jewish defendant will always get a stiffer sentence.”
This also occurs in almost all countries, where there are prejudicial attitudes. In the US, for possession of an ounce of marijuana, a black or Latino will most often get a longer sentence than a white. It also has a class component.
The worst prejudices were omitted by Pappe, that of the corrupt bribocracy that exists prominently in some Israeli administrative departments.
“but Jews who do not serve in the army are not affected by this law. ”
This is false, as the rights are conferred parallel to the US GI bill following WW2. They are veterans’ rights, not ethnic.
You don’t understand the basis of the discrimination. In Israel, rights are conferred on the basis of “eligibility for conscription”, not strictly army service. All Jews are eligible for conscription and thus get benefits regardless of whether they serve or not. This is how those Jews who opt out of service for religious study still qualify for these benefits. It is not army service, per se, but eligibility for conscription that is the determining factor. Palestinian Israelis, with the exception of Israeli Druze, are NOT eligible for conscription. They may VOLUNTEER for service, and some may even be accepted into service, but because they, as Palestinian Israelis, are not subject to conscription, they do not get any of the benefits that even a non-serving Israeli Jew gets.
Theoretically, the Druze, who are also eligible for conscription, would also gain these benefits, but the Israeli bureaucracy often fails to provide these promised benefits to the Druze.
This is definitely NOT AT ALL parallel to the US GI Bill, which confers limited benefits on all Americans, regardless of religion or ethnicity, who actually serve in the armed forces. The Israeli laws are simply thinly disguised ethnic-religious institutional discrimination, which can be easily seen and understood by anyone who actually wants to see what Israel is doing, rather than clinging to a fantasy that this is merely an Israeli version of “veterans’ benefits”. You haven’t been in Israel for 30 years; you don’t read any thing that upsets your fantasy and you don’t listen to anyone here, but yet you think you know more about Israel than Ilan Pappe. You are engaging in “self talk” again, Richard. Stop it. Listen. Learn. Use your eyes to see for a change.
Every country has provisions for military law. In the US, it was used to put Japanese in concentration camps, 70 years ago, not that long ago. Phil’s father was alive when that occurred, and he “let it happen”.
So, now you are blaming Phil’s father for the internment of Japanese AMERICANS during WWII??? Do you think that Phil’s father “held his nose” during this time? Did he think it was all for the greater good? If so, that makes him no worse than you, then. Why pick on Phil’s father?
You do know that the US has officially apologized for that travesty and granted compensation to the internees? It would be a step forward for Israel if it would simply STOP committing these types of travesties.
Richard you’ve never replied to any of the many posts I’ve made which explain that Palestinian political parties that demand Israel be designated as the State or homeland of all its citizens and ethnic groups, and not just a State for the Jewish people, are technically illegal under the terms of the Basic Law Knesset.
Discrimination is permitted without limitation against persons on the basis of “Nationality” in Israel (in lieu of race, citizenship, or religion). See Articles 8 & 10 of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (1992) as amended (1994) for complete details. Those discriminatory statutes include, but are not limited to the following: Law of Return (1950); Nationality Law (1952); Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (2003) Temporary Order 5763 (2003) extended to present; Absentee Property Law (1950); Status Law of Israel (1952); Basic Law: Israel Lands (1960); Land Acquisition Law (1953) as amended (2010); Planning and Construction Law (1965); Law on Agricultural Settlement (1967); Israel Lands Authority Law (2009).
I’ve also listed a number of other laws and military orders that facilitate Israeli apartheid in the occupied territories by establishing separate public sectors for Arabs and Jews., e.g. link to mondoweiss.net
thank you hostage for erudition
>> Phil’s father was alive when that occurred, and he “let it happen”.
This gets more interesting every day. RW is now openly attacking Phil through his father, while engaging in precisely the type of “academic speculation” he routinely condemns.
C’mon, Phil, admit to RW that Zionist terrorism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was a “necessary” evil, tell him that you would have “held your nose” right alongside him, and all will be forgiven. :-)
Apartheid S. Africa provided a sort of partial franchise to certain groups of non-whites, who had their own elective council. Zionists tend to negate the votes of Palestinians within the Knesset and don’t bother with giving Israeli Palestinians their own elective council but the similarity of the Apartheid South African and Zionist systems are obvious to anyone bothering to do the research and to make the proper mappings.
Pappe’s explanation, while briefly stated here, is an excellent outline, but it seems to me that he misses one final distinction. Even if all three of these levels of discrimination that render Palestinian citizens second-class were to disappear tomorrow, Israel would still be a Jewish State, and non-Jewish citizens would have to endure that stigma, not to mention a Law of Return that invites Jews from all over the world to accept their “birthright” of first-class citizenship. I would bet that less than 1% of US Jews would find it tolerable if the US were declared a Christian State, even if Jews did not suffer from any of the liabilities Pappe discusses, and even if there were no special privileges afforded foreign Christians. The mere designation would be unthinkable.
In other words, while Pappe’s forms of discrimination could theoretically be diminished or even eliminated entirely (and after 63 years, they are only getting worse, not better), this unrealistically optimistic outcome still would be something that all US Jews, and all people of common sense and good will, would find intolerable if practiced here.
Of course, Pappe’s discussion relates to acute disadvantages that have concrete consequences, and appear to be permanent features of the Israeli polity. There are numerous “liberal Zionists” who recognize and decry this discrimination, and insist that Israel must rectify the situation to be considered legitimate. (After 63 years, it is difficult to tell when their deadline is.) But while reduction of the discrimination would no doubt bring great relief, the notion that a Jewish State could provide truly equal rights to all citizens strikes me as inherently impossible.
The socialist worker should know better than to act as if Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians happens in a vacuum. They devolve into “loser liberalism” quite often, this seems to be another example. They’re basically pleading for Israel the state to get its act together….. Not sure what reform of the capitalist state construct has to do with socialism…..Seriously, a reporter from the “socialist worker” doesn’t ask one economically minded question? Must be an American.
I think the title should be changed to -second CLASS’ citizens. Second-rate implies that Palestinians are not as good citizens as Israeli Jews.
Richard Witty suggests ‘the rights are conferred parallel to the US GI bill following WW2′. Not so. Every right and privilege depends on this, but even so Druze and Circassians do not get equality e.g. they are still excluded from 93% of the land as the JNF/ILA do not accept them.
I’m not sure Tree is right re it depends on eligibility rather than actual service. The reason I say this is that under the discharged soldiers amendment act 1968 Haredi ultra orthodox do not serve and are therefore not eligible for welfare benefits at a higher level BUT to ally this, since they have the largest no. of children, a special grant has always been made to the Ministry of Religion to cover the cost of paying the child benefit in question.
Israel is the only state in the world to deliberately use what we would term indirect discrimination (where a neutral provision, criteria or practice applies to all equally, but affects one group more than another). The UK state, despite its racism, has attempted to eliminate racism in society via Race Relations/Equality Acts. Israel perpetrates racism and increases it.
Please tony, give us your comments much more often than you have been so far!
I am surely not alone in appreciating what you contribute.
What Pappe describes as the Palestinian situation within the Green Line reminds me, in part, of the dhimmi status of Christians and Jews under Islamic rule. While that status was abolished over 150 years ago by the Ottoman empire, it’s incredible that Israel saw fit to restore that status to the Palestinians who refused to be ethnically cleansed. I guess the zionists not only brought with them the worst of European racism and sectarianism but also revived a status that the Ottoman empire had abolished. Worst of both worlds, really.
The system of discrimination in the State of Israel has more in common with the Czarist Empire or with inter bellum Poland than with pre-tanzimat Ottoman Empire.