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Shmuel

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• SF officials describe 'apartheid' label as 'intolerance alienating the Jewish community'
  • Shmuel May 25, 2013 at 7:39 am

    Those who don’t speak out against them.

    Against whom? The members of San Francisco's board of supervisors (7 out of 12) who think they're doing the Jewish community a favour by equating this ad (end apartheid ) with the previous one (Muslim savages)?

  • Shmuel May 25, 2013 at 5:33 am with 6 replies

    intolerance alienating the Jewish community

    Why? Did someone suggest that the Jewish community in SF practises apartheid? Supports apartheid? Defends apartheid? The ad mentions Israel (not the Jewish community), Americans (not Jewish Americans) and the U.S. (not the San Francisco Jewish community).

    Had someone called out the "Jewish community" (or at least its mainstream institutions and most vocal spokesmen) for its support and defence of apartheid, that would have been alienating - true, but alienating. If the "Jewish community" can't take its political choices being challenged (even harshly), then it should stay out of politics.

    It's rather ironic that it is those claiming to defend the Jewish community -- not the people behind the ad -- who are blaming all Jews (by religious/ethnic association) for Israeli apartheid. Shame on them.

• San Francisco bus ads condemn Israeli apartheid: backlash begins
  • Shmuel May 11, 2013 at 5:27 pm

    Apartheid defined under international law.
    Apartheid is defined as an institutionalized form of racism in which states enact laws which function as the apparatus to commit inhuman acts for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. The practice of apartheid is a crime under international law.

    Racism or racial group is any distinction, exclusion or preference based on race, color, religion, descent, national origin, ethnic origin or other criteria which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the rights of one group.

    Apartheid Regimes Rely on Three “Pillars of Apartheid” to Maintain Their Domination

    Pillar 1: The state codifies into law a preferred identity. It then establishes adjunct laws that grant preferential legal status and material privileges to the preferred group on the basis of their identity while discriminating against the non-preferred group on the basis of the inferior status afforded them.

    Pillar 2: The state segregates the population into geographic areas based on identity. The state establishes security laws and policies designed to suppress any opposition to the regime. The favored identity receives preferential access to land, water, other resources and to government benefits and services while the non-preferred group is confined to ever- shrinking, non-contiguous, besieged territorial enclaves.

    Pillar 3: The system of domination is reinforced through assassinations; administrative detention; torture; cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment; and arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of the non-preferred group.

    Using these criteria, the May 2009 South African study finds that “Israel, since 1967, is the belligerent Occupying Power in occupied Palestinian territory, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.”

    The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA has summarized the findings of this study to help people understand that talk of apartheid is more than just rhetoric and to provide a tool which concerned citizens can use to help bring an end to Israel’s apartheid regime.

    Source: http://icahdusa.org/multimedia/downloads/2012/12/is-israel-an-apartheid-state-single-page.pdf

    The full South African Human Sciences Research Council study can be found at:
    link to electronicintifada.net

• Israeli right-wing flys off the deep end following Hawking boycott
  • Shmuel May 9, 2013 at 12:47 pm

    "Stephen Hawking's message to Israeli elites: The occupation has a price"

    That is the message of the academic boycott in general to the Israeli elites: Your colleagues, mentors and students -- people for whom you have deep respect and admiration -- are outraged by Israeli policies and long-standing intransigence, and wish to express solidarity with their (and your) Palestinian colleagues, by not crossing their picket line. As more and more academics, like Stephen Hawking, join the boycott, it will get harder and harder to dismiss them as naive, misinformed, manipulated, hateful or hypocritical.

    The message is that business cannot simply go on as usual in Israeli faculties and labs (as well as at high-profile media events like the "Presidential Conference"), while policies of apartheid and oppression are implemented only a few kilometres (or metres in some cases) away.

• A Catholic heritage community is next on the occupation's chopping block
  • Shmuel April 28, 2013 at 4:51 am with 2 replies

    I wonder whether the pope will raise the issue of Cremisan in his upcoming meeting with Shimon Peres (30 April, at the Vatican). The subject of the meeting (as reported by the Italian press) is in fact the legal and fiscal status of Church properties in the Holy Land. Thus, even if His Holiness doesn't want to offend his guest by talking about such pesky issues as occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, torture, administrative detention, etc., he can safely broach a subject directly pertaining to Church real estate.

• The limits of liberal Zionism: 'NYT' columnist Roger Cohen misrepresents the Nakba and the right of return
  • Shmuel January 29, 2013 at 1:36 am

    Netanyahu and Lapid speak for Jews collectively.

    No, they speak for Israelis collectively (albeit an ethnically-engineered electorate - by means of selective immigration, ethnic cleansing and apartheid).

• Visualizing Palestine: Imagine if you were born at an Israeli checkpoint
  • Shmuel January 23, 2013 at 3:02 pm

    You seem to be saying, in effect, that we need to accept the radical Palestinian position, period.

    Not really - although I do consider the right of return, as understood by the UNGA and the refugees themselves, to be a moral, legal and pragmatic imperative.

    The thrust of my comment was that you do not in fact accept RoR, and so it is dishonest to state that you do - redefining the concept to the point of emptying it of all meaning. If you reject Palestinian RoR (as do the vast majority of Jewish Israelis), please say so, instead of playing semantic games.

    it seems to me that demanding the RoR to their actual former homes inside Israel , without admitting that that’s a euphemism for the destruction of Israel – there’s the dishonesty.

    The expression "destruction of Israel" is also dishonest in this context, as advocating the RoR implies no such thing. What it does imply is an end to ethnocracy, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. I would call that "constructive" rather than "destructive", but to each his own.

• Exchange on anti-Sephardi racism on the left
  • Shmuel January 7, 2013 at 3:10 am

    But this is the most important point: the biblical themes in Jewish religious Zionism greatly overshadow the European nationalist themes. In fact, most Jewish religious Zionists are extremely hostile to European nationalism.

    Once upon a time, there were a bunch of European Jewish assimilationists, who wanted nothing more than to be good Germans, Austrians, Hungarians and Czechs. When they discovered that their discarded religious origins were a greater impediment to that goal than they had originally thought, they decided that if they could not be good Germans etc., they would become like good Germans etc. ... but Jewish!

    They had their work cut out for them. They needed to invent a people, a homeland, a national language, mythology, folk culture, high culture, symbols, holidays, etc. Some things could be borrowed (with a few necessary changes) from the Jewish religious traditions they had rejected as primitive and backward, while others would have to be baked from scratch. The political and cultural model would of course be mitteleuropäisch, but the specific content would have a different national flavour. European folk cultures were a good place to start, with a little orientalism thrown in (after all, Jews were "semitic" and the moorish style was all the rage in modern synagogue architecture) and a little religious culture to taste (weren't European nations infused with their religious culture?)

    Bourgeois assimilationists weren't buying it, nor were religious Jews of all stripes. So they looked eastward to the impoverished, but largely traditional Jewish masses. That meant upping the dose of religious elements in Jewish nationalism (Palestine, myths, symbols, holidays, etc.) and even tossing in a little socialism (for those Jews so inclined), but that couldn't be helped. They enjoyed a modicum of success, but were still opposed by virtually all religious leaders, although they were quick to exploit any sign of religious support for their new ideology - whether that had been the intention of the leaders in question or not.

    They were eventually joined by a small group of religious Jews, who embraced their modern, European national aspirations, but needed to flesh out the religious justification for it (and develop their own mythology regarding their role in the movement from its very inception, and even before). For the most part, these religious Zionists aligned themselves with the mainstream within the movement. Some had serious doubts and fears of where such nationalism might lead, and took moderate, pragmatic positions.

    Fast forward. The State of Israel is established and gradually, the reformist religious streams that had been vehemently opposed to Zionism, come around, but (not believing in the supernatural or the divine authorship of Scripture) adopt the secular Zionist positions. After the '67 war, both secular and religious messianism went wild, with Orthodox religious Zionism finally finding its niche in the movement - largely imitating the culture of the earlier, secular settlement movement on which they had missed out. From a small, core group of mystic-nationalists, Orthodox religious nationalism spread to virtually the entire Orthodox Zionist public, even making inroads into some Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) groups. They rallied around the Zionist flag - but heightened its "authentic" Jewish meaning; embraced the army, guns, violence, apartheid and ethnic cleansing - but sanctified them and sought religious justification and precedents; and developed a theology that would explain the secular origins of the Zionist movement and the scant enthusiasm it had aroused among religious Jews.

    Of course religious (and secular) Zionism is "hostile to European nationalism". It is both modelled on it and a reaction to it. Rival nationalisms often resemble one another, although they would never admit it.

• If Hillel rejects nonviolent resistance to the occupation, what does it propose in its place?
  • Shmuel November 28, 2012 at 2:24 am with 1 replies

    if Hillel does not want to interact with pro-Palestinian groups that support nonviolent resistance for peace, how does Hillel expect people to resist Israel’s brutal occupation and well-documented human rights abuses?

    If Hillel rejects both violent and non-violent Palestinian resistance, one can only conclude that it rejects Palestinian resistance tout court. And if it rejects Palestinian resistance, it must support (whether enthusiastically or in a hand-wringing, lesser-of-the-evils sort of way) the status quo of Israeli occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, because the powerful and the privileged will not renounce their power and privilege unless somehow compelled to do so. It is in this light that we must view any professions on the part of Hillel or similar organisations of commitment to
    peace or a two-state solution -- or to diversity of opinion.

• Israeli commandos board ship to Gaza and direct it to Israel
  • Shmuel October 22, 2012 at 11:52 am

    Are there any parties, who deny the rights of Israel as a Jewish State being banned from participating in elections?

    The exact wording of the Basic Law (art. 7a) is "negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people", but do you think the lack of such parties might have something to do with the fact that they are banned?

    However, the majority of VOTERS still prevail over her personal and political beliefs, making her accusations of “regime” silly and infantile.

    Not really, because that "majority" was achieved through 64 (or 95, or 130) years of electoral engineering, including selective immigration, ethnic cleansing, gerrymandering and apartheid. What is silly and infantile (not to mention dishonest) is to pretend that Israel is an ordinary democracy with an ordinary electoral process.

    I becoming fully convinced that her actions ... are for the self-promotion and the ongoing publicity

    There couldn't possibly be any other explanation for Dr. Peled's activism (including the bereaved families' circle) and scholarship, so naturally, she must be after the publicity. So obvious. How could we have missed it?

• If only it was just one tweet: One activist's experience in the 'Our Land' Facebook group
  • Shmuel October 19, 2012 at 2:33 am with 6 replies

    When I first started to look outside my liberal Zionist comfort zone (having previously left a few, more extreme comfort zones) soon after the beginning of the Second Intifada, I joined the Al Awda-Right of Return listserve. Martillo/Provoni/Ajami was there; Israel Shamir was there; a couple of US white supremacists were there; and a guy calling himself Horst Wessel was there. Time after time, Palestinian activists put them in their place, rejecting their racism both in principle and as a detriment to the Palestinian cause - basically telling them, 'we don't want or need your kind of support'. Were they following a "Zionist agenda"? Using "the master's tools"? Showing weakness? It would have been all too easy for them to take the "any enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach or to follow the Zionist example of excusing alliances with Pinochet or Apartheid South Africa as necessary evils for "a small people with few friends in the world". But they didn't. They showed both integrity and farsightedness - at the risk of splitting their own movement and rejecting much-needed support.

    It is in that light that I see the positions taken by Abunimah (and other tireless Palestinian activists) in this matter as in the matter of Israel Shamir and Gilad Atzmon. Berlin herself may not be in the same category as the other two but, as Today in Palestine puts it:

    I don’t want to get into any philosophical questions about what truly makes an anti-semite, the fact is that Greta is responsible for this current sh*t storm and it is up to Palestinians (and others like Bekah) to clean up her mess. I understand that Greta has done good work in the past but that does not give her carte blanche to discredit our movement by associating our cause with unsavory characters online.

• Pinkwashing advertisement in NY, brought to you by Birthright
  • Shmuel October 1, 2012 at 4:58 am

    So if the question is not being avoided- what’s the answer?

    Franke:

    While it may seem natural for gays to side with Israel, after all they have such good gay rights laws, this support reflects a major weakness of so many human rights movements that tend to prioritize their own struggles without considering the ways in which all forms of discrimination are linked. In Israel/Palestine gay rights and human rights more broadly are necessarily connected to one another, and treating one domestic minority well does not excuse or diminish the immorality of the state’s other rights abridging policies. Had South Africa enacted good gay rights laws during the Apartheid era no one would have seen that as excusing their treatment of black and colored people.

    link to blogs.law.columbia.edu

    The Gisha report is from 2007, the Goldstone report has been dead ever since Justice Goldstone himself repudiated it. The reality is Hamas rule.

    More obfuscation. What has changed, specifically, to invalidate the Gisha report, and can you cite another, more recent report or legal opinion that explains why these criteria of "effective control" - although they may have applied in 2007 - no longer apply? Goldstone's "repudiation" made no mention of Israel's status as occupier, but referred only to questions of war crimes and intentionality. I repeat: The "reality [of] Hamas rule" does not, in and of itself, determine whether Israel is an occupying power in Gaza or not. There are specific legal criteria - presented by Gisha and the Goldstone report - which you have failed to address. 'It looks like the occupation is over to me' is not a valid argument.

• Discarded EU definition of anti-Semitism is important tool in silencing criticism of Israel
  • Shmuel October 1, 2012 at 1:07 pm

    I urge all regular Mondoweiss commenters and Phil Weiss himself to read the section on “the non-Jewish Jew.”

    I couldn't disagree more. The author of the review is so obviously hostile to Rose's views (despite his attempts to compliment her on some of her prose and the "touching" essay on her sister) as to make his representation of them practically worthless.

    On the subject of "settler converts", Taxi has explained to me in the past that although even a pedigreed descendant of ancient Judeans would have no right to displace the indigenous people of Palestine, it is particularly irksome when even the dubious Zionist claim itself doesn't pan out.

    When the Zionist in question is not even the possible descendant of converts some time in the distant past, but a direct and recent convert herself - and an extreme "ethnic" nationalist at that (living as a member of the dominant group in an apartheid reality) - it just makes things all the more outrageous and offensive.

• Discussing life 'after zionism' in Israel/Palestine
  • Shmuel August 26, 2012 at 6:13 am

    A boycott means a boycott.

    You still haven't explained how Palestinians exercising their right to go to the beach in their historical homeland violates the boycott part of BDS.

    Furthermore, BDS is a strategy, not a religion, and its application by those living under occupation necessarily differs from its application abroad. South African blacks living under apartheid or South African occupation were never expected to lend a hand to their own oppression by denying themselves access to the few rights they actually enjoyed.

    Your "take" is thus entirely without basis.

• It's apartheid, says Jeffrey Goldberg
  • Shmuel August 24, 2012 at 11:17 am with 9 replies

    So when can we expect Goldberg to endorse BDS (de-facto and officially temporary BDS, of course, and neither as elaborate nor as pervasive as the South African anti-apartheid divestment campaign)? If he finds the acronym too "highly-charged" he can call it BITS (Boycott Israel to Safety) or SIGN (Save Israel's Good Name), although he probably did that already, 20 years ago, when he was working for the Jerusalem Post.

• Geller's 'savage' bus ad meets strong resistance from the Bay Area
  • Shmuel August 17, 2012 at 5:41 pm

    So now you’re agreeing there is a qualitative difference?

    You are rather obviously attempting to avoid conceding the point.

    You really don't get it. I try to judge both historical and current phenomena for what they are - without hyperbole and without trivialisation.

    The crimes of Fascism were enormous. They destroyed millions of lives. That cannot and must not be contextualised or rationalised or minimised. Were some of their policies less draconian, less destructive than those of the Nazis? Yes. Were their policies toward Jews less all-consumingly brutal? Yes. Did they gas and hang and torture Ethiopians and Serbs and Italian political prisoners with any less brutality than the Nazis did Poles or communists? Probably not. And where does Israel fit into all of this? Is it somewhere between extremely evil and mind-numbingly evil? Based on what criteria? Is it more like the Belgians in the Congo or the French in Algeria? Is the Nakba more like the Porajmos or the Holodomor or the Rape of Nanking? Is it more Apartheid or Jim Crow? If you suggest a historical analogy that is less than the absolute worst you can possibly imagine, are you belittling it? Betraying Palestinian suffering? How do you decide that Israel is more Poland than Somaliland, more Eichmann than Graziani? Surely not the number of dead. The communities destroyed then? The families broken apart? The freedom denied?

    Auto theft? Paint cans? Sent some people away for a holiday (to quote another apologist for Fascism)? You do not know what you are talking about. If you have a point to make beyond the most evil thing you can think of, make it. If not you do an injustice to the victims of Zionism and the victims of Fascism.

• The blatancy of apartheid
  • Shmuel July 28, 2012 at 10:45 am with 27 replies

    An argument that is constantly waved around by Israel apologists is that those who criticise Israel are somehow singling that country out (the implied motivation is inevitably anti-Semitism or "self-hatred").

    What Phil has done in this post is exactly the opposite. He sees apartheid. He doesn't want to hear that "Israel is different" or "it's complicated" or "it's their fault". He sees injustice and wants to know why so many people and institutions have colluded for so long to cover up this reality and, more importantly, when will they stop.

• Finkelstein's critique misreads the special relationship and misunderstands political mobilization
  • Shmuel June 15, 2012 at 1:49 am

    Where I don’t agree with Max is that working class Jews will find common ground with Palestinians to overthrow the apartheid regime. The system in place is designed to prevent that since even working-class Jews are more privileged than Palestinians.

    I agree, Inanna, but it's not only actual privilege. The way things are set up, the very fact of membership in the ruling group (even when denied all access to power and resources), precludes making common cause with non-members. How does one raise (create?) class consciousness in a context of all-pervasive ethno-religious nationalism? Chip away at the edges I guess, but I don't see it happening either.

• Should we call it apartheid?
  • Shmuel June 13, 2012 at 10:01 am

    View this video for another perspective

    MP Meshoe may know a lot about apartheid, but he seems to know very little about the situation "in Palestine, in Israel" (as he puts it). I'm afraid the only ignorance exposed here is his own.

    [The Palestinians have] freedom of movement without being arrested

    What part of "Palestine" is the Honourable Kenneth Meshoe talking about? If he is only referring to Israel proper he is simply avoiding the issue (the HSRC report,* for example, only addresses the situation in the OPT), and why then does he call it Palestine?

    * link to electronicintifada.net

• If '5 Broken Cameras' wins an Oscar-- then will you end the occupation?
  • Shmuel June 6, 2012 at 2:33 am

    Israeli director Guy Davidi said that BDS worked in South Africa but now everything is different, for global material reasons—anyone who buys an HP printer is complicit in the technology of the wall, so why single out Israel?

    What is Davidi actually saying (beyond real or feigned ignorance of how BDS works)? That someone who buys an HP printer is just as responsible for Israeli policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing as the Israeli state that devises and carries out those policies? The "singling out Israel" argument reaches new heights of preposterousness.

• Story of forced searches of travelers' emails goes viral
  • Shmuel June 6, 2012 at 3:13 am with 1 replies

    “We all know that “apartheid” as Annie uses it doesn’t really apply to Israel.”

    Welcome, Brian. Here's what the experts (the South African Human Sciences Research Council) have to say on the subject:
    link to electronicintifada.net

    And if you haven't got time to read the 300-page report, here's a summary:
    http://icahdusa.org/multimedia/downloads/2010/09/is-israel-an-apartheid-state-single-page.pdf

• 'Hath not a Palestinian eyes?': Protesters disrupt Habima performance at Globe
  • Shmuel May 30, 2012 at 8:00 am with 1 replies

    I wonder what Juliano Mer-Khamis would have thought about this protest?

    No need to wonder. He was a strong supporter of the cultural boycott of Israel. From an appeal he signed:

    We, the undersigned Palestinian filmmakers and artists, appeal to all artists and filmmakers of good conscience around the world to cancel all exhibitions and other cultural events that are scheduled to occur in Israel, to mobilize immediately and not allow the continuation of the Israeli offensive to breed complacency. Like the boycott of South African art institutions during apartheid, cultural workers must speak out against the current Israeli war crimes and atrocities. We call upon the International community to join us in the boycott of Israeli film festivals, Israeli public venues, and Israeli institutions supported by the government, and to end all cooperation with these cultural and artistic institutions that to date have refused to take a stand against the Occupation, the root cause for this colonial conflict.

    link to pacbi.org

• International attention must be paid to the Palestinian nonviolent movement
  • Shmuel May 18, 2012 at 10:15 am

    we want the reconciliation to start now

    An interesting notion, reconciliation before (read: rather than) ending apartheid. Now why didn't De Klerk think of that? He could have had his koek and eaten it too! Mmmm, lekker.

  • Shmuel May 18, 2012 at 9:32 am with 38 replies

    gilad,

    Reconciliation came after the abolition of apartheid and is an ongoing process.

    As another Barghouti (Omar) said:

    “When a master hugs a slave, it is not love, but rape. First the master-slave relationship must be ended, then we will be able to tolerate one another and eventually, who knows, maybe even come to love one another.”

• US military officers taught to target civilians and wage 'total war' on Islam
  • Shmuel May 11, 2012 at 12:16 pm with 1 replies

    The cartoon is not only Islamophobic; it is also reactionary in a broader sense, inasmuch as it trots out the old stereotype that liberals are unable or unwilling to confront harsh reality.

    It is the approach that justifies Guantanamo and torture and "pre-emptive war" by "our side", because "they" have no respect for human rights. It is the approach that allows Israel to - literally - get away with murder (and apartheid and ethnic cleansing), because Israelis live "in a tough neighbourhood", surrounded by people who "don't share our values".

    The cartoon dehumanises Muslims, but it also dehumanises the rest of us, by rejecting the fundamental principles of human rights and dignity as "soft" and "naive". All in the name of "freedom and democracy", of course.

• A portrait of a former Zionist (Part 1)
  • Shmuel May 9, 2012 at 11:52 am with 14 replies

    Yes, it's all so complicated, and westerners are so naive. They mean well, the poor dears, but their grasp of the world is so black-and-white. They just don't understand the myriad shades of grey that make up reality beyond their comfortable existences. Yet they presume to judge us. How dare they! If only they could see the things that we've seen, experience the things that we've experienced. Then they'd know that the Middle East is not "uptown" or even "midtown", that here it's kill or be killed, oppress or be oppressed. How can we possibly hope to compete with romantic notions of occupation and resistance, imperialism and liberation, apartheid and democracy?

    The best we can do is "rebrand" and hope for the best, Oleg. Try to tap into their simple binary minds and make them believe that we wear the white hats on this frontier. They're so gullible, it might just work.

• Feminist scholar Katherine Franke refuses to be pawn in Oren's equality game
  • Shmuel May 5, 2012 at 12:50 pm

    I agree, David. I know what I'm linking to, the next time the subject comes up (if someone else doesn't beat me to it).

    I especially liked this part:

    While it may seem natural for gays to side with Israel, after all they have such good gay rights laws, this support reflects a major weakness of so many human rights movements that tend to prioritize their own struggles without considering the ways in which all forms of discrimination are linked. In Israel/Palestine gay rights and human rights more broadly are necessarily connected to one another, and treating one domestic minority well does not excuse or diminish the immorality of the state’s other rights-abridging policies. Had South Africa enacted good gay rights laws during the Apartheid era no one would have seen that as excusing their treatment of black and colored people. For this reason I have chosen to honor PQBDS’s request that we boycott the Equality Forum.

• Major olive producing village ordered to uproot 1,400 trees by May 1
  • Shmuel May 10, 2012 at 2:56 am

    Actually, that definition won’t work. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are racial groups.

    "Race" is a tricky concept, and some anthropologists will even tell you that there is no such thing. Fortunately for us, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination has defined "racial discrimination" as pertaining to "race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin". That should cover the differences between Israeli Jews and those eligible to become Israeli citizens according to the law of return on the one hand, and Palestinians on the other.

    The Convention does exclude "citizenship" from its definition, but citing that distinction in Israel's case is rather cynical (beyond the fact that the distinction is in fact between Jews [and their relatives] and non-Jewish Palestinians, rather than citizens and non-ctizens), as the Yishuv ethnically cleansed Palestine and created a new kind of citizenship specifically designed to exclude the ethnically cleansed non-Jewish population.

    Areas under Israeli control basically comprise two systems. Both systems entail elements of colonialism and apartheid, although not to the same degree. As others have pointed out, South Africa was both colonialist and apartheid - both within its sovereign borders and in the territory it occupied in Namibia. There is no inherent contradiction between the two terms.

• The rifle-butting video is following a different narrative
  • Shmuel April 18, 2012 at 5:46 am

    Yes, but it’s a very different reality if the discrimination is “citizen vs occupied” rather than “Jew vs Arab”.

    Maybe for lawyers and members of the de facto Herrenvolk. When you're on the receiving end, it feels just the same.

    You see the apartheid terminology as inflammatory. Yet the security and citizenship terminology fail to provide an accurate representation of the reality on the ground, serving rather to downplay and even justify what is effectively institutionalised religio-ethnic discrimination.

    There are also important repercussions in international law, but I'll leave that to the experts. See link to electronicintifada.net

  • Shmuel April 18, 2012 at 5:07 am with 15 replies

    Apartheid is the reality - whether on the roads, in the allocation of resources (that do not belong to the occupying power or its citizens in the first place), or in the administration of justice. You don't need a "pencil test" to conduct an apartheid regime.

    Citing "security", or "citizenship" as the determining factor, only serves to excuse and perpetuate the intolerable situation in the OPT.

• Anti-Zionism will reemerge in American Jewish life -- Beinart
  • Shmuel April 15, 2012 at 6:46 am

    Regarding 2012 to the future, neither my thoughts nor my emotions have informed me of the path to a better future.

    Yet you stipulate that such a path, from your perspective, must give preference to perceived Jewish needs, with a generous margin of safety. I believe such a position precludes a better future for all concerned – including Jews. The fact that you are a a leftish marker of Jewish Israeli public opinion merely adds to the dismal hopelessness I see in your views. The only “truth” that I have seen is that there is a basic minimum of dignity and recognition (see e.g. Magnes Zionist on the subject) that must be afforded to the other, manifestly weaker side, as a basis for any “experimentation”. If Jewish Israelis and their supporters continue to deny Palestinians this dignity and recognition there simply will be no better future, copious hand-wringing notwithstanding.

    I am not “knocking” you, but disagreeing with you on a fundamental level, arguing that your a priori preference for Jewish welfare (where your views do converge with those of Netanyahu and Lieberman), although perhaps understandable, is both morally and practically self-defeating. Israeli ethnocracy (and apartheid) is a reality. You say that you don't know how to change it, but you establish ground rules that effectively shoot the possibility of change in the foot (or higher). I think your emotional explanation is a cop-out. Don't know how or won't?

• Where is the Bedouin Intifada?
  • Shmuel February 12, 2012 at 5:44 am

    tree,

    I appreciate your comments, as always, but I find the parameters of the entire discussion (set by Winnica) disturbing. Apart from the straw man about what we "here at Mondoweiss" think about the condition of Palestinians in Israel or occupied Jerusalem and the attempt to downplay apartheid and ethnic cleansing ("aren't perfect ... leave much to be desired ... overall trajectory is positive"), I find the "progressive" defence of colonialism utterly repugnant.

• Jewish substitution and the white gaze
  • Shmuel February 7, 2012 at 4:40 pm

    Before discussing the various categories of cultural products and events ...

    Look at the categories themselves, emanresu, not just the introduction. I repeat: merely drawing a salary or enjoying a grant is not sufficient cause for boycott.

    OK, I'll spoonfeed:

    Products funded by official Israeli bodies -- as defined in category (1) above -- but not commissioned, therefore not attached to any political strings, are not per se subject to boycott. Individual cultural products that receive state funding as part of the individual cultural worker’s entitlement as a tax-paying citizen, without her/him being bound to serve the state’s political and PR interests, are not boycottable, according to the PACBI criteria. Accepting such political strings, on the other hand, would clearly turn the cultural product or event into a form of complicity, by contributing to Israel’s efforts to whitewash or obscure its colonial and apartheid reality, and would render it boycottable, as a result.

    I note that the guidelines apply the standard of “complicit until proven otherwise,” which an inversion of the traditional burden of proof, and a guilt-through-silence phrase, which is an inversion of the ancient common law rule.

    It's not a court of law, but guidelines for political action (with higher and lower priorities and admitted grey areas), and as a rule of thumb, the assumption of complicity on the part of "major [Israeli] state and public entities" is quite realistic. If you would like to cooperate with an Israeli institution you suspect is not complicit, no one is stopping you from looking into it. Nevertheless, specific PACBI-initiated campaigns do include demonstrations of complicity.

• Halper vows to rebuild Palestinian home destroyed five times by Israeli soldiers
  • Shmuel January 26, 2012 at 10:01 am

    I’ll see if I can find something that demonstrates the difference between Halper and Avnery

    How about this - from a 2003 interview: link to fromoccupiedpalestine.org

    Jeff Halper: The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed in terms of territory: ending the occupation, a viable Palestinian state, and what that means in terms of territory. But two states and a complete end of the occupation, even in the best scenario, is not really the best solution. The whole Palestinian state would be on only 22% of the country, divided between the West Bank and Gaza. The State of Israel today, within the 1967 borders, represents 78% percent of the country. So even in the ideal situation, if the entire occupation ended and Israel pushed back to 1967 borders, the Palestinian state would be in only 22% of the country. Israel can't compromise on any more than that - even that is a question mark.

    But Israel does want a Palestinian state because it needs to get rid of the three and a half million Palestinians currently living in the Occupied Territories. If it can't send them out of the country, it at least wants to enclose them in a little Bantustan-type state. And so, the issue is framed in terms of territory, and what gets lost is the issue of control.

    The issue is this: will the Palestinians in the end have a state that has potential for economic development, that has real political sovereignty, that has control of its borders, that has control of its resources, like water? Will Palestinians have a state that is a coherent territory that people can move freely within? Is it a real state, even if it's a small one, or is it really a Bantustan controlled by Israel?

    And so, the matrix of control talks about how Israel controls the Palestinians: through incorporating the West Bank into Israel-proper with roads, through connecting electrical systems, water systems, urban systems, and so on. It talks about Israel keeping military control, about Israel keeping control of parts of the country like Jerusalem and parts of West Bank, which in the end will leave the Palestinians with non-viable islands.

    The matrix of control talks about the use of planning and law, and administration bureaucracy to control the movements, building, and commercial activity of the Palestinians. In other words, what the matrix of control says is that besides the issue of military control, and besides the issue of territory, Israel exerts a lot of control over Palestine. It controls the water, it controls the borders, it controls Jerusalem, it controls their army, it controls their freedom of movement. And unless we dismantle the matrix of control, we haven't really done anything. The difference between a real Palestinian state, even if it's small, and a Bantustan, is the matrix of control.

    Now, I don't think we can dismantle the matrix of control. I think it has gone too far, and that the occupation is permanent. We are in a state of apartheid. But not everybody agrees with me - Uri Avnery doesn't agree with me, the people who are in favour of a two-state solution still think that we can end the occupation, or that we can roll it back enough that a Palestinian state will emerge. But the danger in being for a Palestinian state is that if you don't understand the control dimensions, then you are actually agitating for a Bantustan. I mean, Sharon also wants a Palestinian state; he wants a state that is completely controlled by Israel. So if you only look at territory and you don't look at the issue of control, you end up advocating a Bantustan.

  • Shmuel January 26, 2012 at 8:25 am

    seafoid,

    I think the strategy that Shawamrehs have pursued (together with Jeff Halper and the ICAHD) has been both wise and courageous. They have sought to highlight one aspect of the injustices that they have suffered and continue to suffer, as Palestinians - exposing the Israeli apartheid system for what it is.

    I think he’s another one of these committed Israelis who is working for an Israel that is no longer salvageable

    I disagree. Halper is one of the most realistic Israelis I know.

• Oh, the outrage! 'Haaretz' runs 'Pinkwashing' piece from NYT!
  • Shmuel January 17, 2012 at 10:56 am

    Just to get things back on track. The issue on this particular thread is not the coolness of TA, but the intentional exploitation of TA's relative tolerance to cover up all the other stuff. That's the pinkwashing part.

    An appropriate analogy would be a State Department programme to improve the image of the US in Europe (tarnished by things like war, torture and propping up racist apartheid regimes) by showcasing SF as one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world. That would be pinkwashing.

• JNF board member resigns over eviction of Palestinian family in Silwan
  • Shmuel December 14, 2011 at 4:08 am with 5 replies

    How did he live with himself belonging to that den of thieves for so long?

    That's an important question, kalithea. I think a significant part of the answer lies in the widespread international and liberal approval of the "peace process", which has legitimised the existence of an ethnic Jewish state within '49 borders (with all that entails in terms of past and ongoing dispossession and ethnic cleansing), and refused to deal with the harsher and more blatant dispossession and ethnic cleansing and apartheid going on in the OT, because that situation is "temporary" and will be resolved through "negotiation". Of course Israeli settlement policy (post-'67) is "provocative" and "unhelpful", but if we can just get the sides (especially the Palestinians - who continue to reject Israel's "right to exist") back to the table, everything will be resolved.

    Mr. Morrison has just realised that he is somehow involved (albeit through a subsidiary) in these "provocations", which he rightly considers immoral, but will not question the JNF's role in ethnic cleansing within the Green Line - because every moderate, progressive, liberal he knows says it's OK, and because he himself believes "that the Jewish people have the right to a secure, democratic and peaceful homeland in Israel". Only anti-Semites and whackos question the morality of Zionism itself ("mistakes" and "warts" notwithstanding). In a feat of twisted logic, Morrison opposes the ethnic cleansing of Silwan, because it undermines the "peace process", viz. the perpetuation of the ethnic cleansing within the armistice line - some of it by the very same method (the Absentee Property Law) he decries in East Jerusalem!

    I know two leaders of the local branch of the JNF - one a blatantly racist right-winger, and the other a member of the "peace camp". Sadly, there is no talking to either of them about Israel, although the latter might share Morrison's discomfort at the specific actions of Heimanuta (the JNF subsidiary complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Silwan).

• Beinart says Israel must give citizenship to Palestinians under occupation
  • Shmuel December 6, 2011 at 2:28 am with 2 replies

    When Hamas or Fatah or both or either declare that they are freeing their people to become Israeli citizens, then Israel will face this problem squarely... This does not mean that Israel or Israel supporters are under no “obligation” to offer the Palestinians (or the future Israeli Palestinians) rights or citizenship until that point, but until that point Israel has an excuse for dithering

    Israel doesn't need any particular excuse for "dithering". Beinart's point seems to be that the onus is on Israel to act, in the realisation that the damage it is causing to itself (with the help of American Jews) is irreparable.

    The Hamas/Fatah divide is serious, but just as Israel has fomented it over the years, it can contribute to creating conditions conducive to reconciliation.

    Beinart is not really proposing a single state, but observing that I/P is effectively a single unit, under a single regime. This undermines the Israeli defence against the apartheid accusation, and makes Israel responsible for violations of Palestinian human and civil rights now. It also means that that negotiations cannot merely treat the conflict as a "dispute" between two more-or-less equal sides. There is an oppressor side and an oppressed side, and the rights of the latter (as opposed to the "generous offers" of the former) must be on the table.

• Israeli newspaper owner says Obama can't stop settlers' 'apartheid regime' because of 'Jewish lobby'
  • Shmuel November 26, 2011 at 4:02 pm

    Hmm. An unequivocal statement in a US Department of State report vs. an article by an associate director and research director of CAMERA, who confuses Israeli citizens, "aliens" and Jews, and cites repealed laws. I wonder which one we should believe?

    Distraction over. Now what was Schocken saying about Israeli apartheid?

• 'Segregated country': Israel envisions Orthodox-Jewish-only 'cities' in Palestinian area
  • Shmuel November 23, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    The white majority in the US and Australia is “artificial” because it is the result of ethnic cleansing, discriminatory immigration policies and gerrymandering.

    You forgot apartheid South Africa, and I forgot the word "ongoing". There are a few other differences, but I'm sure everyone here knows them by now.

    In any event, my original comment was not about the state of Israeli democracy, but about your ideas of that concept - including your reduction of Jewish opinion to the views of a majority of a community that may one day (but not today) constitute a narrow majority of world Jewry, with little or no regard for the roles of minorities, dissent and protest.

• Dueling messages on Iran
  • Shmuel November 14, 2011 at 6:46 am

    For even Goldstone to be strong armed into writing an op ed tryhig to refute teh charge proves it is not dismissed.

    In the UN footage that Adam posted the other day ("Wayback Machine"), the New Zealand ambassador eloquently - albeit unwittingly - explained why it is a charge that Israel and its supporters must refute at all costs. Ambassador Templeton noted that apartheid is universally considered to be racist, but Zionism is not apartheid and therefore should not be equated with racism.

    But what if it could be demonstrated that Zionism (or, more precisely, the system of religio-ethnic separation and discrimination in force in the State of Israel) is apartheid, or something very close to it? Should it not then be universally considered racist as well, and treated as South Africa was?

    These are high stakes - for the Palestinians, for human rights and international law, and for Israel and Zionists.

• Aloni: Goldstone legitimizes apartheid in Israel/Palestine
  • Shmuel November 10, 2011 at 11:07 am

    The fact is that there is today a single political and geographic space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The whole area has been under Israeli sovereignty and control for the past 44 years. The skies, seas, borders, water rights, the judicial system as well as military and civic government are all controlled by Israel. Palestinians have municipal rule; not sovereignty.

    Ironically, according to a story that appeared at Ynet a couple of months ago, it is the Israeli FM that is insisting that the OPT are part of sovereign Israel, while those nasty Jew-haters the French are trying to save Israeli from the ignominy of apartheid by locating Israeli colonies in "Occupied Palestinian Territory". link to ynetnews.com

  • Shmuel November 10, 2011 at 10:37 am with 1 replies

    A couple of years ago I approached my ardently Zionist mom, a woman who carried a weapon for the Jewish community of Jerusalem in 1948, and asked her a simple question: “Mom, is all this apartheid?”

    With the sigh of a betrayed lover she indicated that, yes, this is apartheid. My heart broke.

    Wow! Shulamit Aloni used the "a" word. Does Justice Goldstone believe that the great Shulamit Aloni who has dedicated her life to the cause of peace also seeks "to retard rather than advance peace negotiations" (his characterisation of those who "slander" Israel with the apartheid label)?

    This is sufficient to call this Israeli practice a form of apartheid.

    Not quite. According to Justice Goldstone, it is not technically apartheid unless a significant percentage of the population bears the surname Van der Merwe.

• Spinozapalooza! Jewish leader says American Jewish community must kick out anyone who supports boycott
  • Shmuel November 9, 2011 at 10:46 am

    the allegation of apartheid is leveled at the whole Jewish populace of Israel.

    No, it is levelled at a government that pursues certain policies and has the power to pursue others. Like Apartheid South Africa. There was never a boycott of "the whole [white] populace of [South Africa]".

    You want to discuss making changes in the attitude towards Israel and in Israel’s behavior? I have no problem with that.

    The Jewish community at large does have a problem with that (as do Israeli government agencies), and has been seeking to suppress such views and expel those who hold them for a very long time - long before BDS, which is only about 5 years old (or the settlement boycott initiated by Gush Shalom, which is a little older).

    You want to discuss using BDS to make changes? That is like discussing whether Jesus is the son of God. There is nothing to discuss.

    Heresy. Herem.

  • Shmuel November 9, 2011 at 2:56 am

    The BDS movement is aimed at having non-Jews boycott and sanction Jews. That has always been considered the action of a “moser”. That is where it crosses the line. It is not the excessive criticism of Israel, it is the egging on of the goyim to harm Jews.

    BDS is not a Jewish movement and it is not aimed at Jews. It is a Palestinian movement supported by Jews and non-Jews, and its target is a political construct, representing both Jews and non-Jews (albeit unequally). It is based on the principles of human rights and international law. The argument of "singling Israel out" doesn't wash with Jews (or Palestinians), because we have many good reasons to take a particular interest in Israel - as the Federations and the Israeli government never tire of telling us.

    The concept of "moser" is primarily a Halakhic one. Since you do not observe Halakhah, we can set internal Halakhic discourse regarding interpretation and applicability aside. The parallel sociological concept is little more than a closing of ranks to protect "one's own", regardless of their actions. It is a throwback to the days of separate judicial systems and double ethical standards, and should be anathema to "a free people in its land" or to citizens of "the land of the free". The vast majority of Jews today would not protect child molesters or embezzlers simply because they are Jews, why should we protect Jews who commit the crime of apartheid?

    Your last sentence - and entire comment in fact - really is straight out of the shtetl. It is indicative of a deep contradiction within Zionism. This is something we should be able to discuss in our communities, without banning or shunning or unilaterally "de-Jewing" those we disagree with.

    On a side note, you should read Immanuel Etkes' הדת והחיים: תנועת ההשכלה היהודית במזרח אירופה [English title: The East European Jewish Enlightenment]. In one of the chapters, he describes the mutual recourse of Maskilim and Hasidim to the Austro-Hungarian authorities to settle internal, Jewish differences - not over criminal activity or harm done to others, but over issues of education, theology and ideology. It is because of these battles that the rabbi who performed my great-grandparents' wedding ceremony could not register the marriage (he was an "unrecognised" rabbi, thanks to the efforts of the Maskilim) and my grandfather was listed in official records as a "bastard". Historically, when Jews have believed that it was for their own good and/or the good of others, they have not hesitated to seek "outside" help or alliances. There is nothing "un-Jewish" or herem-worthy about such efforts in and of themselves. How they are recorded by history usually depends on who is doing the recording.

    To return to my original point. There is no room in most organised Jewish communities today for anti-Zionism, with or without BDS. It is Israel the rabbis are afraid to discuss, not political strategies or tactics. Support for Israel is today's Jewish orthodoxy - not religious or theological orthodoxy, as in the past, but secular-national orthodoxy. Where there is orthodoxy there is heterodoxy and, unfortunately, herem. There is no inherent reason why most of our communities and organisations cannot get over this kind of orthodoxy, just as they have gotten over religious orthodoxy.

• Goldstone's major error: By looking for South Africa, he missed Israel's own brand of apartheid
  • Shmuel November 3, 2011 at 3:15 am

    Goldstone's second major error is to omit core Israeli policies, particularly relating to the mass expulsions of 1948 and the subsequent land regime built on expropriation and ethno-religious discrimination. By law, Palestinian refugees are forbidden from returning, their property confiscated - the act of dispossession that enabled a Jewish majority to be created in the first place.

    In other words, having successfully completed the first stage of apartheid - creating a Jewish majority and setting the mechanisms of Jewish domination in motion - Israel moved on to the second, less blatant and less draconian, pseudo-democratic, "maintenance" stage of apartheid.

    Justice Goldstone is right that Israeli policies of discrimination differ from those of South African Apartheid. The Israeli system has been far more successful.

• Goldstone sugarcoats persecution to try to save Israel
  • Shmuel November 1, 2011 at 4:46 pm with 5 replies

    I was struck by two ostensibly marginal points in Goldstone's op-ed.

    First, Goldstone attacks the Palestinian bid for UN membership as "put[ting] hope for any two-state solution under increasing pressure". This is an untenable position rejected even by many of Israel's supporters. It is, however, the position taken by the Israeli government (which has called the acceptance of Palestine as a member of UNESCO a "tragedy" - no less) and consequently by organised Jewish communities around the world. It also serves Goldstone as the "timely" background for his attack on the Palestinian solidarity movement - which brings me to the second point.

    It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.

    Really? Is that the "calculated" intention of those who accuse Israel of the crime of apartheid? "To retard rather than advance peace negotiations"? Talk about slander.

• The law and practice of apartheid in South Africa and Palestine
  • Shmuel November 1, 2011 at 1:56 pm with 2 replies

    Ah, so, rape isn’t rape when there is no intent to maintain “a regime of sexual violence and physical domination of the female by the male.”

    Eljay,

    The definition of the crime of apartheid (as opposed to other crimes that Goldstone admits Israel regularly commits in the OPT) requires an "institutionalised regime" and the intent of "maintaining domination". In that sense, Goldstone addresses the right points when he attempts to demonstrate that Israeli crimes in the OPT - as awful as they may be - do not amount to apartheid. The question is how he can ignore all of the evidence that points to the existence of such a regime and the clear intent of all Israeli governments to maintain Jewish domination in those territories (with or without ineffectual hand-wringing) for the foreseeable future.

• Boycott update: Champion fencer Sara Besbes stands down rather than plays Israeli
  • Shmuel October 17, 2011 at 1:36 pm

    3e,

    The question was whether the system in force in all or part of the territory under Israeli control is consistent with the definition of the crime of apartheid in international law. Jon did not argue, as you do, that what counts is which countries are "considered" (by whom?) to practise apartheid, rather than criteria established in international statues and conventions, but that Israeli policy (as deplorable as it may be) does not meet those criteria. It is thus reasonable to ask that he back up his opinion with cogent arguments and sources, especially since he has accused the HSRC report of bias.

  • Shmuel October 16, 2011 at 9:12 am

    jon,

    Thanks about the riots. I think I have pretty good protest "survival" skills, and they served me well yesterday.

    I think you are missing a few points in your analysis of the applicability of the apartheid label.

    First, the OT are not on the moon, or even in another country. They are a de facto part of Israel, in which Israel formulates and implements policy. To say that 'Israel practises apartheid in some of the areas under its control' in not fundamentally different from saying that 'Israel is an apartheid state'. That it was only a partial study of Israel's worst violations is duly noted both in the original report and in the summary.

    Second, apartheid is not a matter of taste or degree (a little discrimination not nice, a lot of discrimination apartheid). There are legal definitions, which do not require precise equivalence to the situation in apartheid South Africa. The relevant question is does Israel - in any part of the territory under its control - fit those definitions? You have not seriously addressed the actual legal arguments contained in the report, or cited any counter sources. Do you have an opinion on "the pillars of apartheid", or are you only prepared to dismiss them in general terms because you don't like the politics of ICAHD (or the HSRC, or the experts it consulted)?

    Start with the definition offered at the beginning of the report (based on the Rome Statute and ICERD convention):

    Apartheid is defined as an institutionalized form of racism in which states enact laws which function as the apparatus to commit inhuman acts for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. The practice of apartheid is a crime under international law.

    Racism or racial group is any distinction, exclusion or preference based on race, color, religion, descent, national origin, ethnic origin or other criteria which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the rights of one group.*

    * Emphases mine.

  • Shmuel October 16, 2011 at 3:23 am

    jon,

    As tree points out, I have made quite a number of comments on the subject, that you can access by searching for "apartheid" on my profile page.

    You have basically made three points on this thread:
    1. Gaza is not under Israeli control and therefore does not count, even if definitions of apartheid might otherwise apply.
    2. You do not approve of policies in the West Bank (I don't know whether you include E. Jerusalem or not), but would not define them as apartheid.
    3. Because Palestinians vote as citizens in Israeli elections, the situation cannot be defined as apartheid.

    I do not accept your position on Gaza (as I have argued before), but let's leave it out, for the sake of argument.

    With regard to the WB and E. Jerusalem, have you read the ICAHD summary of the report (only 15 pages in large print)? Which parts of it do you disagree with? What is wrong with the HSRC understanding of international law in this case? Can you cite any sources to back up your critique?

    With regard to Israel within the Green Line, the situation is certainly much better than in the OT (or apartheid SA), but why are you so certain that the definition of apartheid could not possibly apply? The mere fact of citizenship and the right to vote does not preclude the existence of a racist system that might be legally defined as apartheid (although not as severe as in the OT or in apartheid SA). The ongoing policies of "Judaization" - especially in the Galilee and Negev - would seem to point in that direction, especially when examined in the broader context of systemic discrimination and access to resources (land, in particular) in favour of Israel's "charter" ethnic group.

  • Shmuel October 15, 2011 at 4:31 pm

    The South African report looks like a case of shooting the arrow and then drawing the bull’s eye around it. The conclusions were pre-ordained.

    Anything substantive to say about the content of a 300-page report written by a group of experts on the subject of Apartheid?

  • Shmuel October 15, 2011 at 5:19 am

    From: http://icahdusa.org/multimedia/downloads/2010/09/is-israel-an-apartheid-state-single-page.pdf

    Is Israel an Apartheid State?
    Summary of an International Legal Study

    The Government of South Africa, seeking to eliminate and prevent the kind of suffering the South African and Namibian people suffered under apartheid, commissioned a legal study of the Israel-Palestine situation. “The aim of this project was to scrutinize the situation from the nonpartisan perspective of international law, rather than engage in political discourse and rhetoric.”

    An international team of legal and human rights scholars carried out this fifteen month collaborative study. They set out to examine legally the question:
    Do Israel’s practices in occupied Palestinian territory, namely the
    West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, amount to the crimes of
    colonialism and apartheid under international law?

    The study is comprehensive. It addresses pertinent international law and legal rulings, the legal status and laws governing historic Palestine from Ottoman times to the present, Israeli law and Israel’s various legal arguments as to why international law does not apply. It reviews Israel’s practices weighed against this legal context, citing similar practices carried out by the government of South Africa during apartheid.

    The evidence in the study is broad. It addresses Israel’s practices within the state of Israel proper and in occupied Palestinian territory as well as practices that affect Palestinian refugees. Conclusions about apartheid focus on Israel’s practices after 1967 when it occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

    ...

    Conclusions
    The conclusions of the study address Israel’s practices in occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The study finds Israel’s practices in these territories constitute both colonialism and apartheid.
    The study contains much evidence of similar practices within the state of Israel itself, suggesting the need for additional studies in areas where Israel’s laws dominate. That would include Israel’s practices within the state of Israel proper, where 1.7 million Palestinian Israelis, nearly 24% of the population, are considered “citizen non-members of Israel and afforded a status inferior to that of Jewish citizens;” Israel’s practices regarding Palestinian refugees where Israel’s citizenship laws place inhumane limits on refugees’ right to return to their homes and reclaim their property confiscated by Israel in 1948 and 1967; and Israel’s practices in the occupied Golan Heights.

    Under international law, practices of colonialism and apartheid are judged damaging to international legal order and seriously threaten world peace and security. Findings of colonialism and apartheid legally obligate third party nations to oppose the colonialism-apartheid system. Findings of apartheid, a crime against humanity, also give rise to individual criminal responsibility.

    The full HSRC report, "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law" (Cape Town, May 2009), can be found here: link to electronicintifada.net

  • Shmuel October 15, 2011 at 4:41 am

    jon,

    Definitions of Zionism are far less important in this context than definitions of Israeli policies. It is not enough just to say they're bad or that you feel for Palestinians. Whether they do indeed constitute such crimes as apartheid and ethnic cleansing is a matter of serious international, legal and diplomatic import.

    Read the ICAHD booklet I linked to (summary of the South African Human Sciences Research Council report), and provide substantive arguments and evidence to the contrary, if you like.

  • Shmuel October 14, 2011 at 5:43 pm

    The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa published a report saying Israel is practicing apartheid.

    A summary of the 300-page South African report can be found here:
    http://icahdusa.org/multimedia/downloads/2010/09/is-israel-an-apartheid-state-single-page.pdf

  • Shmuel October 14, 2011 at 9:30 am with 32 replies

    Many of you will remember how effective the sports boycott of the 1970s and 1980s was in conveying to sport-crazy South Africans that our society had placed itself beyond the pale by continuing to organise its life on the basis of racial discrimination.

    Your refusal to kow-tow to racism was the sanction that hurt the supporters of apartheid the most, and for those of us who suffered the effects of discrimination nothing could have shown us more vividly the principal value enshrined in the preamble to the Spirit of Cricket, which Lord Cowdrey and Ted Dexter later helped to introduce to the laws of the game, the value of which is all the more powerful for the simplicity of its statement, and that of course is fair play.

    For 20 years, as the sports boycott tightened and apartheid stopped generations of South African sportsmen and women, both white and black, realising their full potential, you and others like you drummed into us what the world saw as fair play and what it saw as unfair play.

    I have not the slightest doubt that what you did played a major role in persuading the supporters of apartheid to change their ways and, in the negotiations that followed F.W. de Klerk’s courageous decision to release Nelson Mandela in 1990, to agree on a constitution based on the principle, also enshrined in the Spirit of Cricket, of respect for others.

    There have been those who have loved the dichotomies that try to divide life into watertight compartments – religion, politics, sport – imagining fondly that they were watertight and impervious to one another. But we know differently: politics impinges on sport as much as on any other aspect of life.

    We know that politics and sport have an important relationship. We indicated that the sports boycott played a crucial part in our liberation, and now sport is playing a pivotal part in helping to build South Africa up to be the rainbow nation.

    From a speech given by the Most Reverend Dr. Desmond Tutu at Lord's Cricket Ground in June 2008. See the full text here.

• South African student bodies declare, 'We recognise apartheid when we see it'
  • Shmuel August 12, 2011 at 9:03 am

    On a related note, at a demonstration in Rome, against Israel's 2008-2009 Gaza massacre, I met a friend who is a very liberal Zionist. She was enraged and on her way home (I suspect she may have been looking for an excuse). Apparently there had been a lot of pre-rally negotiating between organising/sponsoring groups, and in an attempt to appeal to the broadest possible spectrum, an agreement had been reached that there would be no flags or symbols of any kind. The reason my friend was angry is that she had spotted a couple of people wearing keffiyehs around their necks. She insisted that the keffiyeh, in Italy, is associated with the most virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic left (always the left, eh?), and as such was an inflammatory symbol and a violation of the pre-rally agreement. One person's symbol of freedom and liberation was another person's symbol of bigotry and violence. I carried a sign in Hebrew. I don't think anyone was offended, but who knows?

    In my experience (about 25 years of activism in 2 countries), efforts to please everyone rarely have the desired effect when it comes to causes that are considered pretty radical to begin with (like calling the Israeli system apartheid and supporting sanctions against Israel). Those who are interested in the message will swallow a frog or two (I'm not particularly keen on national flags or Che Guevara, for example), and those who are indifferent or opposed will always find reasons to be offended or turned off (such as the mere mention of the dreaded A-word in relation to Israel).

    If you're looking for material to circulate on Palestinian rights, BDS or Israeli apartheid, uncontaminated by the dreaded and irredeemable symbol of the gulag, there's certainly no shortage. You can just give this one a miss.

  • Shmuel August 11, 2011 at 3:39 pm

    I'll take your word for it about Sweden, but communism has been many different things in different places at different times - much of it honourable and entirely compatible with human rights and liberation struggles. The South African Communist Party took part in the struggle against apartheid. The Italian Communist Party took part in the struggle against Fascism, and was instrumental in the establishment of the democratic Italian Republic and the drafting of its constitution after the war. The Israeli Communist Party has been at the forefront of the struggle for Palestinian rights in Israel and the OPT.

    Communism has played a crucial role in labour movements throughout the world (including the United States, and probably Sweden too, although I am not familiar with Sweden's specific case). Without the various communist parties and movements in Italy, there would be virtually no human rights movement, no gay rights movement, no feminist movement, and little if any interest in the Palestinian struggle (or the plight of Afghanis or Iraqis or Roma or immigrants). The dominant symbol at any pro-Palestinian rally in Italy today is the hammer and sickle - because of communist values, not in spite of them. My point is that in many countries, the hammer and sickle is a symbol of freedom and equality, not oppression. I believe South Africa is one of those countries, and that is the context of the above statement. There are countries in which one can call her/himself communist publicly and be taken very seriously (and respected even by opponents). I am sorry that Sweden is not one of them.

    Communist parties all over the world have undergone numerous reforms and changes over the years - including chucking the hammer and sickle. In Italy, the parties that have done so - including the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and the left-of-centre Left, Liberty and Ecology Party (SeL) have also chucked Palestinian solidarity right along with it. Probably the freest and most open (and pro-Palestinian and pro-human rights and anti-war and anti-corruption and pro-equality) paper in Italy is called Il Manifesto, and the dominant colour in every struggle against oppression - at home and abroad - is red.

    There is a very decent communist ethos, currently and historically - despite the terrible things that have been done in the name of communism. I can't say the same for that other symbol you mention. There is no equivalence.

    The crazed wingnuts don't need a hammer and sickle to see commies and Al-Qaeda under every bed.

• Palestinian statehood initiative is educational tactic in a long struggle
  • Shmuel July 26, 2011 at 1:04 pm with 4 replies

    Sometimes ignorance is better than a bad education. Contrary to BDS, the PA bid for recognition at the UN, reinforces the message that the post-'67 occupation is the only problem in I/P, once again abandoning Palestinians within Israel and especially the refugees (Arafat did so at his peril). Does this move really represent what Palestinians want?

    I think Abunimah put it well (as usual):

    The effort to seek diplomatic recognition for an imaginary Palestinian state on a fraction of historic Palestine is a strategy of desperation from a Palestinian leadership that has run out of options, lost its legitimacy, and become a serious obstacle in the way of Palestinians regaining their rights....

    Recognition of a Palestinian "state" under Israeli occupation would certainly solidify and perpetuate the privileges and positions of unelected PA officials, while doing nothing to change the conditions or restore the rights of millions of Palestinians, not just in the territories occupied in the June 1967 war, but within Israel, and in the diaspora.

    Far from increasing international pressure on Israel, it may even allow states that have utterly failed in their duty to hold Israel accountable to international law to wash their hands of the question of Palestine, under the mantro of "we recognised Palestine, what more do you want from us?"

    Palestinians and their allies should not be distracted by this international theatre of the absurd, but should focus on building wider and deeper BDS campaigns to end Israeli apartheid everywhere that it exists, once and for all.

    link to english.aljazeera.net

• New tactic in anti-boycott effort: 'name and shame'
  • Shmuel July 26, 2011 at 10:33 am with 1 replies

    OK, I'll start, but I see no reason to limit the campaign to BDS-supporters.

    I name David Harris - for defending apartheid, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and other violations of human rights and international law, while smearing any views he doesn't like with accusations of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, and hiding behind words he doesn't really mean, like "peace", "engagement" and "co-existence".

    Shame on him.

• Israel 'maintains an apartheid regime,' Israeli general says in 'Haaretz'
  • Shmuel July 31, 2011 at 5:45 am

    Welcome, zhaomafan.

    Defining the actions of the Israeli government as consistent with "the crime of apartheid" is far from academic. Such a definition has serious international, legal, financial and diplomatic ramifications. See this ICAHD report on the subject (a summary of a study commissioned by the South African Government): Apartheid%20Booklet%20Digital.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://itisapartheid.org/Documents_pdf_etc/Apartheid%20Booklet%20Digital.pdf

    As for your criticism of BDS, it is a Palestinian initiative and so, naturally focuses on Palestine. Other boycotts focus on other issues (I think there's a list of current boycotts at Wiki). Furthermore, boycott is a strategy, not an ideology. It worked against South Africa and could work against Israel. On the subject of "Singling Israel out for Moral Opprobrium", I recommend the following article by Jerry Haber (Magnes Zionist): link to jeremiahhaber.com

• The erasure of history (Israel gives go-ahead to desecration of Mamilla cemetery)
  • Shmuel July 15, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    Good for you, 3e. If only it were a matter of this law or that law. It is systemic and it is apartheid. You'll be happy to know, I'm sure, that BDS is not meant to be observed by Israelis (with the exception of companies and institutions complicit in the occupation - where possible). BDS is mainly an external gig, although encouragement "from within" is important and most welcome.

    As for myself, when abroad, I BDS like an outsider, and when in Israel, I BDS like an Israeli - avoiding anything related to the occupation, and trying to buy Palestinian products.

• Richard Witty's 10,000th comment
  • Shmuel July 19, 2011 at 6:11 am

    Richard,

    Again, you frame everything in the terms most comfortable for you - which is very nice, because not only are you not a Palestininian; you're not even an Israeli.

    Why does "the goal" have to be stated in positive terms, when the reality (Palestinian reality) is so negative? The correct order is stop oppression (without creating new oppression, of course), and build something positive. The former is non-negotiable, the latter impossible to achieve without negotiation and co-operation. You want to skip the first part, or worse, make it contingent upon the successful outcome of the second part.

    To go back to our favourite examples, the struggles against Jim Crow and Apartheid were first and foremost about ending oppression - a sine qua non for building an egalitarian, multiracial society. You can't work on what the new, non-discriminatory society (or societies) will look like before you have established the principle that there will be no discrimination, and seriously worked toward eliminating it. The oppressor loves talk about visions for the future - he can't get enough of it - because it means he can preserve his privilege in the present.

    The most effective way of attaining the primary goal of ending oppression is to highlight the fact that the issue is one of human rights and international law, not contingent upon negotiation or compromise or peace or love or relationships. Establishing the non-negotiability of the principle of equality is also the most effective way of ensuring an eventual, viable resolution to the conflict.

    In practical terms, BDS would appear to be an effective strategy, in terms of its guiding, non-violent principles, ability to raise awareness of the situation in I/P as a problem of rights and international law, and possibility of bringing significant - especially moral - pressure to bear on Israel to abide by its obligations according to international law. Furthermore, as a Palestinian initiative, supported by the vast majority of Palestinian society, it reaffirms the principle of self-determination.

    You then create a false dichotomy. The fight against oppression (including BDS) does not "follow hateful statements and terrorist mass murderous actions." That is something you have been trying to attribute to it, without any basis in fact - because you are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that one side (your side) bears far more responsibility than the other, and not because it is "insensitive" or "inhumane" or requires anyone to "suicide their sensitivity" (a rather odd and violent expression).

    You close with another false and slanderous assertion - that the Palestinian struggle against oppression somehow entails "hate", which must then be "justified". Your pompous, Ten Commandment-style sermon on mutual declarations of "I shall not hate" is just another way of saying "why can't we all just get along". Masters and slaves don't just get along, although the master sometimes likes to pretend that they do. Work on changing the relationship, establish equality, and then talk about getting along.

  • Shmuel July 18, 2011 at 1:52 pm

    You do not crave reliable information on Palestinians' lives. You crave comfortable information on Palestinians' lives. You want to hear moral equivalence and mutual pain and respective narratives and relationship-building and sympathy, because that is what you need to hear, whether that is what Palestinians are saying or not. You ignore and dismiss authentic, intelligent, non-violent, Palestinian voices, like the Unified Call for BDS - twisting and mauling them in the process, for failing to live up to your vision, your ideal, your interests, not theirs.

    You do the same with authentic Palestinian views on the Gaza massacre, the closure, the checkpoint regime, the hell on earth created by the supremacist settlement project, and every other aspect of Palestinian reality that would upset your why-can't-we-all-just-get-along approach to ongoing apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

    It is uncomfortable for you to think of "the relationship as ONLY oppressor/oppressed", but that is the way the vast majority of Palestinians in the OPT experience it. You "crave RELIABLE information on Palestinians' lives", but have no interest whatsoever in the way that Palestinians actually live and feel, because that would interfere with your "self-construction". So you dismiss views you find disturbing as unreliable or polemical.

    BDS is precisely "a grand mix of engagement and self-development efforts and non-violent civil disobedience". As in SA and the US South, alliances and relationships are built for the purpose of ending oppression, not for understanding and sympathising with the oppressor and his supremacist sensibilities. BDS is anything but "loud drama", but you can't allow yourself to see that. So you make up your own version of BDS - a "fascist" version, that you can easily dismiss.

    Your green thread suggestion is not an act of resistance, because it resists nothing and shows no solidarity - if only because it fails to recognise the existence of the other side and its needs. The concept of two states, in and of itself, is meaningless to Palestinians. BTW, Palestinians from the WB are not allowed anywhere near the green line. Gazans are simply shot if they go anywhere near their prison fence. The privileged lords and masters of the land may go anywhere they like, with as much yarn as they fancy. No one cares. Certainly not Palestinians.

  • Shmuel July 18, 2011 at 11:31 am

    When I referred to experience of direct action, I meant Jim Crow, Apartheid, and anti-colonialism - struggles against oppression that would never have succeeded were it not for determined action to render privilege less comfortable. These are the models for BDS and the current struggle for Palestinian rights.

    Palestinians have been using every possible method of struggle (including direct action) against their dispossession for nearly a century. They have had successes and failures - the First Intifada, with its tax- and commercial-strikes and other forms of civil disobedience being a case in point. Without the First Intifada, the Israelis would never have gone to Madrid or Oslo. The latest concerted effort - BDS -is only 6 years old and has had remarkable success so far in heightening awareness, offering a way in which to channel and expand solidarity, and showing Israelis that their actions are not without consequences.

    The Oslo years saw a huge rise in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue on a popular level, joint projects, exchanges and "relationship-building". Palestinian society as a whole has come to the conclusion however, that these efforts have, for the most part, been a waste of time, simply serving to perpetuate their oppression, while offering their oppressors ways to feel better about themselves without effecting any real change - even in attitude. The more they met with Israelis, the more the settlements grew and the harder their lives became. BDS (as explained in the Unified Call) was not the product of impatience, but of sober evaluation and the understanding that negotiation and dialogue, as practised thus far, have been to the exclusive advantage of their oppressors.

    You say that you "crave reliable information on Palestinians’ experience". Not only does this site present mountains of it (from Palestinians themselves and from close observers such as Jonathan Cook), but you reject as "vague" and "maximalist" and even "racist and fascist" the conclusions and appeals of Palestinian civil society - the fruit of Palestinian experience - first and foremost the Palestinian- initiated and led BDS campaign. You say you would like to build relationships, but you never bother to ask whether Palestinians are interested in such relationships, or what their experiences of such relationships have been in the past, or what they would like to accomplish in the short, medium and long-term.

    And a word about your mother-in-law. The difference is that regardless of what Hungarian anti-Semites may have said and felt, she was not an interloper. Regardless of what the settlers may say and feel, they are indeed interlopers - and brutal ones at that - by every measure of international law, progressive values and common sense. It is the Palestinians who resemble your mother-in-law, not the settlers. It is they who are called interlopers in their native land, and are harassed, stolen from, beaten, tortured, killed and driven out on a daily basis. Yet you do not even have the courage to stand up and tell them to stop, to condemn and take action against those responsible, because you feel that BDS is not sensitive enough to the possible future needs of the oppressor.

    I repeat:
    

    Is there anything in your universe that might warrant actual condemnation and resistance?

• Jerusalem Ad: Beautiful apartment, breathtaking view, Jews only
  • Shmuel July 11, 2011 at 3:17 am

    Rechavia,

    The license plates give the soldiers at the checkpoints a convenient way of sorting the cars. What really counts is ID cards. WB Palestinians in a yellow-plated car will not be allowed to continue, if stopped and checked.

    Regarding the non-citizen residents, there are yeshiva students, American Jews who spend part of the year in “Israel” (I have some relatives like that in Efrat), and olim on A1 visas (תושב קבע) trying to figure out if they want to stick it out or not – a common practise among western olim. I am sure they far outnumber other foreign nationals in the WB.

    You complain about nitpicking, but the entire discussion began when justicewillprevail was criticised for his accurate characterisation of the roads as “Jews only”. The definition proposed by tokyobk (which you incorrectly claim is “technically correct”) was “Israelis only”, which is, at the very least equally imprecise, but misses the essence of the division – the isolation, restriction and dispossession of non-Jews who challenge Jewish hegemony. The essence is not a matter of immigration laws (citizenship) or the DMV (license plates). It is about taking the land from those whom the state views as having no right to be there (only temporary sufferance) – because it is Jewish land (Jewish, not Israeli) and they are not Jews (פשוטו כמשמעו).

    From the Rome Statute:

    ‘The crime of apartheid’ means inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;

    The context of the “inhumane acts” committed by Israel in the OPT is the “systematic oppression and domination” on the basis of ethnicity, regardless of the specific bureaucratic means used to carry it out. Highlighting the bureaucratic mechanism (especially when done incorrectly), rather than the essential ethnic discrimination, merely serves to absolve Israel of the crime of apartheid – with far-reaching legal consequences. Needless to say, this is extremely important, hardly nitpicking.

  • Shmuel July 10, 2011 at 5:45 pm

    You are absolutely correct in your analysis, but incorrect in terms of semantics. That’s the only thing under debate.

    Sorry to insist, but if Jewish non-citizens of Israel resident in the WB may use the roads, but non-Jewish non-citizens of Israel resident in the WB may not do so, how is it a matter of citizenship? That's on the technical level.

    On the non-technical level, it is self-defeating to employ Israeli terminology and bureaucratic justifications (even when technically correct - which is not the case here) for what is for all intents and purposes apartheid.

    Tokyobk was thus technically wrong in his correction, and was essentially saying to justicewillprevail (whether that was his intention or not) that things are not really as bad as all that. Discrimination between citizens and non-citizens does not seem quite as nefarious as discrimination between ethnicities, and it's much harder to call apartheid.

  • Shmuel July 10, 2011 at 5:00 pm

    Rechavia,

    I was not talking about JNF land, but about a certain type of property, of which there is a lot in Jerusalem, technically owned by the Israel Land Authority but permanently leased (effective sale) only to Israeli citizens (including Palestinians) or those entitled to Israeli citizenship by the Law of Return. Thus my parents could buy a flat in French Hill, as could a Palestinian colleague of my dad's, originally from the Galilee, or a Jew from Tucson, but not a Palestinian resident of E. Jerusalem, born and bred down the street in Shu'afat (or even in the pre-67 Palestinian enclave in French Hill itself). Technically, it would be accurate to say that the policy is based on citizenship (and potential citizenship), when in fact, it is a policy of ethnic discrimination, part of a wider policy of ongoing ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem.

    That is what I meant by my comparison. Yes, a Palestinian from the Galilee can drive on the network of settler roads leading to Eilon Moreh, but a Palestinian from Nablus (right near Eilon Moreh) can't, and that is because only Jewish residents of the WB are allowed to use those roads. It is thus entirely accurate to call those roads "Jews only roads", and incorrect (for the reasons I have explained) to say that it is a matter of citizenship. It is not - technically or otherwise.

    Israel calls itself a democracy, and insists that it be treated as one. It is in fact an ethnocracy - with some trappings of a democracy, behind which it tries to hide the essence of its political system. In the OT it goes a step further, pretending that the situation is temporary, and that everything will be resolved by accord some day - while continuing to perpetuate its colonisation of the territory. Of course the colonisers have more rights. After all, they are citizens of the metropole! The distinguishing factor is citizenship. There is no apartheid or ethnic discrimination there!

    I don't think I jumped down anyone's throat, and the facts presented were incorrect both in substance (the example of the US citizen I gave) and in focus (the only relevant discrimination is between populations resident in the territory itself).

  • Shmuel July 10, 2011 at 12:14 pm

    This is because the law pertaining to the apartheid roads distinguishes between citizens and non-citizens, not between Jews and non-Jews. The reason these roads are apartheid roads is that among the actual residents of the area, only the Jewish ones are citizens of Israel.

    So it’s not exactly about citizens and non-citizens (a [non-Palestinian] US citizen, for example, would have no problem driving to Eilon Moreh – although trying to get through BG Airport en route to Nablus might be a problem if she tells the truth), but about the two different kinds of residents in West Bank. One is entirely native born, legally resident, entirely non-Jewish, and involuntarily provided all of the land for the roads in question. The other kind, includes many non-natives and even non-citizens (Efrat, for example, is full of tourists and A1 “toshavei keva”), resides entirely illegally in the area, is entirely Jewish, and was not required to provide any of the land for the roads.

    Of all of the characteristics of these two groups – who are the only relevant groups for the purposes of deciding who may and may not use the roads in their area – which do you think is the decisive one? Citizenship or ethnicity? Besides, who has the “Jewish” state been stealing all that land for? All Israeli citizens? The Bahai? The Circassians?

  • Shmuel July 10, 2011 at 3:46 am with 2 replies

    ToivoS,

    These complications are the foundation of the "Jewish and democratic" fallacy. They must be exposed for what they are - individually and as a system.

    Ironic that Israel's critics are accused of waging "lawfare", when Israeli ethnic cleansing and apartheid are concealed within a web of legal and ostensibly reasonable mechanisms.

  • Shmuel July 10, 2011 at 3:30 am

    Rechavia,

    The assertion that the distinction on the roads in question is by license plate and not ethnicity (although technically correct) is, to quote Shulamit Aloni, "hityafyefut nefesh". Without getting into the situation within the "green line", the entire system and regime in the West Bank is designed to isolate, restrict and expropriate space from non-Jews for the benefit of Jews. For all intents and purposes, there is an apartheid regime in effect, that is absolutely a matter of ethnicity, regardless of the technical, bureaucratic, diplomatic and security excuses employed to make it somehow more acceptable to Israeli and western ears and eyes.

    Similarly, one might say that the prohibition against "selling" (technically perpetual leasing) Israel Land Authority properties in Jerusalem (including French Hill) to anyone who is not an Israeli citizen or entitled to Israeli citizenship (i.e. non-Israeli Jews) is a matter of citizenship and not ethnicity, because it includes non-Jewish citizens of Israel. In fact it is a racist policy designed to limit the housing possibilities for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem - hopefully causing them to leave the city, thereby losing their residency status. It is equally disingenuous to say that they have been offered Israeli citizenship (see link to btselem.org ), so what are they complaining about?

    It is paramount to denounce Israeli policies for what they are, and not for what they pretend to be - which inevitably softens (in appearance only) and excuses them, even in the mouths of critics.

• Unsafe, unfair, unreasonable Hitchens
  • Shmuel July 6, 2011 at 6:04 am

    GF,

    Mandela was a terrorist, and the ANC was considered a terrorist organisation even by governments that condemned apartheid. An Amnesty report chosen at random (1981) from the Apartheid years, explicitly refers to "violent acts" on the part of the ANC, "an attack on a police station", "the seizure of a bank" and "the deaths ... of civilian hostages." The ANC was definitely not "nice", and Amnesty never said it was. The bulk of Amnesty's criticism and documentation however, was aimed at the South African government, just as it is currently aimed at Israel.

    Codepink is not identical to the flotilla, although I'm sure that all individual and organisational participants in the flotilla agree that Hamas must be given a place at the negotiation table (the substance of Benjamin's "mission"), and that Israel is by far the greater perpetrator of violence and acts terrorism. Like Gideon Levy, Benjamin focuses on the far greater and lesser-known injustice. It is preposterous to suggest that she "works for" or supports Hamas.

    Demands that those who support the Palestinian cause denounce violence by Palestinians (legitimate and illegitimate) are little more than parlour tricks, intended to distract, manipulate and obfuscate. If you were truly concerned about your kids growing up in "an Apartheid state", you wouldn't be trying to draw attention away from the crimes committed by that state, even if Palestinian resistance and the movements it has produced have been less than perfect (not to minimise, but to put in proportion - as Amnesty and HRW do).

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