Amos Schocken is the publisher of Haaretz. Today in that great newspaper that his family has published for three generations he prints an amazing editorial stating that Israel has become an “apartheid” state because for the eighth time the government has extended a “temporary” citizenship law that in essence forbids someone from living in Israel with his/her spouse if he/she married a Palestinian form the West Bank. It is worth quoting this editorial at length:
It is obvious that this has barely any effect on the
right of young Israeli Jews to live in their country with the spouse of
their choice, because there are hardly any marriages between Israeli Jews
and Palestinians from Judea and Samaria. On the other hand, these
Palestinians constitute Israeli Arabs’ natural pool for choosing a
spouse. For this reason, the law severely discriminates when comparing
the rights of young Israeli Jewish citizens and young Israeli Arab
citizens.When the law was first passed in 2003, supposedly as
a temporary one-year measure, it was accompanied by security reasoning
– the risk of implanting terrorists in Israel via marriage. The
reasoning was faulty even at that time: Every Palestinian who wishes to
enter Israel must be addressed individually. It is the Shin Bet
security service’s task to do this and thus carry out its mission –
protecting the security of Israel’s citizens such that the country
remains democratic, with equal rights for all. However, as the years go
by, it becomes clear that the security argument and the term “temporary
measure” are merely a deception aimed at “koshering” discriminatory
legislation for demographic reasons.The claim that there are indications of an apartheid state in
Israel is widely heard in the Western world. The word apartheid is
catchy and understood in many parts of the world, which makes it useful
to send a message that we resent and which we claim has no connection
with reality in Israel. However, we do not have to identify the
characteristics of South African apartheid in the civil rights
discrimination in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state.
The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly the kind of practice
that leads to the use of such a term, and it is best that we not try to
evade the truth: Its existence in the law books turns Israel into an
apartheid state.
This editorial is a ravishing moral statement. Ravishing because of its incredible clarity and grand impatience with petty objections. Ravishing to me personally because a Jew has said these things, and I still have my Jewish chauvinism. Israel still has its miracles. When will America allow this type of expression?
(Thanks to Richard Witty for the heads up.)
Here, by the way, is a Palestinian perspective, from Omar Barghouti:
Even the owner of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, here admits what
Palestinians have known for 60 years: that Israel itself, not just in
the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967, acts as an
apartheid state — that is a state that institutionalizes and
legalizes racial discrimination.
It is contemptible, though, how someone as well informed as Mr.
Schocken would act shocked — quite disingenusouly — that such an
apartheid marriage law should pass in Israel, knowing quite well that
more than 20 laws, including some far more fundamental ones, have for
decades discriminated against all “non-Jewish” citizens of the state,
particularly against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of the state.
