Nine years ago when Jimmy Carter said that Israel was imposing apartheid on Palestine, he was angrily grilled by Wolf Blitzer and Terry Gross on their influential TV/radio shows. The next thing Carter was wandering the moors like King Lear, and exiled from the Democratic Party.
Conditions haven’t changed much in apartheid Palestine since then, but a big change happened in Israel last week, the reelection of Benjamin Netanyahu, and suddenly the apartheid label is no longer verboten in our mainstream media. I saw the word apartheid on the front page of the International New York Times the other day on my plane coming home: it was printed in the reefer (bottom left hand corner promotion) of Yousef Munayyer’s op-ed piece saying Netanyahu’s victory is good for Palestine. In the piece, Munayyer stated bluntly that Israel is an apartheid state:
the political dynamics in Israel and internationally mean that another term with Mr. Netanyahu at the helm could actually hasten the end of Israel’s apartheid policies. The biggest losers in this election were those who made the argument that change could come from within Israel. It can’t and it won’t.
And yesterday on CNN, Rula Jebreal from Jerusalem told Michael Smerconish that Israel/Palestine is one state, and an apartheid state at that.
It’s already de facto a one state with separate sets of rights… So we have an apartheid state on one hand [in Jerusalem and the West Bank] and I would say an ethnocracy rather than a democracy [in Israel].
Smerconish didn’t push back, though Aaron David Miller was visibly upset and tried to argue that you could have the two state solution again with a click of your fingers.
And look at this. James Besser was the longtime DC correspondent for Jewish newspapers. Now retired, he declares in Haaretz that Israel has chosen the path of apartheid.
In my quarter century as Washington correspondent for Jewish newspapers, I frequently defended Israel against charges that it had created an apartheid system in the West Bank. But this week’s election, with Benjamin Netanyahu poised to serve another term with an even more hardline coalition, means that apartheid is the path Israeli voters have chosen. The inevitable results will include even greater international isolation for the Jewish state, a boost to efforts to apply boycotts and sanctions, diminished support from American Jews and endlessly intensifying cycles of violence…
Because apartheid is apartheid, and that’s exactly what Israeli voters chose this week as a course for their nation.
This is a trend, folks. It is becoming fashionable to state the truth about the place in mainstream media, calling a spade a spade; and that is a very good thing indeed.
Thanks to Max Blumenthal: Jim Besser, the unofficial dean of Washington Jewish press corps, declares: “Israel chooses the path to apartheid”
It’s fun watching the cable tv news/infotainment channels waltz around Bibi’s racist statement about Arab Israeli voters voting “in droves,” and Bibi’s denial of Palestinian statehood, coupled with his change of tune once he was elected, not to mention Bibi-GOP attack on Obama’s attempt to diplomatically reach a deal with Iran–while all along Israel has nukes not subject to any monitoring at all. Mostly, the media narrative is it’s just a kurtuffle between two personalities–and, they say Obama is respecting Iran, the arch enemy, while dissing Bibi, who holds American values in his heart. LOL
Jim Besser in Ha’Aretz says that it was until now possible to view the occupation as an accidental empire, but no more. Well, many of us never did take that view, to us it was no accident, not in 1947, not in 1948, and not now. Perhaps the militarists who performed the exile of the 750,000 in 1947-8 did so w/o approval from “the people”, and now the Israeli-Jewish vote responsive to BB’s “never, never a 2SS” shows that, indeed, apartheid has immense approval. Whatever. Nice to see him, or anyone in any sort of seat of power or influence, say so.
At long last. Besser and others are answering that question many remember from the Army-McCarthy hearings, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Great summary, Phil. I am glad that you made it home safe and sound.
I had read all of the pieces that you cite~ eagerly consuming the first of MSM awakening. They’ve been coming fast and furious. Better late than never…
Apartheid is now au courant, but those of us that have been watching for a long time knew that what Jimmy Carter said years ago was the truth. I think that Gideon Levy is right, we have Netanyahu to thank.
“….But no to a state. Never.
If an honest leader like Netanyahu had arisen years ago, we Israelis would have known, the Palestinians would have known, and so would the whole world: it will not be. Then it would have been possible to deal with other solutions, instead of wasting time cheating, time in which hatred only grew and blood spilled for nothing. We could have begun long ago to think of alternatives to the two-state solution – and there’s only one: one state. And we could have begun debating what regime it would have – and there are only two: democracy or apartheid. Instead, we were misled.
Now Benjamin Netanyahu has come and put an end to all this. We must be grateful to him for this. History will remember that he was the first Israeli prime minister to speak the truth.””
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.648122?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
I think we also have to give enormous credit to the Israeli electorate…the 95% from last summer.
“…..Netanyahu deserves the Israeli people and they deserve him. The results are indicative of the direction the country is headed: A significant proportion of Israelis has finally grown detached from reality. This is the result of years’ worth of brainwashing and incitement. These Israelis voted for the man who will lead the United States to adopt harsh measures against Israel, for the man whom the world long ago grew sick of. They voted for the man who admitted to having duped half the world during his Bar-Ilan speech; now he has torn off his mask and disavowed those words once and for all. Israel said “yes” to the man who said “no” to a Palestinian state. Dear Likud voters, what the hell do you say “yes” to? Another 50 years of occupation and ostracism? Do you really believe in that?
On Tuesday the foundations were laid for the apartheid state that is to come. If Netanyahu succeeds in forming the next government in his spirit and image, then the two-state solution will finally be buried and the struggle over the character of a binational state will begin. If Netanyahu is the next prime minister, then Israel has not only divorced the peace process, but also the world. Piss off, dear world, we’re on our own. Please don’t interfere, we’re asleep, the people are with Netanyahu. The Palestinians can warm the benches at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the Israel boycotters can swing into high gear and Gaza can wait for the next cruel attack by the Israeli army.”
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.647555
Some change in terminology required.
“Israel , the only apartheid and Jewish nation in the ME.”.
Should it be saved.Should the world waste time , trying to reform this pariah state.Should we expend the effort putting manners as well as borders on this rogue entity.
Or should we just let it destroy itself while it,s educated Jewish citizens desert it .Better to wait for it to become a “land without people for a people without a land.
Glad zionist apartheid in Palestine is finally getting discussed openly in MSM. Really amazing that it took many, many years. This was so obvious:
1) before 1967 in how zionists were treating Palestinian Israelis, formally calling them 2nd class citizens; and
2) right after 1967 when all residents of the last part of Palestine to be colonized by the zionists were classified as Nazis classified Jews – with different color license plates, different roads, different travel documents, different laws, different rights, etc. etc. etc.
All of this was obvious for those who wanted to see. But zionists blinded the west and kidnapped the west’s brains and hearts.