When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez labeled Israel an apartheid country over the weekend, writing, “Apartheid states are not democracies,” she made international headlines. And Missouri Rep. Cori Bush promptly echoed her colleague from New York. Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib made the apartheid charge last week.
It’s obvious that the Human Rights Watch report of April 27 accusing Israel of the crime of apartheid has given others permission to open their mouths. AOC defended herself from an onslaught of critics by retweeting HRW‘s statement that it didn’t arrive at the apartheid charge “lightly” and by citing the B’Tselem apartheid finding of January, along with the HRW finding.
Of course, Israel critics have leveled the apartheid charge for more than 15 years. Rep. Betty McCollum of MN first leveled the “apartheid” charge in 2018.
But the Human Rights Watch report has gotten legs from Israel’s latest Gaza onslaught; and what we are now seeing is a sudden end to a taboo (as my friend Dan Walsh says).
This weekend both John Oliver on HBO and Ali Velshi on MSNBC deployed the apartheid charge to explain what viewers are seeing.
Last night John Oliver accused Israel of war crimes and apartheid against Palestinians, and cited HRW and B’Tselem. Daily Beast has the quote:
They’ve been living under a suffocating blockade for 14 years, and in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinians are essentially being governed by a form of apartheid—an assessment echoed by both international and Israeli human rights groups,
Here is a longer clip of Oliver from the show.
“Both sides are suffering heartbreaking casualties. But one side is suffering them exponentially… We have got to start having this conversation honestly. And falling back on convenient, sanitized terms like real estate dispute and air strikes on militants feels a little disingenous, when what you are describing is forcing people form the homes they have lived in for decades and killing civilians and children…
“Some things are pretty simple. One side is suffering much more…If America really wants to help… I would hope that a real friend would tell me when I’m being an asshole and definitely when I’m committing a fucking war crime.
Ali Velshi spoke out on May 15, on MSNBC, this clip thanks to CAIR:
Palestinians are at best third-class citizens in the nation of their birth. The idea that it is even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable. One look at a map of Israel, Gaza and the occupied territories conjures up only one other example, apartheid era South Africa…
It may be worth going deeper than what you may hear in your bubble in understanding the depth to which the Palestinian people are subject to apartheid in their own land, deprived of basic necessities and subject to relentless civil rights violations. This is not a secret. It’s out there to see. You just have to look for it.
Velshi was soon echoed by Joy-Ann Reid:
What @AliVelshi says in this succinct explanation is just facts: painful, well known and documented facts. Israel has a right to exist in peace but so do Palestinians, who currently suffer under what can only be called apartheid. And no one is doing anything about it.
The young Jewish group IfNotNow has made apartheid a regular allegation in their messaging.
To bomb schools today — or any day — goes against everything it means to be Jewish. #JewsAgainstApartheid
This morning David Rothkopf, scribe of the liberal establishment, tweeted: “Israel is an apartheid state. Apartheid states are not democracies.”
And yesterday, Iran labeled Israel an “apartheid” state and called for international action to stop its systematic violations of human rights.
Time is Israel’s greatest enemy. It’s 7 years since the 2014 turkey shoot. Adelson is now in hell.The boomers are slowly leaving the stage. No generation below them drank the Exodus Kool Aid. no generation was as rabid about Israel.
Carter wrote “peace or apartheid” in 2007. He was attacked. But it’s 2021 now and Israel’s goons are weaker. They had to take out the leader of the UK Labour party in 2019. They are afraid of international law. They are afraid of the goys abandoning them. There are many Friends of Israel groups across the OECD . But Israel has no friends. Nobody to tell it to end the apartheid and behave like a civilised state.
Exodus is over.
Finally!!! I knew we would hit the tipping point eventually, but personally thought it was still at least another 5 fives years away at the soonest. I think this now is half to do with reaction to Trump giving away the farm to the radical right in both countries. The other half is that these same media folk have been desperately wanting to say this since 2014, but the circumstances did not quite presented itself and Obama made it very difficult for them to come out of the closet, so to speak. Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer’s silent complicity has left a gigantic vacuum for ACTAUL progressives to stand up and vocally fill that gaping void and they aren’t wasting a single minute in doing just that!
The good news is that ever faster, “Israel” is digging its grave
The usual suspects (AIPAC ET AL) must be doubled over gasping for breath wondering if they have coronavirus , or was the term Apartheid uttered on mainstream media several times in one day.
All hands on deck , we are being attacked by Jew haters who would destroy the one and only Jewish , (Apartheid )State in the world.If only we can hang on for another 3 or 4 Gaza wars we will have the full package.
Someone needs to create a false flag operation in the USA and blame it on the Palestinians.Tell the Americans that Hamas is threatening to destroy their country with rockets.Americans are stupid ,and they are easily moved. That should shore up US support for our cause long enough to spirit away all the Palestinian paupers from our beloved Yisroel.
B’Tselem has called Israel an apartheid nation, so did Human Rights Watch. Rev. Desmond Tutu also stated that Israel had apartheid policies, and the good man was attacked so viciously by apologists all over the world. The US will continue to embrace, and worship, that apartheid terrorist state, in fact we just found out that the Biden administration will sell that apartheid state weapons worth 750 million dollars, which they use to kill more women and babies.
We are the aiding, arming, and protecting an apartheid state, that terrorizes 2 million people living in an open prison, by sending those precision bombs into civilians structures.
So much for Biden’s foreign policies based on human rights. What a joke.