Yesterday news broke that yet another organization determined that Israel’s rule over Palestinians constitutes “apartheid,” this time a report from the Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council. The Israeli government now “fears an ‘unprecedented’ effort to push the apartheid label,” Haaretz says— a wave Israel’s foreign minister predicted a few months ago.
Much to Israel supporters’ chagrin, The New York Times actually published a fair account of this new report. So no, This is not just a bad dream, it’s happening in the real world. The fact that the New York Times covered the report caused the American Jewish Committee to respond with rage to the report, coming on the heels of Amnesty International’s apartheid finding in February:
AJC strongly rejects the biased findings of the UN Special Rapporteur’s libelous report on Israel. Israel is a pluralistic democracy that ensures equal rights to all of its citizens. Bolstering @Amnesty‘s baseless allegations does nothing to advance the cause of peace.
Amnesty International welcomes the new report today: “Palestinian human rights organizations have been calling the situation apartheid for years, and this report is a landmark moment of recognition of the lived reality of millions of Palestinians.” Human Rights Watch also welcomed the report— which follows its “apartheid” report of last year.
While the Council on American-Islamic Relations drew the natural conclusion– stop the Israel aid. “More and more human rights organizations and experts are documenting the fact that the Israeli government’s racist system of oppression against Palestinians meets the definition of apartheid,” CAIR official Edward Ahmed Mitchell said. “It is now time for our nation to recognize the obvious and stop funding human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.”
The young Jewish group IfNotNow has also been publicizing the report and the word “apartheid.”
The @UNHumanRights report by @MichaelLynk5 notes the decades-long Israeli occupation is “indistinguishable from annexation … This is apartheid.”
As for the Israel lobby, the rightwing lobby is angry, but the liberal lobby seems to be hoping that this goes away.
AIPAC won’t even mention the word apartheid in an email about the Human Rights Council:
The U.N.’s relentless diplomatic assault against the Jewish state exposes their deep, anti-Israel bias and plays right into the hands of Israel’s enemies. Only the U.S.-Israel alliance stands in the way of the U.N.’s attacks…
The rightwing Israel lobby group Camera put up a commentary bashing the report as antisemitic for describing Israel’s seizing of Palestinian lands as “covetous.”
But the center/left branches of the Israel lobby haven’t had much to say about the new apartheid report. It feels as if they’re embarrassed by the fresh charge and are pulling the pillow over their heads; they’d rather talk about the death of former secretary of state Madeleine Albright at 84. Democratic Majority for Israel is “heartbroken” at Albright’s passing. The ADL is “heartbroken,” too. J Street also issued a statement on Albright’s death.
But J Street has not mentioned the apartheid report on its twitter feed or even in its daily news roundups. Like it never happened.
The report is bothersome to liberal Zionists because it fosters dissatisfaction in their progressive base — about why they’re not taking a stronger stance against human rights violations– beyond acknowledging their existence (as J Street often does). Just last week a California congressman whom J Street took out to Israel said there are “parallels” to apartheid. But J Street is very clear that it does not use the word apartheid.
Americans for Peace Now is more direct about the new report, maybe because it is not in the business of talking to Congress but more aimed at the grass roots. The report shows “very serious problems” that can’t be addressed with “cries of antisemitism,” APN says. (Much as J Street said when the Amnesty International report apartheid dropped.)
Americans for Peace Now’s ceo Hadar Susskind elaborates:
Sure. Feel free to complain about the use of “apartheid” if you don’t like it. But what are you going to do about it? And by “it”, I mean the reality on the ground.
Bear in mind that Americans for Peace Now chair James Klutznick actually called that reality apartheid in 2020: “Whether or not anyone wants to say apartheid, I just said it. It’s been de facto apartheid for a long time and this could end up being official.”
So this report will create more pressure on liberal Zionists to acknowledge the reality in Israel and Palestine, instead of adhering to their vision, the “just and necessary” “democratic national homeland for the Jewish people.” A dream indeed.
The fix is already in on cable news. Like clockwork, the Liberal Zionists on cable news have already sprung into action. Less than a day after completely ignoring the UN report of Israeli Apartheid, Andrea Mitchell managed to run a straight-up Hasbara segment interviewing Israelis at the Israeli field hospital in Ukraine. No mention of Israel’s tepid condemnation of Russia, no mention of the lack of defensive weapons or supplies, no mention of Iron Dome, o mention of the complete lack of official Israel policy and action, nor the total lack of sanctions against Russia by Israel, just feel-good pro-Israel public relations Hasbara. Classy!
Lynk’s report is well written and powerful. But unlike the Amnesty International report that just came out, Lynk’s report ONLY commented on the situation in the OPT. That is not a criticism, it was his task from the UN Human Rights Council.
AI was much broader, claiming that Israel is exercising a regime of apartheid over all the territory it covers (including Israel itself).
Must watch YouTube video!! Young Jews visit Spain and discover their faith’s supressed non-Zionist past. Filmed in January 2016.
“The Golden age of Jewish Culture: Watch our Birthwrong trip to Spain”
The Golden age of Jewish Culture: Watch our Birthwrong trip to Spain – YouTube
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Time is ticking: Israel’s balancing act in Ukraine is likely to backfire (juancole.com)
Israel/Palestine March, Informed Comment, 26/2022, by Ramzy Baroud “Time is ticking: Israel’s balancing act in Ukraine is likely to backfire”
EXCERPT:
“Israel’s balancing act in the Russia-Ukraine war is likely to falter soon, simply because the resulting NATO-Russia conflict is expected to last for years, not weeks or months. Eventually, Israel would have to make a choice. Alas, whatever that choice may be, Israel will stand to lose.
“From the first day of the war, Israel somehow became involved. Top Israeli officials, including the country’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, began calling their Ukrainian & Russian counterparts. Initially, some in the media surmised that Israel is concerned because of the large Jewish populations in both Ukraine & Russia.
“However, the headlines quickly moved on, with terms such as ‘Israeli oligarchs‘, ‘Jewish oligarchs‘, & other combinations of Israel-friendly oligarchs dominating the news. Business interests quickly began replacing the supposed concern over the safety & welfare of ordinary Ukrainians.
Video: Ukraine’s Zelensky presses Israel for missile defence help • FRANCE 24 English – YouTube
“Ukraine’s Zelensky presses Israel for missile defence help”
“The latter fact was demonstrated in a most tragic way when Israeli Channel 12 reported, on 10 March, that many Ukrainian refugees were ‘stuck at Ben Gurion Airport, facing cold & callous treatment’.
“Israeli hypocrisy reared its ugly head once more on 26 February, when Israeli Minister of Aliyah & Integration, Pnina Tamano-Shata, said in a statement, ‘We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home.’
“….[T]hese newcomers to Israel would eventually be incorporated into the country’s illegal settlement enterprises. We know this from history & particularly from the history of the migration of Russian Jews to Israel, who arrived in their hundreds of thousands in the early 1990s. Not only do many of them now reside in illegal Jewish settlements, but to some extent, they also represent the backbone of some of Israel’s far-right political parties, the likes of Avigdor Lieberman‘s Yisrael Beiteinu.”(cont’d)
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These newcomers to Israel would eventually be incorporated into the country’s illegal settlement enterprises. We know this from history & particularly from the history of the migration of Russian Jews to Israel, who arrived in their hundreds of thousands in the early 1990s. Not only do many of them now reside in illegal Jewish settlements, but to some extent, they also represent the backbone of some of Israel’s far-right political parties, the likes of Avigdor Lieberman‘s Yisrael Beiteinu.
“Aside from the fact that a country moving its residents to an occupied territory is a stark violation of international law, it is also a violation of the rights of these vulnerable refugees, who will be expected to live in another war zone in the service of Israel’s Zionist ideology.
“It is unfortunate, but typical that Israel finds opportunities to bolster its settler colonial model in occupied Palestine by exploiting the tragedies of other societies to its advantage. It has done so many times in the past: in Ethiopia, following the famine in 1984, in Russia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, & in France, following the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015.
“While France was still trying to fathom the enormity of its tragedy when 130 people were killed in broad daylight on 13 November, 2015, then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on French Jews to move to Israel. ‘Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country, but we say to Jews, to our brothers & sisters: Israel is your home,’ he said.
“Shamelessly, Israel finds tragedies as political opportunities worth exploiting. While this quality is not unique to Israel – the Russia-Ukraine war has also exposed the opportunism of other countries around the world – Israel’s exploitation is doubly shameful as it hopes that war-torn Ukraine would help it sustain its own war waged against the Palestinian people.
“However, serious cracks in the Israeli balancing acts are already on display. On 11 March, US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland called on Israel to join sanctions against Russia. ‘We’re asking as many countries as we can to join us. We’re asking that of Israel as well,’ she said.”