Last week the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously passed a bill to restrict curriculums so that Palestinian children won’t be taught to “demonize” Israel.
The committee also unanimously OK’d an amendment from Republican August Pfluger of Texas to bar “claims that Israel practices apartheid” from curriculums in U.N. or Palestinian Authority schools funded by the U.S.
So Palestinian curriculums must not include the view of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that Israel practices apartheid.
The “Peace and Tolerance in Palestine Education Act” was sponsored by Brad Sherman of Los Angeles. The discussion and vote took place last Wednesday and featured an argument from Brad Sherman in support of the apartheid ban that struck me as extremely stupid.
Here’s Sherman:
“I believe this amendment is accurate… There might be some who would say– or at least I have met a few people who would claim– that Israel is an apartheid state, and I want to rebut that extreme conclusion. We want a two state solution. That means that there will be one state for one people apart from another state for another people. That is not apartheid. Apartheid was a vicious system in Southern Africa that the entire world worked to destroy. So to call Israel an apartheid state is to call for a worldwide effort to destroy Israel. The fact is that there is a border between Israel and Egypt. So the Egyptian people are separated from Israel by a border. They live apart from Israel in Egypt. That is no different from what we see in Europe. Nobody has called the Netherlands an apartheid state because it has a border with Germany. And the Dutch live predominantly on one side of the border and Germans tend to live on the other side of the border, and they both have different states for different people. And of course there are some Germans living in the Netherlands and some Dutch living in Germany and their rights are protected. So to say those who want a Jewish state living side by side with a Palestinian state are embracing the evils of apartheid is to say that virtually every international border constitutes a separateness, an apartheid, because it divides people into different countries. And I think that’s an extreme and ridiculous conclusion. We do want a two state solution. That is a majority sentiment in Israel and is the official position of the Israeli government. It’s almost the position of the Palestinian Authority. So to condemn Israel because it wants to be a Jewish state should be done right after we condemn the Netherlands because for wanting to be a predominantly Dutch state.”
There are many reasons I think this argument is nonsense. There is today only one state in the land, Israel, and the U.S. does all in its power to prevent Palestine’s efforts to be recognized as a state. The “borders” established by the international community in 1947 and again in 1949 are mere wishes; they have not been respected; Israel has occupied the land assigned to Palestine and moved 750,000 Jewish Israelis into that territory. Jews there are under a separate set of laws than the Palestinians, with separate roads and walls that cut through Palestinian villages, and the Palestinians are under military law.
Vicious? This whole system constitutes apartheid in the eyes– not of extremists– but Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Al-Haq, B’Tselem, and other human rights groups, as well as leading voices including Jimmy Carter, Stephen Robert (“apartheid on steroids”), Zaha Hassan, and Aida Touma-Sliman. Not to mention many Protestant groups, including the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church.
Moreover, the Human Rights Watch “apartheid” report of 2021 was set in motion in 2018 when Israel passed a Nation-State bill that gave Jews higher rights to land and language over Palestinians inside Israel. B’Tselem has said there is an “apartheid regime” in the entire land. And P.S. the “two-state solution” is off the table in Israeli politics.
No wonder people are trying to dismantle that persecution. Much as apartheid laws were dismantled in South Africa.
Almost as staggering as Sherman’s speech was Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina saying that Palestinian youth have given up on “acceptance and tolerance” because of text books. She said that on a recent trip, “We met with Palestinian youth who were deeply disillusioned about the possibility of peace with their Israeli neighbors,” because their curriculums contain content that “perpetuates antisemitism and Palestinian victimhood and martyrdom” — texts that “demonize or mischaracterize Israel.”
“No child is born to hate, they have to be carefully taught,” Manning said.
The Congress is seeking to deny “the very idea that Palestinians have any legitimate grievances against Israel,” Lara Friedman commented.
“This bill & the grandstanding in committee reflect comfortable Congressional framing that the underlying cause of the ‘conflict’ is irrational Palestinian hatred of Israel/Jews, as opposed to anything Israel actually does to Palestinians…[The bill] insists that Palestinians ‘learn’ their views about Israel in schools, as opposed to from their LIVED EXPERIENCE under Israeli apartheid. It is impossible to capture how disconnected the discussion/framing on the Hill is from the lived reality of Palestinians living under Israeli rule.”
Friedman said the Pfluger amendment on apartheid offered members an opportunity “to grandstand at the expense of progressive Democrats in general and HFAC member Rep. Omar (D-MN) in particular.”
Omar has described Israeli rule as apartheid. So has Rep. Rashida Tlaib. The Democratic establishment is terrified of the truth catching hold.
h/t Scott Roth, Adam Horowitz, Dave Reed.
Another mind boggle: we’re still waiting for a carefully reasoned refutation of the apartheid reports put out by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Btselem.
To state the increasingly obvious, great worry and panic is rapidly growing in the Zionist camp. While they still have several U.S. politicians in their pocket, (e.g., Brad Sherman) whose support they buy, at the same time, where it really counts, ever increasing numbers of people around the world, including Americans, especially all important youth, along with more and more enlightened Jews are seeing through racist Zionism and comprehending its monstrous crimes committed against the indigenous Palestinians for 74 years – unknowingly financed in large measure by American taxpayers. They are rapidly organizing and will determine the future. It’s only a matter of time. Sheldon Adelson and many of his hatefilled ilk are gone. Indigenous Palestinians, however, are still in their ancient homeland and multiplying while Israeli Jews (primarily of foreign origin) are increasingly leaving. Remember, including their ancestors, Palestinians have been there for at least 15,000 continuous years. The Zionist presence will prove to be but a blip in history
It has been documented Israel’s private policy has always been to take over all of “Greater Israel”. Its public statements to the contrary are, by massive accumulated evidence, brazen lies.
Members of Congress like Sherman and Manning are participating in a giant criminal coverup. It includes swindling the American people on behalf of a foreign entity, and violating their oath of office.
I would like to see them impeached, and this whole sordid issue laid completely bare before the American public. America should not be supporting in any way an archaic, barbaric belief system that violates the very core of America’s stated purposes.
I grew up in Apartheid South Africa. This is literally exactly what the racist National Party government did to the educational curriculum in an effort to quash awareness and criticism of their racist, fascist, Apartheid regime. I also remember South Africa’s own leaders at the time claiming that the goal of those intent on destroying Apartheid was to destroy South Africa.
In their craven effort to protect their Israel First benefactors from their crime of Apartheid, these scumbags are quite literally echoing and engaging in the exact kind of rhetoric and behavior that the nationalist Apartheid government of South Africa did.
Or in the words of the Bard himself, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
I assume the house foreign affairs committee will also put forward a bill to clean up the Israeli curriculum, which plays a part in all the hate and policies we see in Israel today!!!