South Africa’s 84 page long Application to the International Court of Justice to begin proceedings against Israel for its genocide in Gaza is a devastating document laying out Israel’s genocidal acts and statements in horrifying detail.
Israel’s new government has cemented apartheid with the annexation of the West Bank and Biden doesn’t care; but American Jews who thrive in a secular democracy should be outraged by what is done in their name.
Even a scholar who opposes the label says, “Israel does not have a case against apartheid.” That is the power of the apartheid framing. The label for Israel has gained broad acceptance because of the widening awareness of the death of the Two State Solution — that Israel never really wanted a legitimate, contiguous Palestinian state. Because of American support for Israeli impunity, it may take years for the apartheid name and frame to achieve the result we are hoping for. But at least we now have a tool for organizing and persuasion of great potential potency, if we bang the apartheid drum often and loudly.
The French writer Sylvain Cypel went to Israel as a young man to join the army and build the country. Now he is deeply dismayed by its rightwing nativism and indifference to international human rights law and has penned a lacerating book about the threat of Zionism to Palestinians and to Jewish tradition.
“This is our state — the Jewish state. This is our nation, language, and flag,” Netanyahu has said; and the Palestinian oppression is a Jewish shonda, overwhelmingly supported by world Jewry with cultural, political and financial backing. So Jews who object to Israeli crimes must come forward.
NYT Jerusalem correspondent Patrick Kingsley gives last word to Palestinian in Jerusalem who 8 times has been denied permission to expand his home to prove apartheid charge to readers. His coverage of the Human Rights Watch report affirms its findings and should be welcome by readers seeking changes in establishment opinion.
The two state solution has been killed by Israeli expansion, and Jonathan Kuttab argues for the development of a program for one hybrid state that would be a truly unified democracy by allowing both Jews and Palestinians to “validate the essential elements of both Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism,” while rejecting those elements in each “which degrade or deny the Other.”
For 22 years after its founding Jewish Voice for Peace declined to take a position on Zionism. Now it has boldly stated that “Zionism has meant profound trauma for generations” and “We unequivocally oppose Zionism because it is counter” to “our vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people.” JVP member Robert Herbst writes that the landmark statement “helps restore in my Jewish heart and soul a modicum of pride.”
For more than a generation, Palestinian voices have been suppressed at the New York Times. But under the new publisher A.G. Sulzberger, 38, the paper is serving notice that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans who want open debate. This explains Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking piece saying it’s time to end the progressive silence over Palestinian rights.