Fifty-two percent of Middle East scholars say the two-state solution is no longer possible. Fifty-nine percent say the current reality is “akin to apartheid.” The survey of nearly 1300 scholars reflects a mounting recognition of apartheid, echoed lately by comedian Michael Che on SNL.
Several recent findings that Israel is an apartheid state reflect a mounting international recognition. But the indifference to them in the U.S. is also in a long tradition: ignoring apartheid pronouncements about Israel in the U.S. To accept the finding would create a crisis in the Democratic Party and require support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and the Israel lobby including its liberal branch insists that BDS is antisemitic.
What happens when B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO, has effectively described the State of Israel as a racist endeavor? Thanks to B’Tselem’s apartheid report, British Jewish groups that seek to display progressive or radical outlook appear tame, weak, their courage lacking.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave details behind the decision to ban Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering Israel and the West Bank on a Congressional delegation this afternoon in a statement that alleged terrorism ties on the part of the trip’s coordinator and said “the sole purpose of their visit is to harm Israel and increase incitement.”
Last week, the news broke in Israeli media that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs had launched a “stealthy campaign” that resulted in the shuttering of some 30 bank accounts affiliated with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Ramallah-based human rights NGO, Al-Haq, slammed Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan’s smear campaign against Palestinian rights groups as “spurious, unsubstantiated and libelous,” constituting what it called an “illegal interference” with Palestinian civil society under the Hague Regulations.
The Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh does not support a two-state or one-state solution. “We should focus on calling for the end of the occupation, and then we can find ways that we can live together,” he tells Jaclynn Ashly.