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Apartheid

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Palestinians take part in a protest against the Israeli decision to declare six Palestinian human rights groups as "terror organizations", in Gaza City on November 10, 2021. (Photo: Mahmoud Nasser/APA Images)

I work for one of the leading Palestinian human rights organizations, Al-Haq, which was recently declared a “terrorist organization” by the Israeli regime along with five prominent civil society organizations in Palestine. Friends and acquaintances keep asking me how it feels to be a member of a “terrorist organization”. I always respond by saying: it seems like we’re doing something right.

A Palestinian man puts a national flag atop a vehicle of Israeli security forces during clashes following a march on February 19, 2016 in the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah, to mark the 11th anniversary of their uprising against the building of Israel's controversial separation barrier and the construction of Israel settlements. (Photo: Shadi Hatem/ APA Images)

As the word “apartheid” grows in popularity to describe Israeli oppression of Palestinians it is helpful to revisit another concept defined in the mid 20th century: genocide.

Human rights groups around the world have condemned Israel's decision to designate six civil society groups "terrorist organizations."

Israel will not end its occupation and apartheid regime of its own free will. We call on those appalled by Israel’s apartheid and by its attempt to crush human rights organizations, to join us in supporting the organizations under attack and to support Palestinian civil society’s call for BDS.

A shuttered Palestinian shop in Hebron closed down by the Israeli military that was vandalized with a Star of David, an ancient Jewish symbol adopted by the Israeli state as a national symbol. (Photo: Lauren Surface)

Within Israel, Apartheid is so deeply entrenched that dismantling it appears as viable as dismantling Zionism itself. But this is what needs to happen. In fact, abolishing Apartheid means abolishing Zionism and burying the idea of Jewish supremacy, which for all the sugar coating, stands at the core of Zionism itself.

Israel is a “strategic liability of the first order” for the United States and is “the most likely state in the world to take the United States to Armageddon,” says Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Sec’y of State Colin Powell. And the neoconservatives planned to set the Middle East on fire so that Israel’s enemies wouldn’t be able to give it trouble.