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.
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.
The Episcopal Church of Vermont stood up loudly against Israel’s U.S.-backed oppression of the Palestinians, Nov. 4, as its annual convention, condemning by an 89-25 majority what it said are the Jewish State’s apartheid policies. Similar resolutions will soon be considered by other Episcopal dicoeses.
‘NYT’s Israel bureau chief Patrick Kingsley demolishes the idea that Israel is “shrinking” the conflict in an article in which he visits several places in Israel where Palestinians once lived and were uprooted and shows the deep alienation that discrimination has fostered in ordinary Israelis.
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.
For much of this year, Israel’s defenders have waged a successful battle to keep the word “apartheid” from entering the mainstream discourse. Israel just set that process back by smearing Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations.
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.
Leading Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard responds to South Africa’s Chief Rabbi Zeev Warren Goldstein, who recently argued that the term “apartheid” should only apply to South Africa.
As more and more young Jews say that Israel practices “apartheid” or “genocide” against Palestinians, Israeli President Isaac Herzog calls on the U.S. Jewish community to push back against these Jews. But he never mentions Palestinian conditions that alienate American Jews.
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.