ApartheidIsrael has been exposed for all to see. Credible human rights organizations have investigated and reported on the crimes against humanity that Israel has committed to devastate Palestine and Palestinians for decades. The United States’ role in legitimizing, funding, and perpetuating these crimes must be cut. To the United States, to Americans, to the world: call it what it is – ApartheidIsrael.
Liberal Zionists’ moral problem is that they are so wed to “the right of the Jewish people to a state” they seek to discredit any real program to pressure Israel for Palestinian rights. Liberal Zionists could maintain this contradiction when fighting Trump seemed more important to Americans than fighting rightwing Israel; but they have now lost this figleaf, and there is an urgent need for real action, not lip service, on Palestinian rightslessness.
Human rights are understood to include civil, constitutional, individual, and collective rights. Palestinian citizens are deprived of all of these rights in the State of Israel.
Remember Israel’s basic law stating that it is the “Nation State of the Jewish People”? Well a judge dismissed a discrimination suit filed on behalf of Palestinian children who can’t find Arabic-speaking classes in the town of Karmiel, saying the law prioritizes Jewish settlement of the land, Palestinians are a minority in the town, so the state doesn’t have to lift a finger to help these children.
In what sounded like an audition for secretary of state, Sen. Chris Murphy tells an Israel lobby group Joe Biden will restore a “decision” the two parties made long before Trump came along not to argue about Israel. He said Donald Trump’s “anti-Muslim” actions had the unfortunate effect of making Netanyahu’s policies toward Palestinians look racist to some Democrats, but those days will end under Biden.
Benny Gantz, who became an American liberal Zionist hero over the last 18 months as he tried to replace Netanyahu– and then folded–spoke at a Friends of Israel Defense Forces gala of a “people’s army” that protects the “Jewish homeland” and draws its ranks from “every walk of life… every type of background.” But very few Palestinians serve in the Israeli army. Only Jews are required to do so.
In a new report, Amnesty International details how Palestinian members of Knesset face systemic discrimination: “Despite being democratically elected like their Jewish Israeli counterparts, Israeli Arabic MKs are the target of deep-rooted discrimination and undue restrictions that hamstring their ability to speak out in defence of the rights of the Israeli Arabic people,” the report says.
Benjamin Netanyahu has the inside track to remain prime minister of Israel because he supports the “Jewish identity” of the state, says political scientist Tamar Hermann. The left is a marginal factor in the Israeli election in September, and Israeli Jews overwhelmingly don’t want Palestinians in any governing coalition. The only thing Israeli Jews and Palestinians agree on is that the Trump peace plan won’t work.
Israeli opposition party co-leader Yair Lapid tweeted after a shower, “Israel has to be a state of all its citizens.” Under attack, he reversed himself a half hour later. And Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz has upbraided him, calling the tweet a “seriously outrageous anti-Semitic remark … the slogan of the enemy”.