More than 1000 academics, artists and intellectuals have signed a “Declaration on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid in Historic Palestine.” There used to be a mainstream prohibition on the word apartheid. In 2021, that logjam has broken. The world’s civil societies have had enough. Across countries and continents, across age groups and ethnicities, the marches, the manifestos, the opeds, the motions passed overwhelmingly have swelled into a torrent.
Noushin Framke was shocked to find a hero of the Palestinian human rights movement criticize the Biden Administration’s acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide.
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.
Israel has both effected and veiled a comprehensive policy of apartheid directed at the whole Palestinian people in Israel, in occupation, and in exile, the stunning UN report says — and it was promptly veiled.