“…the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. It’s army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.”
Shulamit Aloni, January, 2007
Former Education Minister under
Yitzhak Rabin *
“Article 7 of the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists apartheid as one of several ‘crimes against humanity.’ The crime of apartheid is defined as inhumane acts such as torture, imprisonment, or the persecution of an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, or other grounds ‘committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.’ When the emphasis shifts to an identifiable national, ethnic or cultural group, as opposed to a racial group, Israeli policy in the West Bank clearly constitutes a form of apartheid with an effect on the Palestinian people much the same as apartheid had on the non-White population in South Africa.
Both have their genesis in the desire by the minority to control land occupied by the majority. To achieve this result, the Israelis have imposed a legal framework on the Palestinians in the West Bank that ensures perpetual economic, political, and social dominance.”
Ronald Bruce St. John, “Apartheid By Any
Other Name” Counterpunch, 2/2/07
The first week of March was observed worldwide as the 6th Israeli Apartheid Week. It is a key event at which time educational programs are presented in the universities which describe Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and explains what is being done to stop these crimes and create a more just situation for the Palestinian people living within 1948 Israel, on the West Bank, and in Gaza. One of the major tools is the BDS campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions, which was used to end South Africa’s apartheid.
The campaign must be having considerable success because Israel’s influential Reut Institute in Tel Aviv (2/14/10) has called the movement an “existential threat” to Israel. It urged Israel to use it’s resources to “attack” and, if necessary, engage in “sabotage” (which Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines as a “destructive or obstructive action to hinder or hurt”) of this movement which they believe delegitimizes Israel. The strategy suggested by Reut is “aimed at frustrating, delaying, and distracting attention from the fundamental issue: that Israel – despite it’s claims to be a liberal and democratic state – is an ultranationalist ethnocracy that relies on the violent suppression of the most fundamental rights of millions of Palestinians, soon to be a demographic majority, to maintain the status quo.” (Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 16)
Against this background a meeting took place at New YorkUniversity on March 4th which was organized by NYU Students for Justice in Palestine. The subject was Indigenous Struggle: A Call for the Boycott of Israel. It linked the struggle of the Palestinian people with the indigenous people’s in the US and with the fight of the indigenous people of South Africa against apartheid.
The first speaker, Melissa Franklin, was part of a youth delegation to Palestine. She is a student at Haskell College, in Kansas, which was once one of the federally funded boarding schools that Native Americans were sent to. Their 3 person delegation to Palestine was housed with Palestinian families in refugee camps. They worked on some art and music projects with the youth there but mostly they shared stories of generations of oppression and occupation, and of intergenerational trauma and grief. One of the most emotional subjects of discussion for both groups was the right of return. For the Palestinians it was a matter of 60+ years but for the Native Americans it was 500 years.
The next speaker was Nada Khader who teaches the history of the Middle East and is the Director of WESPAC (Westchester People’s Action Coalition). She said that from the beginning Israel didn’t want Arab laborers – Arab people were never welcome there. Today Gaza is a giant ghetto comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto. The infrastructure was severely bombed, including the water treatment facilities. The people can’t trade because Israel controls what goes in and what comes out. So farmers and manufacturers cant sell their goods. Fishermen are shot at while in their boats. Arable land is being made toxic. There are open sewers. There is a deliberate shortage of food and medicine. Teenagers smuggle essentials through tunnels which sometimes collapse. People struggle with each other because of the scarcity and sometimes betray each other to survive. The attitude of the world can be summed up as, let Israel finish them off, it’s just a breeding ground for terrorists.
On the West Bank there is apartheid and land stealing. Palestinian people have a spiritual connection to their land and their olive trees, some being 1,000 years old. All is being taken from them. They have asked for UN Peacekeepers to protect them from the Israeli military and the settlers but Israel, of course, won’t allow it. Khader concluded that BDS was a humane response to a very inhumane system of violence.
The final speaker was Gilad Isaacs, a South African activist and graduate student at NYU. He said that Israel started out sounding benign, a land without people for a people without land but they knew that the area was inhabited by the Palestinians. The same thing happened in South Africa. Apartheid would create 2 groups living separately but equal. But separate is never equal. Israel is an apartheid state and the term is defined by international law. Is Israel a democracy? One cannot have a democratic Jewish state – it is an oxymoron. Israel is a theocracy, only democratic for the Jews. Israeli apartheid is worse than what existed in South Africa. The pass system was not as bad as the permit system on the West Bank with all the check points. In South Africa there was no wall, no troops in the townships, no armed settlers, and they weren’t bombed as Gaza was. The anti-apartheid movement worked, they had the moral high ground, what was right and what was wrong was very clear. It was non-violent and legitimate under international law. However, there are obstacles that have to be dealt with in Israel that did not exist in South Africa. Israel doesn’t want to use Palestinian labor whereas South Africa needed Black laborers who were united in strong unions. It was good for South African businesses to end apartheid – that isn’t an issue in Israel. South Africa was of no strategic value to the US, but Israel is. BDS can isolate Israel internationally, quarantineing apartheid. By amplifying public opinion public action can be created.
The presentation was followed by a Q & A period. As that was about to start an official of NYU came into the room, introduced himself, and said that he was going to remain there to see to it that all the university’s rules were followed. That seemed odd. Then the questions began. Some were honest, looking for answers, and others seemed to be trying to waste time challenging the speakers with nonsensical questions. For example, there are Arabs in the Knesset who are in the minority, and there are Republicans in congress who are a minority, does that mean that the US is an apartheid state? Or, since the original name of Israel is Judea, doesn’t that mean that the Jews are the indigenous people? Or, isn’t BDS really an anti-Israel violent movement? This went on for quite awhile. Many of the “wise guy” type questioners were reading their questions. And many were wearing tee-shirts that said “Buy Israel” on the front and ”The David Project” on the back. This was an organized plan of disruption.
Sadly, the good, well intentioned, and wise people sitting at the table in front of the room were not able to handle this barrage. They got caught up in the minutiae. They didn’t have the facts or figures at their fingertips and they were unable to bring the subject back to the very serious issues of dropping white phosphorous on children, bombing hospitals and schools, shooting grandmothers, stealing land, genocide, torture, and apartheid. Outside of a court of law, does it really matter if, while the definition of apartheid fits the West Bank perfectly, it doesn’t fit 1948 Israel proper as perfectly – despite the 20 laws that discriminate against Palestinians? Is spending considerable precious time on that really worthwhile? The genuine substance of the evening was lost.
In the future speakers will have to be better prepared factually and better prepared for the kind of serious challenges the organized opposition will present. Omar Bhargouti, Ali Abunimah, and Norman Finkelstein can’t be everywhere.
* The quote from Shulamit Aloni was in the article by Ronald Bruce St. John, “Apartheid By Any Other Name” in Counterpunch, 2/2/07
U.S. Jewish activist: Why I am protesting the Friends of the IDF dinner
By Donna NevelWhy am I protesting the $1,000-a-plate Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dinner honoring Chief of the IDF Staff Gabi Ashkenazi at the Waldorf on March 9?
Like many American Jews, I grew up hearing that the IDF was the most moral army in the world. An honest look at the historical and current evidence, however – most recently documented in the report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Israeli Invasion of Gaza (the Goldstone Report)- reveals a very different reality.
As a college student in the 1970s, I defined myself as a socialist Zionist and attended Israeli consulate-sponsored “hasbara” workshops.
The literal translation of hasbara is “explanation,” but specifically refers to Israel’s campaign to promote its public image. These sessions taught a simple strategy for “dealing with” Israel’s critics on college campuses.
Begin by speaking about Israel as having the most moral army in the world. Never address the content of your opponents’ allegations.
Reference the Holocaust repeatedly, emphasizing the need for a Jewish homeland with a strong army so that those who hate the Jews will “never again” prevail.
And be sure to question the integrity of Israel’s critics, insinuating that they are anti-Semitic (or, in some cases, self-hating Jews). Those of us in the room who supported a Palestinian state (and there were a few) recognized ourselves in their descriptions of who to watch out for.
I remained active on Palestine-Israel but left my identity as a Zionist far behind, recognizing the incompatibility of Zionism (and the reality of what it was) with my support for justice for the Palestinian people.
Recently I experienced deja vu when I saw the exact strategy I had been taught so many years ago being used by the Israeli government and the American Jewish establishment as part of a relentless hasbara campaign to denounce and discredit Justice Richard Goldstone and the Goldstone Report.
On this past International Holocaust Day, as part of this campaign, the Israeli government shamefully used this day to further its attack on Justice Goldstone and the report.
The attack has been particularly virulent, perhaps because this evidence-based report, whose lead author is internationally respected and known as a supporter of Israel, revealed the immorality of the IDF’s actions with powerful legal authority.
The IDF is not a “defense” force. It is an illegal occupying army that is brutalizing the Palestinian people. Why am I marching with 22 organizations to protest the Friends of the IDF dinner and the war criminal it is honoring? Quite simply: How could I not?
Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and long-time organizer for Israeli-Palestinian peace and justice, is a member of Jews Say No!, one of the organizations co-sponsoring the protest on March 9th.
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