Don’t Accuse Israel of Apartheid

[Shaktimaan]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/17/don-t-accuse-israel-of-apartheid.html

Don’t Accuse Israel of Apartheid

Living in apartheid South Africa, as I did, was easy in moral terms. Living in Israel, as I do now, is difficult.

In apartheid South Africa the choice was clear and beyond escape: It was good versus evil. Apartheid, apartness, which meant racial segregation and discrimination enforced by the white minority on the country’s black, colored and Asian peoples, was wrong and inhuman, denying freedom and stunting and destroying lives. The problem for concerned people was not merely to do the obvious thing and reject apartheid, but to decide what to do about it. That is, how far to go in opposing it against an increasingly tyrannous government: from being a passive bystander to imperiling your liberty, even life.

In Israel, the moral choices are many and complex and are a daily challenge. Each of the two main competing groups, Jews and Arabs, has right on its side, through history, land, religion, geography, and tradition. The dilemma is how to satisfy their separate demands and aspirations for a tiny piece of land. The problem is bedevilled because in the long struggle between them, neither side has always behaved well, inflicting death and destruction on the other.

Each side believes that it is in the right, and each side fears and rejects the other. Jews and Arabs are a mirror image of each other: each believes that force is the only language that the other understands; each believes that the other is trying to wipe it out. That there is some truth in these beliefs on both sides adds to the complexities.

I have had to struggle to relate the image of the pure and beautiful Zionism with which I grew up to the reality of Jewish behavior, which at times is inhumane and beyond toleration and which has grown worse with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank/Judea and Samaria and the spread of settlements.

The ugly reality must not be denied, as some do from the standpoint that Israel can do no wrong or that it must be defended at all costs against its enemies. Anti-Semitism is certainly a factor behind some of the attacks on Israel, but it must not be overstated, as some do, as a means of counterattacking. The Holocaust is inextricably bound up with Israel’s existence, but it must not be misused, as some do, as an emotional weapon to silence genuine critics.

At the other extreme, Israel’s failings and mistakes must not be used, as some do, as an excuse—even more, a cover—for condemning Israel to the extent of denying its very right to exist.

Israel’s accomplishments are wondrous; but it is not a perfect society and its people sometimes behave badly and violate their moral standards, like people anywhere in the world. They must be judged and treated the same as other people and countries. None of it has lessened my belief in Zionism or the imperative of Israel as a home and sanctuary for Jews.

Israel is accused of being “like apartheid South Africa” or it is the “new apartheid” or it is “reminiscent of apartheid” or it “resembles apartheid” or it is “tantamount” to apartheid or it has “elements” of apartheid or it perpetrates the “principle” of apartheid, or it is even “worse than apartheid.” These phrases are used mainly in regard to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, but some critics also apply them to Israel itself.

They are more than mere words: the obvious aim is to have Israel declared as illegitimate a state as was South Africa and hence open to international sanctions. And even more, at least for some, to deny the validity of its existence.

If the apartheid accusation is correct, then Israel merits harsh condemnation. For it to be an apartheid state would be a betrayal of the Jewish ethics that underpin its existence, of the dreams of its founders, and of the words of the Declaration of Independence of May 14, 1948: “The State of Israel . . . will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice, and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex…”

[WatermelonRat]

1. By the standards used to justify the use of the term for Israel, dozens of modern countries

would be guilty of apartheid, yet I never see the accusation leveled at any of them. Hell, even Rhodesia generally doesn't get referred to as an apartheid state, and they were pretty much a carbon copy of South Africa.

[King_David]

2. Oh in this group they will claim to know better than someone who lived there,

Heck a lot of them in this group who are not Jewish on occasion even claim to speak for Jewish people.

Others tell us hate crimes against Jews in Morocco or Boston or Frankfurt or Paris are as a consequence of the occupation.As if neo Nazis or extremists need excuses or are justified in bashing or killing Jews anywhere in the world because they happen to be Jews.

[aranthus]

3. But it's such good propaganda,

and there is a certain type of Westerner who is so willing to believe it.

[HooptieWagon]

4. True. Genocide is more accurate. nt

[Shaktimaan]

5. only to those who are confused as to...

the definition of genocide.

[840high]

55. Look up what genocide is.

[HooptieWagon]

58. Okay. Here:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

a, b, and c all fit what Israel is doing. The euphemism Israel uses is "cutting the grass".

[HooptieWagon]

84. noun

"the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation."

That describes what Israel is doing to a T.

[Israeli]

6. Too late ...

From someone that lived here a little longer than your source Shaktimaan :

Shulamit Aloni

ref: https://www.knesset.gov.il/lexicon/eng/aloni_eng.htm

Aloni, a lawyer, civil rights activist, and member of the Knesset, was born in 1928 in Tel Aviv. She studied at the Teachers’ Seminar in Jerusalem and at the law faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She also served in the Palmach, and during the War of Independence, she was captured by the Jordanian army while at the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Aloni joined Mapai (Worker’s Party of Eretz Yisrael) in 1959. Between the years 1961 and 1965, she produced radio broadcasts on legislation and judicial affairs. One such broadcast prompted Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s government to form the Ombudsman position in 1965. In the same year, Aloni was elected to the Sixth Knesset on behalf of the Alignment. In the elections to the Seventh Knesset (1969) she was not reelected, and following disagreements with Golda Meir, she ran in the elections to the Eighth Knesset (1973) in her own party – the Civil Rights Movement (Ratz) – and won three seats.

Yes, There is Apartheid in Israel
by SHULAMIT ALONI

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/01/08/yes-there-is-apartheid-in-israel/

[King_David]

11. Shulamit Aloni never lived in Apartheid South Africa

He lived un both places .

[FarrenH]

7. Don't accuse Israel of Apartheid

because the aim of such claims is denial of it's existence?

Uh, no.

That's not why.

The reason is to point out that it's de facto Apartheid. What you decide should be done about that is up to you. And yes, boycotts are among the legitimate responses, for the same reason as they were legitimate responses to South African Apartheid.

Signed
A South African who grew up under (and bitterly opposed) Apartheid.

[4now]

8. Don't accuse - Just Boycott, Divest, and Sanction.

Israeli Apartheid is going to end. Some people just don't see it yet.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

9. Whoomp, there It Is!

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Desmond-Tutu-Israel-guilty-of-apartheid-in-treatment-of-Palestinians-344874

Desmond Tutu: Israel guilty of apartheid in treatment of Palestinians

Desmond Tutu, the noted civil rights leader who became the first black archbishop of Cape Town, compared Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the apartheid regime that discriminated against blacks in his native South Africa.

Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate, told News24, a South African media entity, criticized Israeli policies toward the Palestinians in the territories as "humiliating."

"I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces," he said in a statement.

"Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government."

[Shaktimaan]

12. Where is it?

I read the article. Didn't see anyplace where tutu actually said Israel was guilty of apartheid.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

13. Desmond Tutu: U.S. Christians must recognize Israel as apartheid stat

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.599422

Veteran anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu has called on the Presbyterian Church (USA) to pass a series of resolutions condemning Israel as an apartheid state and proposing policies to boycott it.
---
"I am especially urging the Assembly to adopt the overture naming Israel as an apartheid state through its domestic policies and maintenance of the occupation, and the overture calling for divestment of certain companies that contribute to the occupation of the Palestinian people," Tutu wrote in an article published in Huffington Post.

"The sustainability of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people has always been dependent on its ability to deliver justice to the Palestinians," Tutu wrote. "I know firsthand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation. The parallels to my own beloved South Africa are painfully stark indeed."

[Shaktimaan]

14. Wow

So you'd also agree with him that Israel is an apartheid regime within its own borders?! That's interesting.

I'd love to hear more about that.

But I can't because all he did was accuse Israel of apartheid without making any kind of argument as to why. Which is pretty unconvincing considering he's talking about a state that already grants all it's citizens equal rights.

[FarrenH]

15. Asked and answered, many times

In fact Tutu himself has elaborated elsewhere. When we (virtually every South African who actively opposed Apartheid) talk about Israeli Apartheid, we take it as implicit that areas under de facto Israeli control are "within its own borders".

In fact for the sake of comparison to SA Apartheid this is not only reasonable, but logically necessary. Under South African Apartheid, black people were stripped of their South African citizenship and instead declared citizens of "homelands", fragmented bantustans within SA that were surrounded by, relied on and effectively controlled by the Apartheid state, even though they had their own governments. They even had their own militaries. The world didn't recognize those bantustans as separate states because it recognized that they were a vehicle for dispossession and control.

The West Bank, by virtue of facts I shouldn't have to explain to anyone of right mind, and Gaza, by virtue of its history (most of its citizens being displaced from what is today Israel and the West Bank) and having no control of its borders, are rightly viewed by those of us who grew up under Apartheid, as indistinguishable from Bantustans in this analogy. And the oft-repeated response that excludes them from consideration, is viewed as willfully and dishonestly missing the fucking point.

The continuous refusal to respond to the actual critique, rather than a straw man, gives every appearance that the argument is entirely in bad faith and that the nationalist response is not so much an exercise in thoughtful consideration as it is an exercise in rationalizing and excuse-making. It's all very familiar for this white South African. In fact sometimes it amazes me how similar Israeli nationalist rationalizing sounds to white South African rationalizing in the old days. Sometimes you can take entire paragraphs and just change the names of the actors and it is indistinguishable from things South Africans defending Apartheid said 20 years ago.

In the case of South Africa, its noteworthy that the largest foreign block of people willing to defend and rationalize our Apartheid (and actively oppose sanctions) was also American. What a contradictory country you have. Many of the most progressive, open-minded people I have met online and in real life are Americans. And many of the most vocal and toxic right-wing positions, positions that clearly see the lives of brown foreigners as less valuable than those of Europeans, are also American. Also, purportedly liberal hawks who have no problem bombing the crap out of foreign brown people, or enthusiastically supporting governments that do. It's like there are two diametrically opposed Americas.

Many seem to feel Israel-"proper"'s Arab population somehow negates the accusation. It doesn't. The fact that every effort has been made to ensure that it remains a minority - in fact the entire reasoning for not absorbing the remaining Palestinian population properly into the state of Israel - is in service of the same aims as SA Apartheid. South Africa's respected Human Sciences Research council details how the inclusion of a minority Arab population under the formal state does not negate the charge (and their analysis is based on the formal UN definition of "The Crime of Apartheid&quot in a comprehensive legal analysis:

http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/media-briefs/democracy-goverance-and-service-delivery/report-israel-practicing-apartheid-in-palestinian-territories

[Shaktimaan]

16. Before...

I respond to the bulk of your argument, I'd like to clarify a point. Your explanation for tutu's belief that apartheid exists within Israel's borders rests on a supposed understanding amongst South Africans that ALL of Palestine is to be considered a functional part of Israel proper. But tutu in his quote is quite clear in making a distinction:

"I know firsthand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation. The parallels to my own beloved South Africa are painfully stark indeed."

This would seem to reaffirm that he does draw a distinction between the opt and Israel, as would the link you provided, which specifically restricted its accusation of apartheid to the occupied territories.

The continuous refusal to respond to the actual critique, rather than a straw man, gives every appearance that the argument is entirely in bad faith and that the nationalist response is not so much an exercise in thoughtful consideration as it is an exercise in rationalizing and excuse-making.

There's hardly a lack of articulate arguments to be found online that engage the critique in full. If you are truly having trouble finding them I'd be happy to provide you with links.

That said, do you truly believe that in this quote tutu was NOT referring to Israel within its borders when he said "within its borders?" It seems to me he was pretty clear as to his meaning. Most people offering this criticism make sure to clarify that their remarks are directed solely at the opt, and not Israel proper, as your link did.

If tutu was referring to Israel as well as the opt, do you have any thoughts on his possible reasoning? Because it seems like a pretty ridiculous accusation to me.

[FarrenH]

18. You're making an assumption that isn't reasonable

Anti-Apartheid South Africans and their foreign allies didn't see the bantustans of Apartheid as legitimate states. They saw them as Potemkin villages meant to provide the illusion that black people had agency and self-determination in "their own lands", while they still lived under the de facto control of a white government. South Africa's borders encompassed the so-called "homelands" (AKA bantustans). That's the entire point. The global community refused to recognize them as separate from the state of South Africa because they recognized that their form and relationship to the Apartheid state made them vehicles of dispossession.

And when Tutu says "within its borders" that's exactly what he means. The occupied territories are "within Israel's borders". Any graduate of the anti-Apartheid struggle would parse it like that.

[Shaktimaan]

19. No I understand that.

What you seem to be missing is the fact that your single state philosophy, while just and appropriate wrt SA, has no common ground when applied to the I/P situation. Israel isn't unilaterally dividing a single state up for purposes of disenfranchising its own citizens. The two nations were never intended to exist as a single state. And as opposed to SA the rest of the world supports the palestinian's right to self determination and recognizes their state as separate from Israel.

fact for the sake of comparison to SA Apartheid this is not only reasonable, but logically necessary.

My point exactly. In order to draw a comparison between these two situations one must impose a set of parameters that have no merit. No one is making the argument that Israel's logical and ethical action should be the absorption of the opt into a single Israeli state.

You ARE ignoring the actual circumstances that led to the current situation in favor of using a template drawn from another history in order to draw preordained and intellectually dishonest conclusions.

[FarrenH]

21. You're making a distinction without a difference

Two states didn't exist at the outset. Two ethnic groups in one strip of land did. 50% of the land that is part of modern Israel was purchased and acquiring most of the remainder involved violently dispossessing original residents, of one ethnic group, to ensure a majority of another ethnic group. The fact that the West Bank/Gaza weren't part of an original Israel that was then carved up is irrelevant to the charge. What's relevant is that original inhabitants of Israel were dispossessed , displaced into territories under the de facto control of the surrounding state, and denied self-determination. The pattern of control that developed is functionally equivalent to Apartheid, in its present form, with two ethnic groups at the mercy of one government, and that government only representing the will of one of those ethnic groups. The international community's recognition of the PA doesn't signal recognition that they have autonony or power and it's profoundly disingenuous to even suggest that is the case. Rather, it is because observer status provides them with legal means to access some of the United Nation's dispute mechanisms and protections, since the majority of the world feels the same way I do. It may be hard to see if you're inured to the American news cycle, but diplomatically, Israel is isolated and most countries of the world unequivocally side with oppressed Palestinians. Hell, my own country (South Africa) just kicked out the Israeli ambassador over Gaza and every single one of my anti-Apartheid heroes has labelled the situation in Israel "Apartheid". A lot of Americans and Brits I've spoken to are deceived by the fact that Israel has strong support in many rich western countries. But those countries represent around 5-10% of the earth's population. Pro-Palestinian sentiment is far stronger elsewhere. And this is important: Not just dictatorial or fundamentalist hellholes, but nascent democracies like my own that have emerged from their own history of oppression and racism and evaluate the conflict based on that experience and the moral parameters they taught us.

[Shaktimaan]

22. Except.

What's relevant is that original inhabitants of Israel were dispossessed , displaced into territories under the de facto control of the surrounding state, and denied self-determination.

That actually isn't at all what happened. You seem to be very unfamiliar with the basic history of this conflict.

[FarrenH]

23. I'm VERY familiar with it

I'm an absolute history nut and I wouldn't wade in without a detailed understanding. I have little doubt our ways of parsing historical events - motives et al - will be different. And I have little doubt that is because you will claim that various acts of dispossession and colonialism were acts of self-defense and and acts of self-removal, which, curiously, always resulted in more land for foreign Jews to live on and less for native Palestinians. But, you know, that was just coincidence or the painful reality of war and they* started it or some other specious bullshit.

*Where "they" encompasses everyone from Egypt to Jordan to distant governments that ejected Jews to actual original Palestinians, because for the purposes of arguing legitimacy, no distinctions are required. They're all Arabs and the native Palestinian population can be held accountable for the actions of all Arabs everywhere, and have their land and resources stolen because of neighboring countries attacking and as reprisal for legitimate resistance, from what I've gleaned from pro-Israeli advocacy.

[Shaktimaan]

24. You aren't supporting your argument though.

To argue that the nakba was the equivalent of ethnic cleansing or that Palestinian civilians were victims of colonial racism is actually besides the point here. Our deebate centers around whether the charge of apartheid is relevant. They aren't related arguments.

The key feature of apartheid was the segregation and oppression of people who were citizens of a single state. It was not Israel who denied the Palestinians self determination post 48 nor were the Palestinians in any way under the control of the Israeli government. Up until the late 80s the entire population of the West Bank were Jordanian citizens. Virtually no one supports the idea that the Palestinians and Israelis are in reality a single state, where the Palestinians are merely Israelis denied their rights. In your post you yourself made the argument that Israel denied the Palestinians self determination. The two concepts that the Palestinians are entitled to self determination AND are also rightfully Israeli citizens are mutually exclusive. Self determination is a collective right. If the Palestinians have the right to their own state (as most of the world believes), then they can not simultaneously be the equivalent of black South Africans living in banthustans. You can't argue that Israel is simultaneously stealing Palestinian land without implicitly accepting the two state concept.

The world rejected the legitimacy of South African banthustans because they recognized South Africa as a single state. That isn't the case with Israel where the rights of the Palestinians to their own independent state is the accepted ideology.

Whether or not you accept the legitimacy of the way Israel claimed land and independence, there is no arguing that the current borders resulted from wars that were split down ethnic lines. This reality immediately distinguishes it from the motives apartheid sprang from.

[FarrenH]

25. Your argument is very strange

Last edited Wed Jul 23, 2014, 11:25 PM - Edit history (7)

Recognizing South Africa as being originally a single state that was carved up had NOTHING to do with the world's condemnation of SA Apartheid.

The world condemned South African Apartheid because our government dispossessed a native population of land and residency and contrived a fiction that they were all residents of "autonomous" scraps of land that whites didn't want and were under the de facto control of the Apartheid government anyway, for the convenience of whites and to the detriment of blacks. The previous historical incorporation of the land into the modern state is basically irrelevant trivia. In fact, doing it outside your asserted borders (to displaced former residents of land from within those borders) is arguably worse. Let me repeat this: The majority of Gaza's population are refugees or the descendants of refugees that lived in what is today Israel. That is the formal position of the UN.

Your moral compass must be completely broken if you think that the world's opprobrium had anything to do with formal past incorporation. If we took land by force of arms and forced black South Africans all to become residents of the tiny neighbouring state of Swaziland, then militarily surrounded and occupied Swaziland itself, taking the lions share of essential resources like water there, built white suburbs everywhere in between their towns and enforced different laws for different people in the nominally African state, of *course* we would have attracted the exact same criticism. Maybe more. What a silly proposition!

No, that has nothing to do with why we call it Apartheid. It certainly isn't part of the definition of Apartheid the Rome Statute calls "The Crime of Apartheid". In fact that crime in international law was described in a manner that did not match the exact legal structure and history of Apartheid precisely because the intention was to prevent particular features of Apartheid from happening again, not every tiny detail that doesn't have moral bearing.

And aside from that definition in international law there is a broader, common sense understanding shared by virtually every moral titan of our own struggle to throw off Apartheid, many of whom have (having actually spent time in Israel and the OT) called the situation there unmistakably equivalent and even worse than Apartheid. That's right. Numerous black leaders of the struggle against Apartheid here actually went there, saw what was going on, and said the Palestinians in the OT are more oppressed than black people here were.

And before you launch into a red herring about Gaza having no settlers, let me head that off by saying Gaza and the West Bank are two parts of one phenomenon. I mentioned it because the fact that the majority of its population are displaced natives is supremely relevant. Theft and control, for the benefit of one ethnicity, to the detriment of another. Those were defining features of Apartheid.

Its incredibly tiresome hearing the same straw clutching arguments over irrelevant historical minutiae over and over again in this debate when that argument is already settled in International legal terms. The nations of the world already reached consensus on what the actual crime was, and it wasn't "exactly what South Africa had". It was "these aspects of what South Africa had". And South Africans, especially my fellow black South Africans have a hell of a lot more moral authority to say what the defining evils of Apartheid were than someone trying to justify Apartheid elsewhere.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

53. Actually lots of people do.

No one is making the argument that Israel's logical and ethical action should be the absorption of the opt into a single Israeli state.

There are plenty of people who advocate the one state solution, just as there are plenty who advocate a two state solution.

And I think you're looking in the mirror.

You ARE ignoring the actual circumstances ... in order to draw preordained and intellectually dishonest conclusions.

[SnakeEyes]

10. If Israel is apartheid

then why do they allow more arab doctors, lawyers, and judges in Israel than there are jewish ones in Islamic countries? Some of which doesn't even allow Jews. Also, what does that make other nations?

[shaayecanaan]

17. If apartheid does not exist in one part of a country

that does not preclude it from existing in another part.

In Northern Ireland, for a long time Catholics were entirely precluded from entering most branches of the public service. In the rest of Britain, anti-catholic bigotry had died off a long time ago. The fact that there was no serious anti-Catholic bigotry elsewhere did not mean that it ceased to exist in northern Ireland.

In the US, at the same time that Jim Crow laws were in force in the south, there were bastions of progressive sentiment in the north, including colleges and hospitals were black graduates were admitted. That didnt necessarily make it any better for Blacks in the south.

There are bastions of progressive sentiment in Israel as well, but that does not change the fact that the situation in places such as Hebron, for example, is nothing short of apartheid.

[FarrenH]

20. Precisely

Especially when the reason for that Apartheid is to ensure that those members of the oppressed ethnic group who are not its victims remain a minority within the society doing the oppressing. The reason the UN calls most of Gaza's population "refugees" is that they were driven out of what is today Israel by violence and threats of violence and denied inclusion in its democracy, to ensure a Jewish majority. A significant proportion of those thus driven out never even fought the nascent state of Israel. Some of them were even its allies and were still driven off their land. So pointing at the minority who enjoy nominally equal rights does nothing to ameliorate the charge.

[Israeli]

29. exactly shaayecanaan ...

There are bastions of progressive sentiment in Israel as well, but that does not change the fact that the situation in places such as Hebron, for example, is nothing short of apartheid.

BTW its total and complete apartheid in Hevron .

[ann---]

26. Why not?

If you were a Palestinian living in Israel, you would NOT have the same rights as Israelis. THAT is living under apartheid. And Israel is ALLEGEDLY a "democratic" nation.

[Shaktimaan]

27. Except I would have the same rights.

All citizens of Israel are granted equal rights under the law. What rights do you believe to be granted to Jews but denied to Palestinians?

[ann---]

28. Try reading this....

http://www.seamac.org/EqualRights.htm

WHAT IS ISRAELI APARTHEID?

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was the first prominent figure in this country to apply the term apartheid to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories—East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. Israel’s apartheid system, however, also affects Palestinian Arabs who make up 20 percent of the population within Israel itself. Apartheid is a central feature of the Zionist state that proclaims it is exclusively for Jews.

The word “apartheid” originated to describe the rigid system of legal segregation imposed by the white supremacist South African government against people of color in that country from 1948 to 1990. The word itself is from the Afrikaner language and means “separateness” or “apart.” Afrikaners were Dutch settlers who denied basic democratic and human rights to that nation’s black majority and other people of color. In 1948 they formalized racial segregation by making it the law of the land, a policy they called apartheid.

Israeli apartheid is both like and unlike the system of segregation that existed in South Africa. It is also similar and dissimilar to the system of legal segregation that existed in the American South for many decades. The word apartheid could easily be used to describe the system of legal segregation that existed in nine U.S. Southern states from the end of the Reconstruction Period to the mid-1960s when the civil rights movement achieved some of its greatest victories. It could also describe the de facto segregation that existed outside the U.S. South and resulted in the creation of black ghettoes in nearly all U.S. cities.

Three key features characterize Israeli apartheid:

Four million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories lack the right to vote for the government that controls their lives through a military occupation. In addition to controlling the borders, air space, water, tax revenues, and other vital matters pertaining to the Occupied Territories, Israel alone issues the identity cards that determine the ability of Palestinians to work and their freedom of movement.

About 1.2 million Palestinian Israelis, who make up 20 percent, or one-fifth, of Israel’s population, have second-class citizenship within Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state rather than a state for all its citizens. More than 20 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel.

Millions of Palestinians remain refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, unable to return to their former homes and land in present-day Israel, even though the right of return for refugees is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


In 2008, the South African government commissioned a study by leading legal scholars and human rights experts to determine if Israel was practicing apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories according to the parameters of international law. After a 15-month investigation, the study concluded that “Israel, since 1967, is the belligerent Occupying Power in occupied Palestinian territory, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, said of Israeli government policies, “I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”

Israeli apartheid is a two-tiered system of favoritism and privilege for Jews compared with deprivation and discrimination against Palestinian Arabs. It covers many facets of political, social, and economic life, including standard of living, education, housing and development, access to water and roads, an unequal system of justice, land ownership, and freedom of movement. In addition, it has many special features, such as the absolute control that the Israeli military ultimately exercises over all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the recent construction of a Separation Barrier or Apartheid Wall. This wall is meant not only to confiscate land from Palestinians to expand illegal settlements but also to make it impossible for Palestinians to have a contiguous and viable state of their own.

POVERTY
In the Occupied Territories, 66 percent of Palestinians live in absolute poverty, defined as income of $2 or less per day. By contrast, Israelis enjoy an average per capita income of nearly $60 per day. Worse yet, 80 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on international food aid for day-to-day survival, and 33 percent of all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are dependent on international food aid for survival.

The unemployment rate in the West Bank hovers around 19 percent while the unemployment rate in Gaza is about 40 percent. Private-sector unemployment in Gaza is an incredible 85 percent.

Within Israel, 48 percent of Palestinian Israelis live in poverty, compared with a poverty rate of 15 percent for Jewish Israelis. Of the 32 towns within Israel that have unemployment rates higher than 10 percent, 25 of those are Palestinian towns.


Palestinian Israelis face discrimination in employment, wages, and working conditions. Although they make up 20 percent of the population, Palestinian Israelis represent only 6 percent of public employees in civil service jobs.



EDUCATION

Within Israel, Palestinian and Jewish children attend separate and unequal school systems from kindergarten through high school. The Israeli government invests more than 3 times as much in a Jewish student than it does a Palestinian student, according to government statistics released in 2004. Also within Israel the government designates certain communities for “high-priority status” for improving the local educational system. In recent years Israel has designated 553 Jewish communities for high-priority status, compared with 4 Palestinian communities. In East Jerusalem, Palestinian territory illegally annexed by Israel after the 1967 war, the Israeli government spends an average of 2,300 New Israeli Shekels (about U.S. $600) per Jewish student, compared with an average of 577 shekels (U.S. $150) per Palestinian student, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

The discrepancies are especially apparent in higher education. Forty-five percent of Palestinian applicants are turned down for admission to Israeli universities, compared with 16 percent of Jewish applicants. Among Israeli undergraduates, only 10 percent are Palestinian, even though Palestinians make up 20 percent of the population. Palestinians make up only 3 percent of Israeli doctoral students and only 1 percent of university lecturers.

Within the Occupied Territories, Palestinian schools are under funded compared with the generous subsidies given to Jewish schools in the illegal settlements. Israeli military authorities frequently close Palestinian schools or subject them to curfews. Many Palestinian students must pass through Israeli military checkpoints just to get to school, and the military uses these checkpoints to harass and delay students.

In response to Palestinian uprisings, the Israeli military often takes reprisals against Palestinian schools and students in the Occupied Territories. From 2003 to 2005, there were more than 180 assaults on Palestinian schools, resulting in the deaths of 180 students and teachers. During that period more than 1,500 school days were lost due to Israeli closures. A study by the United Nations agency, UNESCO, found that the Israeli military caused $5 million in damages to Palestinian schools.

HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT

In the Occupied Territories, from 2000 to 2006 Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing “funded 53 percent of housing starts and 42 percent of all residential construction costs” in Israel’s illegal settlements, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. The report, titled “Separate and Unequal,” noted that Israel provided absolutely no funding for Palestinian housing in the occupied West Bank.

In occupied East Jerusalem, only 13 percent of zoned land is available for Palestinian construction. Planning and building laws there prevent Palestinian residents from constructing new housing because 65 percent of the residents are impoverished and cannot pay for the infrastructure improvements required for a building permit. In 2009 the Israeli municipal government in Jerusalem outlined as “a main policy goal. . . maintaining a solid Jewish majority” in the city by explicitly discriminating in favor of Jews for services and affordable housing.

Not only does Israel interfere with Palestinian housing and building construction, it also plays an active role in demolishing existing buildings and homes in Palestinian areas. From 2000 to 2007 Israel demolished more than 1,500 Palestinian homes and buildings in the West Bank, compared with about 15 demolition orders carried out against buildings in Israel’s illegal settlements during the period from 1997 to 2009. In Gaza, Israel demolished more than 2,500 homes from 2000 to 2004.

According to the Israeli organization, Peace Now, government statistics showed that from 1996 to 2001, 82 percent of building violations in Jerusalem were in Jewish neighborhoods while 18 percent were in Palestinian areas. However, the Israeli government took enforcement actions against only 20 percent of violations in Jewish neighborhoods, compared with 80 percent in Palestinian areas. According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Israeli officials are 10 times more likely to demolish Palestinian homes due to building violations than they are to demolish Jewish homes with building violations.

Within Israel, Palestinians are legally barred from many communities by racially restrictive covenants in housing, much like those that formerly barred Jews, blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities in the United States from living in certain neighborhoods. Palestinians are legally barred from living in “Jewish community settlements” and “Jewish rural settlements.” Within Israel, 89 percent of its towns are classified as Jewish, and of those non-Jews are excluded from residing in 78 percent. The Israeli government has not allowed the building of a single new Arab town since 1948.

The government also refuses to recognize hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages that existed prior to Israel’s formation in 1948. Because they are not officially recognized, almost all of the housing in these towns is subject to demolition, and none receive services from the state, such as schools, roads, or sewer systems. More than 100,000 Palestinians or about 10 percent of Palestinian Israelis live “off the grid” as a result.

ACCESS TO WATER AND ROADS

Water

Water is a scarce resource in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Israel has controlled water resources in the West Bank and Gaza since its occupation began in 1967. The World Bank estimates that Palestinians have lost more than 100,000 agricultural jobs because Israel has denied Palestinians access to water resources that were diverted to illegal Jewish settlements. The World Health Organization (WHO) found that Israelis consume 4 times more water than Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. In one area alone, the Jordan Valley, 9,000 Jewish settlers consume 25 percent of the water used by the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank, which totals 2.5 million people. According to the United Nations, 60,000 West Bank Palestinians lack access to running water and must pay one-sixth of their income to have water trucked into their communities.

The WHO recommends a minimum of 100 liters of water consumption per day per person for adequate sanitation, food preparation, personal consumption, and other uses. The average Palestinian in the West Bank receives 50 liters of water per day, compared with 200 liters per day for the average Israeli, including settlers.

The water situation in Gaza is especially critical. About 95 percent of the water pumped into the Gaza Strip is polluted and unfit for drinking, according to the United Nations. Israel’s Operation Cast Lead military offensive that worsened groundwater pollution in Gaza’s lone aquifer, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Furthermore, Israel’s blockade of Gaza prevents repair to wastewater treatment facilities.

Within Israel, more than 170 Palestinian communities, mostly in small villages, are not recognized by the state. As a result, none are provided with running water, and the state does not subsidize the cost of water in those communities.

Roads

Of all the blatant features of Israeli apartheid, perhaps none is more apparent than the fact that roads have been built exclusively for Israelis and settlers in the Occupied West Bank. Palestinians living in the West Bank are denied the right to travel on these roads. The separate Palestinian road system is often unpaved and in some cases is little more than a trail, rather than an actual road. Vehicles with Palestinian licenses are completely prohibited from traveling on approximately 105 kilometers of West Bank roads, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Palestinians can travel on the remaining 180 kilometers of Israeli-built roads in the West Bank only if they obtain a special permit or travel in an ambulance. The Israeli road system crisscrosses the West Bank in a way that would prevent the formation of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state.

UNEQUAL JUSTICE
Israel is the only country in the world that distinguishes between nationality and citizenship. Israeli nationality is guaranteed only to those determined to be of the Jewish religion. Only Jews have full rights in the state of Israel, which is defined as a Jewish state under the Basic Laws that substitute for a written constitution.

Under the Basic Laws, more than 90 percent of the land is state-owned. Israel’s Basic Laws prohibit access or the lease of state land to non-Jews.

The Law of Return of 1950, another of Israel’s Basic Laws, guarantees Israeli nationality to Jews everywhere and grants them automatic citizenship if they seek it in Israel. Palestinians, however, have Arab nationality and are denied the right of return. Palestinian Israelis who marry Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories cannot reside with their spouses in Israel, although Jewish Israelis can legally reside with their spouses in a settlement in the Occupied Territories.

An amendment to one of Israel’s Basic Laws, passed in 1985, states: “A candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objects or actions, expressly or by implication, include one of the following: (1) negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. . . .” This provision effectively rules out the participation of Palestinian Israeli political parties that believe Israel should be a state of all its citizens, including the 20 percent who are Palestinian. Any political party with this belief or program is not allowed to run candidates for election to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Altogether, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, more than 20 of Israel’s principal laws discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinians.

Crimes of violence committed by Israeli Jews against Palestinians are rarely punished. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem examined 119 cases in which Israeli civilians killed Palestinians. The organization found that in only 13 cases were Israelis sentenced to prison. Only six were convicted of murder, and of those, only one received life imprisonment. The seven others were convicted of manslaughter, but most drew light sentences. Israeli soldiers convicted of killing Palestinian civilians are even more likely to receive either mild punishment or no prison time at all. In one notorious case an Israeli soldier convicted by a military court of killing a 95-year-old Palestinian woman received a 65-day prison sentence.

On the other hand, Palestinian crimes of violence against Jews are harshly punished, including by means of extrajudicial assassinations. In addition, the Israeli military often demolishes the house where a Palestinian accused of violence against Israelis resides, depriving an entire family of shelter. At the same time the Israeli military routinely “looks the other way” when Jewish settlers carry out acts of violence, harassment, and property damage against Palestinians and Palestinian-owned property. The Israeli organization, Yesh Din, found that from 2005 to 2009 Israeli police failed to indict a single settler for the destruction of Palestinian olive trees in nearly 70 separate incidents.

Even acts of nonviolent civil disobedience earn Palestinians long prison terms, compared with similar actions by Israeli activists opposed to the Occupation. In one recent case a Palestinian who led nonviolent protests against the Separation Wall in the village of Bilin received a 1.5 year prison sentence, compared with an Israeli Jewish activist with Anarchists Against the Wall who received a 3-month prison sentence. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories can be punished for what they read, what they write, and what organizations they belong to.

During much of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians lived under Israeli military law and faced military tribunals, having no recourse to a civilian court system. Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories are considered Israeli citizens and are brought before civilian courts if they are charged with a crime. Even after the 1993 Oslo peace accords granted the Palestinian Authority (PA) limited self-rule in the Occupied Territories, the Israeli military maintained police and judicial authority in much of the Occupied Territories. The Israeli military also reserves for itself the right to intervene even in areas where the PA was supposed to have full authority over police matters.

In Israeli military courts:

There is no presumption of innocence, and the military courts do not adhere to international standards of due process.
Palestinian defendants are not informed of the charges against them until their first court hearing and their attorneys are not given time to study the indictment.
Court decisions can be based on “secret evidence” not provided to the defendant or his attorney.
Military judges are not required to have a legal background or education.
Palestinian children can be prosecuted as adults at age 12, whereas children of Jewish settlers cannot be prosecuted as adults until age 18.
Palestinians are heavily pressured to plea bargain and can face more severe penalties if they do not. As a result more than 95% of convictions are the result of plea bargains.
In 2006 the acquittal rate for Palestinian defendants in military courts was 0.29 %.

As a result of harsh sentences, more than 650,000 Palestinians have served time in prison since 1967 when the Occupation began. This figure represents about 40 percent of today’s male population. A large percentage of Palestinian prisoners have been tortured, according to several human rights organizations.

LAND OWNERSHIP AND PROPERTY CONFISCATION
Israel has granted illegal settlements control of 43 percent of occupied West Bank land. It has designated 18 to 20 percent of the West Bank as closed military zones and another 10 percent as park land. The total amount of private and public land thus removed from Palestinian control amounts to about 73 percent of the occupied West Bank, according to Human Rights Watch.

Under international law, property can be confiscated only in cases of urgent military necessity. Furthermore, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to an occupied area. It reads in part, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The settlements are thus illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and the confiscation of land to build the settlements is illegal. Under international humanitarian law it is also illegal to confiscate private property without compensation and in a way that discriminates. The Israeli organization Peace Now found that 40 percent of the West Bank settlements were built on privately-owned Palestinian land. Because the settlements are Jewish only and no compensation was paid to the Palestinian owners, the confiscation of Palestinian land for settlement construction is also illegal under international human rights law. Even under Israeli law the construction of settlements on privately-owned land is illegal.

In East Jerusalem, Palestinians are confined to just 13 percent of the land area even though they make up 35 percent of Jerusalem’s population. Illegal settlements in East Jerusalem have access to 25 percent of the land area of East Jerusalem that is zoned for settlement construction. A Jewish settler has access to 3 times more land than a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem. Israel also illegally annexed land from more than 28 Palestinian towns and villages to make it part of Jerusalem’s municipal borders. In many cases, it confiscated only the farmland belonging to Palestinian farmers living in those villages, but excluded the Palestinian population.

Within Israel, more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages were either destroyed or depopulated of Palestinians in 1948 when the state of Israel was founded. Israel has never paid compensation to the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who were forced to abandon their land and homes under threat of massacre or due to military force. From 1948 to 1953, the Israeli government created 370 new Jewish towns. Of those, 350 were built on land taken from “absentee” Palestinian owners.

These owners were “absentees” because Israel refused to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes even though the right of return is established in one of the founding documents of the United Nations known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Instead, the Israeli government enacted the Law of Return as one of its Basic Laws, which guarantees the right of “return” only to Jews. Before 1948 Jews legally owned only about 7 percent of the land in what was then Palestine. After the founding of Israel in May 1948, the government claimed 93 percent of the land as state land.

THE SEPARATION WALL AND FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
Following the 2nd intifada, or uprising, against Israeli oppression, the Israeli government announced that it would build a “security fence” or barrier between Israel and the Occupied Territories. The announced reason was to prevent suicide bombings within Israel. As construction of the “fence” began, however, it quickly became apparent that the Separation Wall had little to do with security. Instead, it had much to do with confiscating more land from the Palestinians, controlling their movements within the Occupied Territories, and making the creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible.

The route of the wall did not follow the so-called Green Line, the armistice line that delineated the border of Israel from the West Bank and Gaza prior to the 1967 war. Instead, in numerous places, the wall sharply veered into the West Bank, cutting off Palestinian villages from adjacent farmland, land that Palestinian farmers had cultivated for generations. Israeli authorities proclaimed that farmers would be able to access their land only if they could prove land ownership. Otherwise, they would not receive a permit to cross the Separation barrier. But in many cases, traditional farming practices meant that land was owned by families rather than individuals and documented “proof of ownership” was not required as land was passed from one generation to the next. Israel has granted permits to only 18 percent of farmers who have been cut off from their land by the Separation Wall.

In addition to separating Palestinians from their farmland, the Separation Wall also intersected Palestinian towns and cities. Instead of separating Palestinians from Israelis, it separated Palestinians from Palestinians. Merely to go to work, to school or to a hospital, Palestinians must pass through military checkpoints, where Israeli soldiers routinely harass and intimidate them or simply delay their passage, including people seeking emergency medical treatment. What was formerly a routine commute to work or school became an onerous trip requiring several hours of delays. The World Bank estimated that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of goods and services produced, in the Occupied Territories declined 60 percent on a per capita basis from 1999 to 2008 due to restrictions imposed on Palestinians’ freedom of movement.

In 2004 the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that Israel was obligated to halt construction of the wall, to dismantle it where it interfered with Palestinians’ freedom of movement, and to compensate Palestinians for lost income. The Court found that the Separation wall interfered with Palestinian’s “right to work, to health, to education, and to an adequate standard of living as proclaimed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child."

The impact of the Wall on many Palestinian communities has been devastating. According to United Nations reports, about 15,000 Palestinians were forced to move elsewhere due to the Wall’s impact on their ability to work and live. A UN report on the West Bank village of Jubara found that the Wall’s impact on a once-thriving economy that featured 10 poultry plants had led to 90 percent unemployment and the impoverishment of 1,800 farming families cut off from their land.

Even without the Separation Wall, Palestinians must still pass through myriad military checkpoints. According to a World Bank report, “on any given day the ability to reach work, school, shopping, healthcare facilities and agricultural land is highly uncertain and subject to arbitrary restriction and delay."

Gaza also is enclosed by fences on both the Israeli and Egyptian borders. Israel maintains complete control of Gaza’s borders, making it the largest open-air prison in the world. Palestinians cannot travel outside Gaza without special permits from Israel. Israel restricts the movement of Gaza’s students to and from the West Bank. In 2000, about 350 Gaza students attended Birzeit University in the West Bank. After Israel imposed its blockade, fewer than 15 Gaza students were able to attend Birzeit.

CONCLUSION
These are just some of the many aspects of Palestinian life affected by the Israeli government’s apartheid policies. Fortunately, an international solidarity movement has formed around the world and is heeding the call of Palestinian civil society to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) Israel for its flagrant violations of human rights. Just as in South Africa and the American South where whites joined with blacks to fight segregation and white supremacy, many Israeli Jews are also repudiating their government’s policies. They have actively joined with Palestinians to fight apartheid. In weekly protests in villages like Budrus and Bilin and in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Palestinians, Israeli Jews, and international solidarity activists demonstrate nonviolently against home demolitions and the Separation Wall. Their actions speak louder than words and prove that Arabs and Jews can live together peacefully and in harmony on the basis of equal rights for all.

Many Americans, including American Jews, also oppose Israel’s policies and the way the U.S. government helps prop up the apartheid system by giving Israel $3 billion in annual military aid. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act prohibits U.S. aid to countries that deny human and democratic rights. The Arms Export Control Aid prohibits military aid to countries that habitually violate human rights. Write to your members of Congress and demand that the U.S. government cease providing aid to apartheid Israel.

[Shaktimaan]

41. Ok. I read it.

This link is a collection of half-truths, misrepresentations, false conclusions, and a lot of outright falsehoods with a few accurate facts sprinkled in here and there. The most egregious lies happen to be the ones related to our discussion; equal rights among Israeli citizens. I can pull a few of them out of the document as examples of how crap this article is.

"More than 20 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel."

Well, adalah DOES make that accusation, but none of their examples stand up to scrutiny. For instance, they posit that a law granting benefits to members of Israel's military is discriminatory because Arabs aren't required to serve in the army as Jews and Druze are. Of course they CAN serve. They're allowed to, and are then eligible for the same benefits as Jews are. They just aren't required to.

"Israeli nationality is guaranteed only to those determined to be of the Jewish religion."

There's no such thing as Israel nationality. There's Israeli citizenship, but qualifying for right of return isn't limited only to Jewish people.

"Only Jews have full rights in the state of Israel, which is defined as a Jewish state under the Basic Laws that substitute for a written constitution."

Israel's Declaration of Independence guarantees equal rights to all citizens of Israel. The basic laws define Israel as "a Jewish state AND a democracy."

"Under the Basic Laws, more than 90 percent of the land is state-owned. Israel’s Basic Laws prohibit access or the lease of state land to non-Jews."

Israeli law prohibits discriminating against non-Jews who want to lease or rent land anywhere in Israel. Every single court case wrt examples of discrimination have been decided in favor of the Arab parties.

"Palestinians are legally barred from living in “Jewish community settlements” and “Jewish rural settlements.” Within Israel, 89 percent of its towns are classified as Jewish, and of those non-Jews are excluded from residing in 78 percent."

This is simply untrue. Cases where the residents of such settlements tried to exclude Arabs exist. Israeli courts have ruled against these attempts in every case.

None of your examples of unequal rights stands up to any scrutiny. Discrimination exists, as it does everywhere. But there simply aren't differences in legal rights afforded to Jewish Israelis as opposed to non Jews.

[timdog44]

34. I would hope

That is a rhetorical question. What rights are granted to Jews born in Israel that are not accorded to the immigrant Jews, read slaves. What rights do Russian or Hungarian or Polish Jews have that are equal to Jews from 1947 or their descendants? Probably none or maybe to the right to the wailing wall, which they do not wish to frequent.

[Shaktimaan]

40. Huh?

What are you talking about? Your post was incomprehensible.

[King_David]

48. Are you serious with this post?

I have never heard that ridiculousness before .

Where'd you get that nonsense from?

[freshwest]

30. Interesting take from someone who lived in both places and times. n/t

[FarrenH]

31. Just another variation of progressive except where Palestinians are concerned

Last edited Fri Jul 25, 2014, 12:34 PM - Edit history (1)

Influential Jewish organizations in South Africa like the Zionist federation and Jewish board of deputies, are unconditionally pro-Israel and unfortunately this appears to be the mainstream Jewish position in our small Jewish community, from my own finger-in-the-wind estimation. I mean "unconditional" in that it isn't a view that is reasoned from first principles or consistent moral logic, but one that is rationalized from the article of faith that Israel is always the victim not the perpetrator. I've lost friends over this issue, including a former lover whose family I ate bitter herbs and egg with at Pesach, one who bizarrely insinuated anti-Semitism on my part in arguments about the previous Gaza conflict. She was bitterly anti-Apartheid, but had a big fat moral blind spot when it came to Israel. Other friends spent time in kibbutzes and came back disgusted by the anti-Arab racism they witnessed. This writer is just another progressive-except-where-Palestinians-are-concerned ethnic nationalist. The disgusting treatment of Richard Goldstone by the Zionist federation was also symptomatic of his mindset and the enforcing of a political catechism that comes with it. When critical consideration of an issue becomes a taboo, with a host of community punishments that attend breaking it (exclusion, denial of religious services), you end up with a lot of cognitive dissonance and unreliable reporting.

[timdog44]

33. Hi.

Just wanted to greet my friend and let you know I am still around. I have been through a lot since last I was censured. We shall have to speak of it sometime. Tim

[freshwest]

36. So glad to hear from you! Have been through a lot too. Having computer troubles now. Talk later.

[timdog44]

32. Apartheid

I find it interesting when talking apartheid that you mix up the term Israel and Jewish. They are not one and the same. To be Jewish is to have a religious belief. To be Israeli is to live in a particular area. It is not fair for you to do this. Many Jewish people are anti Israeli, and anti Israeli policies.

Also your terminology of anti-Semitism is incorrect. Palestinians are Semites, as are most of the Arab peoples in the region. The Israeli government has coopted the term anti-Semite to their purposes.

The apartheid accusation is correct. They do deserve harsh criticism. The Jewish tenets have been betrayed. If any people should have learned from what happened to them it is them.

4And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war.

[Shaktimaan]

38. Ok. That's awesome.

I've heard people make that same absurd argument, that anti-Semite means hatred of all Semitic people before, but you're the first to say that its unintuitive meaning is actually a Zionist plot by the Israeli government.

Seriously, that's awesome. I have to know... Did you actually read that somewhere or is it just something you made up yourself?

At any rate, you're wrong. Very wrong in fact. You ARE right about Semitic people referring to more than just Jews. Unfortunately the term "anti-semitism" doesn't mean "anti Semitic folks." It means "anti-Jewish." It was coined in the mid-19th century by a German author, well before Israel, or even Zionism, existed, and was never meant to include anyone other than Jews. If you'd bothered to even look up the definition you would have known this.

Not all words in English mean exactly what their compound construction might imply. We don't park on a parkway. Inflammable doesn't mean fireproof. And homophobia doesn't refer to a fear of gay people.

You don't know what you're talking about, but I give you credit for creativity. Yours was a laugh out loud post for real. That Israeli plot thing is gold. Seriously hysterical stuff.

I really do want to know if you read that somewhere btw.

[King_David]

43. LOL

[Shaktimaan]

39. Omg! I missed this part!

They are not one and the same. To be Jewish is to have a religious belief.

Also awesome! Ok, so here's the deal. You don't know anything about what you're posting. Forget about apartheid and anti-semitism. You don't even seem to know what Judaism is. Here's a small hint: while Judaism IS a religion, being Jewish does not necessarily mean believing in it. Jews can be religious or secular. The religion doesn't define the identity.

But thanks for posting! Always fun to hear from someone who has a lot of confidence.

[timdog44]

42. Jews

All I can see is you are taking on several definitions of Jewish to fit your arguments. But it sounds as if you are claiming that Jewish is a nationality. I do not accept that. Israeli is the nationality. Jewish is the religion. People of any nationality can be Jewish and Israelis can be of any religion.
I do have a lot of confidence and you are shoring it up with your cynical and sarcastic replies. Israel is practicing apartheid and racism regardless of all the high talking you are talking.Belittling is so beneath what I thought DUers were above being. Thanks so much for that. It is the reason I left DU the first time. I will stick to my LOL Katz on Sunday and leave the other crap you say to you.

[King_David]

44. Makes no difference what YOU accept , at all.

If Jews want to define themselves as a people , which they are , we don't need anyone's permission .

Ethnicity , people. , Jewish Nation, Tribe etc etc

And it makes no difference whatsoever what you accept or don't accept .

Jewish people are very diverse , different races , different sexual orientations , live in different countries ,different colors , different sects ,religious and atheist ,and a lot if us consider ourselves one people too.

[timdog44]

46. Jews

Jewish people are very diverse , different races , different sexual orientations , live in different countries ,different colors , different sects ,religious and atheist ,and a lot if us consider ourselves one people too.

I think that sums up what I said. Jews are not a nation. Israel is - where many diverse, etc., etc., reside. My whole problem is how the Israeli government treats the citizens of Israel. But especially the people they have penned up and are killing at an alarming rate in response to the actions against them.

[King_David]

47. Jews are a nation

Hence the organization
"The Jewish National fund"



No permission needed from anyone.

[timdog44]

49. Jews are a nation

So the Jews in America apparently have a conflict of interest. Which nation are they dedicated to and are patriotically attached to. Just as a for instance. The attack of the USS Liberty in 1967. Which side were you on, anticipating that you are an American citizen?

[King_David]

50. Sides ?

There's only one side with Jews , USA , Israel and Klingons .

[Shaktimaan]

78. Miltinational state.

A multinational state is a sovereign state which is viewed as comprising two or more nations. Such a state contrasts with a nation-state where a single nation comprises the bulk of the population. The United Kingdom, the Russian Federation, India, South Africa and Canada are viewed as present-day examples of multinational states, while Austria-Hungary, USSR and Yugoslavia are examples of historical multinational states which have since split into a number of sovereign states.

Depending on the definitions of such terms as "nation" a multinational state may or may not be multicultural and / or multilingual.

Many attempts have been made to define what a multinational state is. One complicating factor is that it is possible for many of the people of what can be considered a 'nation' to consider they have two different nationalities simultaneously. As Ilan Peleg has noted,

One can be a Scot and a Brit in the United Kingdom, a Jew and an American in the United States, an Igbo and a Nigerian in Nigeria... One might find it hard to be a Slovak and a Hungarian, an Arab and an Israeli, a Breton and a Frenchman.[1]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_state

[HooptieWagon]

59. Statement issued from 1885 Conference of Rabbis:

"We are a religion, not a nation".

[King_David]

60. So who cares what the Rabbis say ?

Maybe the religious do ,most of us are secular .

As I said we don't need permission from you or anyone else to be a nation or a people .

What's it your concern anyway ?

LOL

[HooptieWagon]

61. All you needed was a gift from the UN, a gift that wasn't theirs to give.

How much would you like to bet the Palestinians who owned 85% of the land in Palestine weren't represented in the UN discussions?

[King_David]

62. What's the UN got to do with deciding

If Jews are a people or an ethnicity or a nation or a religion ?

What are you talking about?

[HooptieWagon]

63. I guess you haven't studied history,

or are being deliberately obtuse.

[King_David]

64. Oh I know exactly what I am talking about,

We were talking about Jews being a people or an ethnicity or a nation.

I am not sure exactly what you were talking about with the UN , but they never decide on this issue and never will.

[HooptieWagon]

66. Would the State of Israel exist, without the UN stealing half of Palestine to give to them?

I think not. From the mid-19th Century to the mid 20th Century, Jewish population in Palestine grew from about 5% to 6%. Out numbered 2:1 by the minority Christian population. There's "Zionism" in a nutshell. Far more were interested in emmigrating to the US, and did so from the 1850s until the onset of the Depression. Understandably, events in Europe in the 30s and 40s spurred a increase in the dessre to leave. However, it was the UN's offer of FREE LAND that spurred a desire to emmigrate to the new State of Israel, rather than elsewhere. Without that, the Jewish population in Palestine might be about 7%, and all three religions would still be living peacefully together, as they had for over 1000 years previously.

[King_David]

67. We were talking about Jews

Being an ethnicity or a people or a religion or a nation.


What were you talking about?

[Shaktimaan]

75. I'm sorry.

But none of that is accurate. The UN never gave any land to the Jews. They don't have the power to do so. They accepted Israel as a member state and previously pitched a peace plan requiring partition that was rejected by the Arabs. The Jewish population in Palestine grew from 8% to 30% between 1900 and 1947. The Christians were never a majority. Muslims were. Nor we're Jews and Arabs such peaceful neighbors. Feel free to google massacres that occurred, general oppression, what a Dhimmi is and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Arab lands.

[HooptieWagon]

85. Understandable the % Jewish population rose,

when close to a million Palestinians were forced out. I guess facts can be twisted any way the Israeli propagandists want.

[Shaktimaan]

90. You certainly are guessing.

Exactly how many Palestinians were forced out prior to 1947? I'll give you a hint. It's a lot less than a million. In fact, the Arab population was growing up until 1947.

Which would imply the opposite effect of your supposedly "factual" post.

Not to mention that we're talking about the population of all of mandate Palestine. An area that no Arabs were forced from. You see, if an Arab family was displaced from Jaffa to the West Bank the overall population of Arabs in mandate Palestine would not drop. Just as any Jews displaced from east Jerusalem to west didn't affect the number of Jews.

[HooptieWagon]

92. Here's your facts, Bob.

Muslim population of Palestine in 1947 estimates between 1,181,000 and 1,339, 763. Certainly some of the over 700,000 Arab refugees displaced during al Nakba did so internally, but it would only have taken a couple hundred thousand to leave for neighboring countries for the % Jewish population to rise by 20% or so. Indeed, refugees fleeing into neighboring countries is cited as the main cause of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Palestine
Certainly the Jewish population began increasing during 1947 after the UN partition, but not as much as Palestinians leaving after being forced from their homes.
The Jewish % of population increased from about 3% in the mid-19th Century to about 6% at end of WW2. They owned about 6% of the land. Post UN in 1947, Jews began immigrating in large numbers, Arabs relocated internally and emmigrated in large #s.

[Shaktimaan]

95. Did you actually read my post?

I gave you the population increase between 1900-1947. The Jewish population of Palestine in 1947 was about 30%.

You can look this basic fact up anywhere. Such as the link you provided.

Also the UN partition never even occurred. It was rejected by the Arabs and never instituted.

[Shaktimaan]

76. So then

If Judaism is a religion, and not an ethno-religious nationality, then how are there atheist Jews as you attest?

[Shaktimaan]

77. Wikipedia the word nation.

It doesn't mean quite what you think it means

[timdog44]

87. I think you did not read the entire article.

Per your definition, the Presbyterians are a nation. Homosexuals are a nation.

But, from Wikipedia - Etymology and terminology[edit]
The word nation came to English from the Old French word nacion, which in turn originates from the Latin word natio (nātĭō literally meaning "that which has been born".[5]

The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for:

State (polity) or sovereign state: a government which controls a specific territory, which may or may not be associated with any particular ethnic group
Country: a geographic territory, which may or may not have an affiliation with a government or ethnic group
Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level governments (as in the name for the United Nations), various large geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet.

Depending on the meaning of "nation" used, the term "nation state" could be used to distinguish larger states from small city states, or could be used to distinguish multinational states from those with a single ethnic group.

[Shaktimaan]

91. Of course I did.

Per your definition, the Presbyterians are a nation. Homosexuals are a nation.

First of all it's not MY definition. It's THE definition. Secondly, neither homosexuals nor Presbyterians share a common ethnicity, language, history or culture. More importantly, neither group identifies itself as a nation, which is a defining characteristic of all nations.

While it's obviously true that the meaning of the word has taken on alternate meanings, all of which are equally valid definitions, they don't apply here because they clearly aren't the INTENDED meaning. When Jews define their identity as a nation we are obviously using the original meaning of the term. When Israel differentiates between nationalities and citizens it is utilizing the same meaning.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

35. At this point let's just brand Israel as murderers.

[Aerows]

37. Let's not

Let's criticize Israeli leadership, which is rightfully where the blame belongs.

[King_David]

45. Thanks again for setting the record right with that particular poster

It's wrong to generalize against all Israeli people or all Jews .

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

57. 35. At this point let's just brand Israel as murderers.

WE could also brand America as murderers WRT what WE as a nation did in Iraq.

No matter how the spin doctors want to assign some form of hatred to what I write, Israel IS responsible for those it has murdered.

[ann---]

51. Why? It's true

http://www.seamac.org/EqualRights.htm

WHAT IS ISRAELI APARTHEID?

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was the first prominent figure in this country to apply the term apartheid to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories—East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. Israel’s apartheid system, however, also affects Palestinian Arabs who make up 20 percent of the population within Israel itself. Apartheid is a central feature of the Zionist state that proclaims it is exclusively for Jews.

The word “apartheid” originated to describe the rigid system of legal segregation imposed by the white supremacist South African government against people of color in that country from 1948 to 1990. The word itself is from the Afrikaner language and means “separateness” or “apart.” Afrikaners were Dutch settlers who denied basic democratic and human rights to that nation’s black majority and other people of color. In 1948 they formalized racial segregation by making it the law of the land, a policy they called apartheid.

Israeli apartheid is both like and unlike the system of segregation that existed in South Africa. It is also similar and dissimilar to the system of legal segregation that existed in the American South for many decades. The word apartheid could easily be used to describe the system of legal segregation that existed in nine U.S. Southern states from the end of the Reconstruction Period to the mid-1960s when the civil rights movement achieved some of its greatest victories. It could also describe the de facto segregation that existed outside the U.S. South and resulted in the creation of black ghettoes in nearly all U.S. cities.

Three key features characterize Israeli apartheid:

Four million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories lack the right to vote for the government that controls their lives through a military occupation. In addition to controlling the borders, air space, water, tax revenues, and other vital matters pertaining to the Occupied Territories, Israel alone issues the identity cards that determine the ability of Palestinians to work and their freedom of movement.

About 1.2 million Palestinian Israelis, who make up 20 percent, or one-fifth, of Israel’s population, have second-class citizenship within Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state rather than a state for all its citizens. More than 20 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel.

Millions of Palestinians remain refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, unable to return to their former homes and land in present-day Israel, even though the right of return for refugees is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


In 2008, the South African government commissioned a study by leading legal scholars and human rights experts to determine if Israel was practicing apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories according to the parameters of international law. After a 15-month investigation, the study concluded that “Israel, since 1967, is the belligerent Occupying Power in occupied Palestinian territory, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, said of Israeli government policies, “I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”

Israeli apartheid is a two-tiered system of favoritism and privilege for Jews compared with deprivation and discrimination against Palestinian Arabs. It covers many facets of political, social, and economic life, including standard of living, education, housing and development, access to water and roads, an unequal system of justice, land ownership, and freedom of movement. In addition, it has many special features, such as the absolute control that the Israeli military ultimately exercises over all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the recent construction of a Separation Barrier or Apartheid Wall. This wall is meant not only to confiscate land from Palestinians to expand illegal settlements but also to make it impossible for Palestinians to have a contiguous and viable state of their own.

POVERTY
In the Occupied Territories, 66 percent of Palestinians live in absolute poverty, defined as income of $2 or less per day. By contrast, Israelis enjoy an average per capita income of nearly $60 per day. Worse yet, 80 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on international food aid for day-to-day survival, and 33 percent of all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are dependent on international food aid for survival.

The unemployment rate in the West Bank hovers around 19 percent while the unemployment rate in Gaza is about 40 percent. Private-sector unemployment in Gaza is an incredible 85 percent.

Within Israel, 48 percent of Palestinian Israelis live in poverty, compared with a poverty rate of 15 percent for Jewish Israelis. Of the 32 towns within Israel that have unemployment rates higher than 10 percent, 25 of those are Palestinian towns.


Palestinian Israelis face discrimination in employment, wages, and working conditions. Although they make up 20 percent of the population, Palestinian Israelis represent only 6 percent of public employees in civil service jobs.



EDUCATION

Within Israel, Palestinian and Jewish children attend separate and unequal school systems from kindergarten through high school. The Israeli government invests more than 3 times as much in a Jewish student than it does a Palestinian student, according to government statistics released in 2004. Also within Israel the government designates certain communities for “high-priority status” for improving the local educational system. In recent years Israel has designated 553 Jewish communities for high-priority status, compared with 4 Palestinian communities. In East Jerusalem, Palestinian territory illegally annexed by Israel after the 1967 war, the Israeli government spends an average of 2,300 New Israeli Shekels (about U.S. $600) per Jewish student, compared with an average of 577 shekels (U.S. $150) per Palestinian student, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

The discrepancies are especially apparent in higher education. Forty-five percent of Palestinian applicants are turned down for admission to Israeli universities, compared with 16 percent of Jewish applicants. Among Israeli undergraduates, only 10 percent are Palestinian, even though Palestinians make up 20 percent of the population. Palestinians make up only 3 percent of Israeli doctoral students and only 1 percent of university lecturers.

Within the Occupied Territories, Palestinian schools are under funded compared with the generous subsidies given to Jewish schools in the illegal settlements. Israeli military authorities frequently close Palestinian schools or subject them to curfews. Many Palestinian students must pass through Israeli military checkpoints just to get to school, and the military uses these checkpoints to harass and delay students.

In response to Palestinian uprisings, the Israeli military often takes reprisals against Palestinian schools and students in the Occupied Territories. From 2003 to 2005, there were more than 180 assaults on Palestinian schools, resulting in the deaths of 180 students and teachers. During that period more than 1,500 school days were lost due to Israeli closures. A study by the United Nations agency, UNESCO, found that the Israeli military caused $5 million in damages to Palestinian schools.

HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT

In the Occupied Territories, from 2000 to 2006 Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing “funded 53 percent of housing starts and 42 percent of all residential construction costs” in Israel’s illegal settlements, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. The report, titled “Separate and Unequal,” noted that Israel provided absolutely no funding for Palestinian housing in the occupied West Bank.

In occupied East Jerusalem, only 13 percent of zoned land is available for Palestinian construction. Planning and building laws there prevent Palestinian residents from constructing new housing because 65 percent of the residents are impoverished and cannot pay for the infrastructure improvements required for a building permit. In 2009 the Israeli municipal government in Jerusalem outlined as “a main policy goal. . . maintaining a solid Jewish majority” in the city by explicitly discriminating in favor of Jews for services and affordable housing.

Not only does Israel interfere with Palestinian housing and building construction, it also plays an active role in demolishing existing buildings and homes in Palestinian areas. From 2000 to 2007 Israel demolished more than 1,500 Palestinian homes and buildings in the West Bank, compared with about 15 demolition orders carried out against buildings in Israel’s illegal settlements during the period from 1997 to 2009. In Gaza, Israel demolished more than 2,500 homes from 2000 to 2004.

According to the Israeli organization, Peace Now, government statistics showed that from 1996 to 2001, 82 percent of building violations in Jerusalem were in Jewish neighborhoods while 18 percent were in Palestinian areas. However, the Israeli government took enforcement actions against only 20 percent of violations in Jewish neighborhoods, compared with 80 percent in Palestinian areas. According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Israeli officials are 10 times more likely to demolish Palestinian homes due to building violations than they are to demolish Jewish homes with building violations.

Within Israel, Palestinians are legally barred from many communities by racially restrictive covenants in housing, much like those that formerly barred Jews, blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities in the United States from living in certain neighborhoods. Palestinians are legally barred from living in “Jewish community settlements” and “Jewish rural settlements.” Within Israel, 89 percent of its towns are classified as Jewish, and of those non-Jews are excluded from residing in 78 percent. The Israeli government has not allowed the building of a single new Arab town since 1948.

The government also refuses to recognize hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages that existed prior to Israel’s formation in 1948. Because they are not officially recognized, almost all of the housing in these towns is subject to demolition, and none receive services from the state, such as schools, roads, or sewer systems. More than 100,000 Palestinians or about 10 percent of Palestinian Israelis live “off the grid” as a result.

ACCESS TO WATER AND ROADS

Water

Water is a scarce resource in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Israel has controlled water resources in the West Bank and Gaza since its occupation began in 1967. The World Bank estimates that Palestinians have lost more than 100,000 agricultural jobs because Israel has denied Palestinians access to water resources that were diverted to illegal Jewish settlements. The World Health Organization (WHO) found that Israelis consume 4 times more water than Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. In one area alone, the Jordan Valley, 9,000 Jewish settlers consume 25 percent of the water used by the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank, which totals 2.5 million people. According to the United Nations, 60,000 West Bank Palestinians lack access to running water and must pay one-sixth of their income to have water trucked into their communities.

The WHO recommends a minimum of 100 liters of water consumption per day per person for adequate sanitation, food preparation, personal consumption, and other uses. The average Palestinian in the West Bank receives 50 liters of water per day, compared with 200 liters per day for the average Israeli, including settlers.

The water situation in Gaza is especially critical. About 95 percent of the water pumped into the Gaza Strip is polluted and unfit for drinking, according to the United Nations. Israel’s Operation Cast Lead military offensive that worsened groundwater pollution in Gaza’s lone aquifer, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Furthermore, Israel’s blockade of Gaza prevents repair to wastewater treatment facilities.

Within Israel, more than 170 Palestinian communities, mostly in small villages, are not recognized by the state. As a result, none are provided with running water, and the state does not subsidize the cost of water in those communities.

Roads

Of all the blatant features of Israeli apartheid, perhaps none is more apparent than the fact that roads have been built exclusively for Israelis and settlers in the Occupied West Bank. Palestinians living in the West Bank are denied the right to travel on these roads. The separate Palestinian road system is often unpaved and in some cases is little more than a trail, rather than an actual road. Vehicles with Palestinian licenses are completely prohibited from traveling on approximately 105 kilometers of West Bank roads, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Palestinians can travel on the remaining 180 kilometers of Israeli-built roads in the West Bank only if they obtain a special permit or travel in an ambulance. The Israeli road system crisscrosses the West Bank in a way that would prevent the formation of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state.

UNEQUAL JUSTICE
Israel is the only country in the world that distinguishes between nationality and citizenship. Israeli nationality is guaranteed only to those determined to be of the Jewish religion. Only Jews have full rights in the state of Israel, which is defined as a Jewish state under the Basic Laws that substitute for a written constitution.

Under the Basic Laws, more than 90 percent of the land is state-owned. Israel’s Basic Laws prohibit access or the lease of state land to non-Jews.

The Law of Return of 1950, another of Israel’s Basic Laws, guarantees Israeli nationality to Jews everywhere and grants them automatic citizenship if they seek it in Israel. Palestinians, however, have Arab nationality and are denied the right of return. Palestinian Israelis who marry Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories cannot reside with their spouses in Israel, although Jewish Israelis can legally reside with their spouses in a settlement in the Occupied Territories.

An amendment to one of Israel’s Basic Laws, passed in 1985, states: “A candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objects or actions, expressly or by implication, include one of the following: (1) negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. . . .” This provision effectively rules out the participation of Palestinian Israeli political parties that believe Israel should be a state of all its citizens, including the 20 percent who are Palestinian. Any political party with this belief or program is not allowed to run candidates for election to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Altogether, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, more than 20 of Israel’s principal laws discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinians.

Crimes of violence committed by Israeli Jews against Palestinians are rarely punished. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem examined 119 cases in which Israeli civilians killed Palestinians. The organization found that in only 13 cases were Israelis sentenced to prison. Only six were convicted of murder, and of those, only one received life imprisonment. The seven others were convicted of manslaughter, but most drew light sentences. Israeli soldiers convicted of killing Palestinian civilians are even more likely to receive either mild punishment or no prison time at all. In one notorious case an Israeli soldier convicted by a military court of killing a 95-year-old Palestinian woman received a 65-day prison sentence.

On the other hand, Palestinian crimes of violence against Jews are harshly punished, including by means of extrajudicial assassinations. In addition, the Israeli military often demolishes the house where a Palestinian accused of violence against Israelis resides, depriving an entire family of shelter. At the same time the Israeli military routinely “looks the other way” when Jewish settlers carry out acts of violence, harassment, and property damage against Palestinians and Palestinian-owned property. The Israeli organization, Yesh Din, found that from 2005 to 2009 Israeli police failed to indict a single settler for the destruction of Palestinian olive trees in nearly 70 separate incidents.

Even acts of nonviolent civil disobedience earn Palestinians long prison terms, compared with similar actions by Israeli activists opposed to the Occupation. In one recent case a Palestinian who led nonviolent protests against the Separation Wall in the village of Bilin received a 1.5 year prison sentence, compared with an Israeli Jewish activist with Anarchists Against the Wall who received a 3-month prison sentence. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories can be punished for what they read, what they write, and what organizations they belong to.

During much of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians lived under Israeli military law and faced military tribunals, having no recourse to a civilian court system. Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories are considered Israeli citizens and are brought before civilian courts if they are charged with a crime. Even after the 1993 Oslo peace accords granted the Palestinian Authority (PA) limited self-rule in the Occupied Territories, the Israeli military maintained police and judicial authority in much of the Occupied Territories. The Israeli military also reserves for itself the right to intervene even in areas where the PA was supposed to have full authority over police matters.

In Israeli military courts:

There is no presumption of innocence, and the military courts do not adhere to international standards of due process.
Palestinian defendants are not informed of the charges against them until their first court hearing and their attorneys are not given time to study the indictment.
Court decisions can be based on “secret evidence” not provided to the defendant or his attorney.
Military judges are not required to have a legal background or education.
Palestinian children can be prosecuted as adults at age 12, whereas children of Jewish settlers cannot be prosecuted as adults until age 18.
Palestinians are heavily pressured to plea bargain and can face more severe penalties if they do not. As a result more than 95% of convictions are the result of plea bargains.
In 2006 the acquittal rate for Palestinian defendants in military courts was 0.29 %.

As a result of harsh sentences, more than 650,000 Palestinians have served time in prison since 1967 when the Occupation began. This figure represents about 40 percent of today’s male population. A large percentage of Palestinian prisoners have been tortured, according to several human rights organizations.

LAND OWNERSHIP AND PROPERTY CONFISCATION
Israel has granted illegal settlements control of 43 percent of occupied West Bank land. It has designated 18 to 20 percent of the West Bank as closed military zones and another 10 percent as park land. The total amount of private and public land thus removed from Palestinian control amounts to about 73 percent of the occupied West Bank, according to Human Rights Watch.

Under international law, property can be confiscated only in cases of urgent military necessity. Furthermore, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to an occupied area. It reads in part, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The settlements are thus illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and the confiscation of land to build the settlements is illegal. Under international humanitarian law it is also illegal to confiscate private property without compensation and in a way that discriminates. The Israeli organization Peace Now found that 40 percent of the West Bank settlements were built on privately-owned Palestinian land. Because the settlements are Jewish only and no compensation was paid to the Palestinian owners, the confiscation of Palestinian land for settlement construction is also illegal under international human rights law. Even under Israeli law the construction of settlements on privately-owned land is illegal.

In East Jerusalem, Palestinians are confined to just 13 percent of the land area even though they make up 35 percent of Jerusalem’s population. Illegal settlements in East Jerusalem have access to 25 percent of the land area of East Jerusalem that is zoned for settlement construction. A Jewish settler has access to 3 times more land than a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem. Israel also illegally annexed land from more than 28 Palestinian towns and villages to make it part of Jerusalem’s municipal borders. In many cases, it confiscated only the farmland belonging to Palestinian farmers living in those villages, but excluded the Palestinian population.

Within Israel, more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages were either destroyed or depopulated of Palestinians in 1948 when the state of Israel was founded. Israel has never paid compensation to the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who were forced to abandon their land and homes under threat of massacre or due to military force. From 1948 to 1953, the Israeli government created 370 new Jewish towns. Of those, 350 were built on land taken from “absentee” Palestinian owners.

These owners were “absentees” because Israel refused to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes even though the right of return is established in one of the founding documents of the United Nations known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Instead, the Israeli government enacted the Law of Return as one of its Basic Laws, which guarantees the right of “return” only to Jews. Before 1948 Jews legally owned only about 7 percent of the land in what was then Palestine. After the founding of Israel in May 1948, the government claimed 93 percent of the land as state land.

THE SEPARATION WALL AND FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
Following the 2nd intifada, or uprising, against Israeli oppression, the Israeli government announced that it would build a “security fence” or barrier between Israel and the Occupied Territories. The announced reason was to prevent suicide bombings within Israel. As construction of the “fence” began, however, it quickly became apparent that the Separation Wall had little to do with security. Instead, it had much to do with confiscating more land from the Palestinians, controlling their movements within the Occupied Territories, and making the creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible.

The route of the wall did not follow the so-called Green Line, the armistice line that delineated the border of Israel from the West Bank and Gaza prior to the 1967 war. Instead, in numerous places, the wall sharply veered into the West Bank, cutting off Palestinian villages from adjacent farmland, land that Palestinian farmers had cultivated for generations. Israeli authorities proclaimed that farmers would be able to access their land only if they could prove land ownership. Otherwise, they would not receive a permit to cross the Separation barrier. But in many cases, traditional farming practices meant that land was owned by families rather than individuals and documented “proof of ownership” was not required as land was passed from one generation to the next. Israel has granted permits to only 18 percent of farmers who have been cut off from their land by the Separation Wall.

In addition to separating Palestinians from their farmland, the Separation Wall also intersected Palestinian towns and cities. Instead of separating Palestinians from Israelis, it separated Palestinians from Palestinians. Merely to go to work, to school or to a hospital, Palestinians must pass through military checkpoints, where Israeli soldiers routinely harass and intimidate them or simply delay their passage, including people seeking emergency medical treatment. What was formerly a routine commute to work or school became an onerous trip requiring several hours of delays. The World Bank estimated that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of goods and services produced, in the Occupied Territories declined 60 percent on a per capita basis from 1999 to 2008 due to restrictions imposed on Palestinians’ freedom of movement.

In 2004 the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that Israel was obligated to halt construction of the wall, to dismantle it where it interfered with Palestinians’ freedom of movement, and to compensate Palestinians for lost income. The Court found that the Separation wall interfered with Palestinian’s “right to work, to health, to education, and to an adequate standard of living as proclaimed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child."

The impact of the Wall on many Palestinian communities has been devastating. According to United Nations reports, about 15,000 Palestinians were forced to move elsewhere due to the Wall’s impact on their ability to work and live. A UN report on the West Bank village of Jubara found that the Wall’s impact on a once-thriving economy that featured 10 poultry plants had led to 90 percent unemployment and the impoverishment of 1,800 farming families cut off from their land.

Even without the Separation Wall, Palestinians must still pass through myriad military checkpoints. According to a World Bank report, “on any given day the ability to reach work, school, shopping, healthcare facilities and agricultural land is highly uncertain and subject to arbitrary restriction and delay."

Gaza also is enclosed by fences on both the Israeli and Egyptian borders. Israel maintains complete control of Gaza’s borders, making it the largest open-air prison in the world. Palestinians cannot travel outside Gaza without special permits from Israel. Israel restricts the movement of Gaza’s students to and from the West Bank. In 2000, about 350 Gaza students attended Birzeit University in the West Bank. After Israel imposed its blockade, fewer than 15 Gaza students were able to attend Birzeit.

CONCLUSION
These are just some of the many aspects of Palestinian life affected by the Israeli government’s apartheid policies. Fortunately, an international solidarity movement has formed around the world and is heeding the call of Palestinian civil society to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) Israel for its flagrant violations of human rights. Just as in South Africa and the American South where whites joined with blacks to fight segregation and white supremacy, many Israeli Jews are also repudiating their government’s policies. They have actively joined with Palestinians to fight apartheid. In weekly protests in villages like Budrus and Bilin and in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Palestinians, Israeli Jews, and international solidarity activists demonstrate nonviolently against home demolitions and the Separation Wall. Their actions speak louder than words and prove that Arabs and Jews can live together peacefully and in harmony on the basis of equal rights for all.

Many Americans, including American Jews, also oppose Israel’s policies and the way the U.S. government helps prop up the apartheid system by giving Israel $3 billion in annual military aid. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act prohibits U.S. aid to countries that deny human and democratic rights. The Arms Export Control Aid prohibits military aid to countries that habitually violate human rights. Write to your members of Congress and demand that the U.S. government cease providing aid to apartheid Israel.

[timdog44]

56. Thanks for the post

It props up what I believe. My feeble postings were just fodder for Shaktimaan to make fun of. His obvious hate of a great person such as Bishop Desmond Tutu is evidenced by the way he presented his name as just "tutu". Like george washington, abe lincoln, martin luther king. Disrespectful like all his responses.

[King_David]

65. What you believe?

That is a rhetorical question. What rights are granted to Jews born in Israel that are not accorded to the immigrant Jews, read slaves. What rights do Russian or Hungarian or Polish Jews have that are equal to Jews from 1947 or their descendants? Probably none or maybe to the right to the wailing wall, which they do not wish to frequent.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=73075

What does any of that goblyygook actually even mean?

???

[timdog44]

68. Nice to have you follow me around.

Immigrants to israel are not treated the same as the jewish people already there. The immigrants are afforded second class citizenship. It is an obvious racist policy that I would think the immigrants would not tolerate. As I had stated before, since you have been shadowing me, that the Jewish people should have learned since the holocaust. Treat everyone equally. Seems they can not bring them selves to do that.

[King_David]

69. Where do you get this stuff from?

You believe that This is what everyone means when they are talking about Apartheid in Israel?

[timdog44]

70. Sad to have

You dragging different subjects around. Apartheid in Israel is the murderous way the Israeli government is treating the Palestinians who are isolated in Palestine. Racism is the way the immigrant Jewish people are treated in Israel.

[King_David]

71. Cite please

[timdog44]

72. Not sue that citing apartheid

Is necessary. I would find it hard for you to deny that it is occurring. One single mention of the way Ethiopian Jews are treated should ring some bells. They are called "niggers", are denied jobs, refused permits to build or even the right to rent apartments. Arab Israelis are. to treated much better. Citations are all over. I doubt you would believe any of them anyway

[King_David]

73. OK was fun but enough now, What Shaktimaan said here +1

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=73115

[timdog44]

74. Appreciate your attitude.

I only infrequently jump into these conversations. I am not always right and am open to learning, but the manner of Shaktimaan responses is neither educational, positive or kind. And only serves to encourage my resolve in what I think. Later.

[Shaktimaan]

93. Are you aware of why I responded in that manner?

You seem unaware of the fact that your initial post, positing that the term "anti semitism" was born from an Israeli plot to further disenfranchise Arabs by assuming sole ownership over victim hood.

This isn't just ridiculous. It's a vile assumption that reinforces common anti Semitic tropes.

[timdog44]

96. To be honest with you

I have always thought that anti semitism pertained to all the semitic peoples. I do not understand why the Israeli government or people just do not say anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli when that is what they truly mean. To me, it is a claim that they are the only Semitic people and effectively eliminates the rest. It is the religion that separates and not the blood. Thanks for the education. My apologies. My position about the Israeli government has not changed, though. I also do not hold the Palestinian peoples blameless, but those with the biggest guns should be the first to try to back away. All that is happening is the creation of more terrorists. The same can be said for America's presence in the Middle East, all we are doing is fostering a hatred for America and creating more terrorists.

[Larkspur]

52. Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela disagree with you

They both labeled Israel's brutal policies towards the Palestinians as apartheid and they reminded them of South Africa's treatment of the native black population.

[Shaktimaan]

79. Nope.

Desmond tutu has. Mandela did not.

[Larkspur]

88. He may not have been explicit but he never corrected Arafat's use of it to describe their shared

struggle.

Shortly after his release from 27 years in prison, Mandela described Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat as “our friend and comrade . . . like us, fighting against a unique form of colonialism.” These comments, made on February 27, 1990 as Arafat joined Mandela at a pan-African summit, provoked a storm of push-back among Israel’s apologists. The next day, Mandela told a reporter: “If the truth alienates the Jewish community in South Africa, too bad.” Questioned about Mandela’s remarks, Arafat said: “We are in the same trench, struggling against the same enemies, against apartheid, racism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.”

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/12/apologists-discredit-apartheid.html

[Maedhros]

81. Israel has occupied Palestine and systematically stolen Palestinian land,

relegating the indigenous Palestinian population into ever-shrinking ghettos.

Apartheid is an appropriate term for what Israel has wrought.

[Shaktimaan]

82. Bullshit map

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/03/israel_and_palestine_0

[Maedhros]

89. OK, then. Consider only the West Bank.

Israel has still taken land from the Palestinians, over and over and over again. This is not disputed by anyone.

[Israeli]

83. if you want maps ....

that he cant call BS on ....(there again he might) ....I would advise here @

http://peacenow.org.il/eng/content/maps-and-flyers

[King_David]

86. Thanks for all the links

[4now]

94. I am still wondering if this is Apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide, or massacre.