Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: Israel, the un-apartheid state – a comparison with Australia [View all]FarrenH
(768 posts)Having comprehension problems? Or just in the habit of misrepresenting everything that challenges your ethnic nationalist perspective? That kind of argument in bad faith was common in South Africa not so long ago. I said massive financial support, rather than censure, makes people who live in secular western democracies peculiarly concerned about Israeli Apartheid. Israel purports to represent the system of government and values we would like to see propagated, but instead is a symbol of the duplicity and hypocrisy of the West and thus works against that aim. That hyprocisy is underlined by the massive support it receives from the West. Moreso, it is of peculiar concern to the descendants of Europeans living in secular Western democracies because Israel is essentially Europe's last great colonial project and the sins of colonialism have been acknowledged in every other case, with little dissent. To make it abundantly clear, that part of the post was an answer to the tired crap "Why focus on Israel? Why not look over *there*?"
Its because of you. You and all the other so-called liberals that support Apartheid and ensure that elected governments in the West provide it with material support. That's why we're not looking over *there*.
What makes it Apartheid is having a gigantic bantustan in it's midst, where people under nominal self government have, in fact been denied nationhood and had their borders, airspace, resources and land rights subject to the whim of the government of a surrounding country, an authority in which they have no representation, for decades. What makes it Apartheid is that it is their ethnicity and the desire to maintain complete control by another ethnicity in the country surrounding them that informs this condition, which has existed for decades. That the surrounding state has a minority of members of that ethnicity with nominal representation does not obviate that, especially since their are unequivocal and visible measures in place to ensure they remain a minority, where only a century ago they were a majority.