Israeli apartheid by any other name still stinks

As the annual Israeli Apartheid Week got underway this week in universities across Ontario and around the world, the denunciations are mounting. In the Ontario Legislature last week, MPPs from all parties supported a motion brought forward by Willowdale MPP Peter Shurman condemning the event and its use of the word "apartheid," which he called "hateful" and "odious." A similar motion is expected to be moved in parliament by the federal Conservatives this week.

Yet comparisons of Israel's occupation to South Africa's apartheid did not just fall off the turnip truck. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu have both described the situation as apartheid, and even two former Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, have used the word in expressing their concerns for Israel's future.

Israelis do not use the word "apartheid" -- they have their own word, "hafrada," meaning separation -- but as it amounts to more or less the same thing, it makes little sense to use with the public a word most people are unfamiliar with. A few facts about "hafrada" highlight the striking similarities with apartheid.

Israel rules directly over approximately five million Palestinian Arabs and six million Jews, yet for over 40 years it has maintained two sets of laws: civil laws for Jews, and military laws for the roughly four million Palestinians in the occupied territories. Israeli settlements in the territories are garrisoned by Israeli military forces and are connected both to each other and to Israel proper by an elaborate set of roads that are reserved exclusively for Jewish settlers, who also get to vote in Israeli elections.

Palestinians in the West Bank, meanwhile, have their movement curtailed even within the territories by hundreds of checkpoints, including "flying checkpoints" that appear without warning or reason. Israel controls borders, airspace, and all movement. Israel also controls all water, which it diverts for its own use while keeping Palestinians on strict water quotas and prohibiting them from digging wells. It continues to confiscate farm land for settlements, many of which are built on hills, dumping sewage onto Palestinian lands below. Palestinians who engage in non-violent resistance routinely face arrest and, quite often, torture.

Defenders of Israel against charges of apartheid tend to point to its 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of Israel. Certainly this is a difference between Israel and South Africa under apartheid. Yet "apartheid" has come to refer to a spectrum of mechanisms for separation, just as the term "genocide" encompasses a broad range of murderous actions, no two being exactly alike in every respect.

Indeed, there are ways in which Israel's "hafrada" is even worse than South African apartheid.

In the Gaza Strip, which Israel has held under siege since 2006, 1.5 million people live like caged animals. Despite a savage bombing campaign in 2009 that left the infrastructure in ruins and thousands of people homeless, the Israeli government has imposed on Gaza a complete embargo not only of concrete for rebuilding but also items such as crayons, musical instruments, hearing aid batteries, bed sheet, mattresses, blankets, candles, matches, and shoes.

Palestinian citizens of Israel, who lived under military rule until 1966, have Israeli passports and citizenship, yet they must carry identity cards identifying them as "Arab." Most are confined to specified "Arab" villages that are prohibited from expanding, despite desperate overcrowding, and they are chronically underserviced. Their schools receive only a fraction of the funding of Jewish schools, and their teachers are vetted and scrutinized by the Shin Bet (the secret service).

Palestinian citizens of Israel are barred from public service jobs. While they are permitted to vote, Israel's laws prohibit them from organizing politically to demand that the character of the "Jewish state" be modified to include them too. The political elite regard them as a fifth column, and they are routinely referred to as a "demographic threat." Israel's deputy prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has even spoken of resorting to "transfer" -- a polite word for expulsion.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that Israeli Apartheid Week started in Toronto around the same time our elected leaders in Canada, without public consultation, began reorienting our foreign policy strongly in support of Israel. In the context of this imbalanced foreign policy, the use of the term "apartheid" does not shut down discussion and debate, as its critics charge; rather, its use in events like Israeli Apartheid Week represents an attempt at the popular level to restore discussion and debate that is missing at the political level.

Comments

Submitted by LimeJello on March 4, 2010 - 12:10pm.

Jason makes some good points and here's how I would respond, not to the debate about who's to blame for what in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which of itself can't really be properly assessed outside of the context of Israel's conflict with neighbouring countries like Syria, Iran and other Muslim countries that have failed to recognize its right to exist.

But to the point of IAW and the entire BDS campaign, it has a very serious perception problem.

Here in the virtual world of Rabble.ca and in like minded areas which, make no mistake, comprise a minority of popular opinion in the continent, there is a general agreement that its goal is to improve the lives of Palestinians.

But unless you are only associating with like-minded people, it's hard not to realize that the debate in the greater sphere has not been about Israel and the Palestinians as much as whether the IAW and the use of "apartheid" in referrence to Israel is bigoted and of itself anti-Semitic. Never mind that there are Jews involved with it, the Jews involved with IAW have been characterized as either "self-hating Jews" or radical Marxist ideologues, which in the popular perception has effectively marginalized them.

I am not at all suggesting that anyone should allow any tactics to intimidate them out of free speech.

What I am saying is that as a tactic, IAW and BDS has become counter-productive because rather than being perceived as an effort for human rights, it's being perceived as bigotry, and it now has to expend more energy explaining that it isn't a gathering of bigots then it does to promote Palestinian rights. In fact, if I were a trying to digress from the issue of peace, I don't think I could have done better then to have invented IAW and BDS as a digression from the real issues.

I've seen a number of comments in the last few days on Rabble attacking Cheri Di Novo. Since when did Cheri di Novo become an enemy of the social justice movement? More evidence that IAW and BDS is self-destructive.

The wider debate about IAW and BDS hasn't become whether Israel is or isn't apartheid, it hasn't been, how do we improve the rights of Palestinians and work towards their having an independent democratic state. It's become, by singling out Israel with one-sided blame and calls for boycotts, when other countries that violate human rights to a greater extent than Israel don't face this treatment, isn't the IAW movement just a bunch of anti-Israel, and possibly anti-Jewish bigots?

And to contradict that, you can refute it in a whole bunch of ways, but then the matter gets sidetracked away from the Palestinian rights issue to the issue of having to explain how you aren't bigoted. And sure, you can bring up the terrible things that Israel has done to the Palestinians to justify IAW and the supporters of Israel can bring up the terrible things the Palestinians have done to justify their treatment of the Palestinians, but the issue of IAW then just comes back to the single-minded bias against Israel.

I know Naomi Klien and others have said you use it against Israel because it can be an effective tactic, but I would suggest it has become a tactic that is backfiring. If that is the case, it doesn't make sense continuing to use a tactic that is counter-productive.

Submitted by alan smithee on March 4, 2010 - 4:01pm.

I'm not going to mince words..What's happening in Israel is an Apartheid and an ongoing ethnic-cleansing genocide and if people of the jewish faith think that that is hateful,I say GET OVER YOURSELVES.

It seems because of the holocaust and the attempted genocide of jews back 65 + years ago,that any criticism or observation directed at Israel or Zionists is somehow some Medusan taboo that should be prohibited by law.

The irony is that Israel...A state created by the West after the war,is practicing the same policies as the fascists that attempted to cleanse their existence from Europe(which would virtually render them extinct if Hitler had succeeded in his plan)

ENOUGH...Israel is NOT above criticism or the law.There is plenty to criticize that rogue state for and even more reasons to condemn their neo-fascist genocidal Apartheid.

Barack Obama could have used his influence and his hard-headed insistance of diplomacy(which was the case at the beginning of his Presidency)to use the world stage to criticize and/or condemn Israel's ongoing Apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people which would have been a small gesture that would have meant alot to the Arab world...But he didn't.

It's this unconditional relationship with Israel that has a portion of the globe's populous eager and willing to blow up and kill as many Americans as possible.It's this oppression amd in many cases extreme poverty both in wealth and in self worth that recruits waves of young people willing to be kamikazes in attacking their oppressors--whether they're directly or indirectly involved in this oppression.

Now that Canada wants to be Israel's biggest bum chum,Americans can sleep in peace knowing that the target is shifting off of their backs and onto ours.And for what? To fulfill a christian fundamentalist prophecy?

So to MPP Peter Shurman and everyone like-minded.Calling Israel out for oppression and Apartheid is not hateful...Treating a people as dogs in an open air prison,ethnic cleansing and genocide is hateful.Get your head out of your ass because people are waking up and smelling the BS eminating from the Middle East...And words like Anti-Semite are not going to change that.

Submitted by Pax R. on March 5, 2010 - 3:19pm.

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Submitted by viscioussidryan on March 7, 2010 - 11:05pm.

Sorry, what is going on in Israel is not Apartheid. Palestinians are not Israelis, and are not entitled to the rights and privileges of Israeli citizenship. This is the fallacy of the Apartheid argument -- that Palestinians (ergo non-Jews) are being systemically discriminated against because they cannot walk into Israel and do things that Israelis do.

**SORRY** Palestinians are not Israelis. The goal of calling Israel an Apartheid state is a circuous attempt at calling Palestinians Israeli citizens. If they are citizens, then the West Bank and Gaza are not disputed or occupied territories, because they are occupied only by Israelis. You can't have it both ways, although I'm sure this logic won't prevent you or anyone else from trying anyway.

What makes calling Israel an Aprtheid state an act of anti-semitism, is that there is a complete concurrent neglect of the real Apartheid states that surround it. We can start with Saudi Arabia and Iran as two states that iconify what Apartheid really means. There is no apparent concern of the Apartheid style laws and systemic abuse by those states. Where is Saudi Arabia Anti-Apartheid Week? Where is Iran lies to the International Community to Illegally Produce Nuclear Weapons Week? And it doesn't stop there, those two states are Apartheids in many nefarious ways, but lips are mum amongst the human rights "advocates" most loudly critical of Israel because of its human rights treatment of non-citizens who continue to agitate militarily against Israel.

Submitted by al-Qa'bong on March 8, 2010 - 1:05am.

Quote:

Where is Iran lies to the International Community to Illegally Produce Nuclear Weapons Week?

I hear there's going to be a rally at Dimona soon.

Submitted by LimeJello on March 24, 2010 - 6:21pm.

You've got a lot of hate in you, Smithee. Wanting to see people blown up. I'm glad you have this forum to express yourself and expose yourself as a hateful fool. You should consider psychiatric help too.

Submitted by traptinkansas on April 1, 2010 - 2:41pm.

Visciousidryan, your argument is self-defeating. Fundamental human rights and humanitarian rights are not subject to derogation and are guaranteed by customary international law and international conventions. The ICJ ruled that Israel is illegally interfering with the national rights of Palestinians. One of the constituent acts of apartheid is denial of nationality. The South Africans, Rhodesians, and Israelis denied the indigenous inhabitants of territories under their control the right to self-determination. They reserved full political rights, freedom of movement, access to land and natural resources to themselves.

Submitted by LimeJello on April 1, 2010 - 7:17pm.

There's an ongoing if dysfucntional process of negotiation, much of which takes place behind the scenes. It should be noted that Palestinians have never had a "nationality" as such as there has never been a country called 'Palestine'. It was a province of the Ottoman Empire then a British protectorate, then occupied by Jordan (and Gaza by Egypt) and then Israel. Palestinains are actually closer to achieving statehood now than they ever have been before, but much more needs to be done. Yet this still isn't apartheid. It is an occupation and credible negotiating partners are needed. One aspect of credibility that the authorities in gaza might strive for would be to desist in their stated goal of the destruction of Israel. It is not reasonable to expect to have serious negotiations with a party whom you pledge to destroy.

I wonder if Smithee will be out on a day pass anytime soon. Here's an observation; I wrote Israel is a democracy and isn't really an apartheid country and here's what I got:

-"LimeJello....You tow the partyline so well." [I'm not sure what party he's talking about. Maybe the party that the UFOs or the voices in his head are warning him about. Obviously not the Canadian Communist party]

-"Anyone who can look at the state of affairs in Israel and somehow justify it as free or democratic is deluded,ignorant and a brown shirt wearing Nazi." [Maybe in his mind, in as much as he has one, That puts me in the same company as Barack Obama, Chief Buthelezei of South Africa, Martin Luther King, Robert and Ted Kennedy and Michael Ignatieff, who I suppose are all nazis too in his demented thoughts]

-"You are clearly one of 3 things...A jew,a christian fundamentalist or a muslim hating xenophobe...Hell,you're probably all 3." [Insane, but I'll chalk that up to an attempt at humour on his part]

-"It's people like yourself who deserve to be blown up" [and I can guess who's in his basement building the bomb right now].

-"With all you people gone,the world would be a far more safe and peaceful place." [Yeah, it'll be much safer if there were only people like you who want to see others blown up.]

-"You're a xenophobe" [and the major qualification for that is saying a country where all citizens regardless of race get to vote is a democracy?]

-"As for a psychiatrist..That's rich...Neocons all suffer from deluded revisionism,delusions of grandiore,narcissism and paranoia,just to name a few illnesses.And you all suffer from foot-in-mouth disease...You're all hypocrits." [aside from not being sure how I got to be a "neocon" that rant speaks for itself. What could I possibly offer to make it sound any more psychotic than it already is?]

-"So have another donut and go pray to your conservative messiah Glenn Beck...Talking about psychiatrists,your portly hero is not but a raving mental patient himself,Buckwheat." [I'm not quite sure how Beck got into this or how I became a worshipper of Beck. This must be part of Smithee's internal narrative where anyone who disagrees with him is a nazi..and what's the "Buckwheat" supposed to mean? Does he think I'm one of The Little Rascals?]

And all this brilliant insight was derived from my saying Israel is a democratic, non-apartheid country. Great job of discrediting your side, Smithee. Anybody that angry sounds like he hasn't been laid in a decade. Smithee, do yourself a favor and put aside some of your welfare check and hire a hooker, as that's obviously going to be your only shot at sex. You should also consider changing your current psychiatrist, whoever it is now obviously isn't helping you much.