The first 2 weeks of March are designated as Israel Apartheid Week.
It’s a harsh term, but those who support honesty, equality and above all justice – and that includes lots of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, even some Rosicrucians and Freemasons – recognize that colonialism, occupation and yes – Apartheid – is alive and functioning in the Middle East.
To recognize that Israel is in the process of implementing full-blown Apartheid is not to be anti-Semitic.
It is, however, a mark of a person’s ability to separate fact from fiction…something that most of our leading politicians seem unable to do.
This appeared in a recent edition of “The Tyee” one of Canada’s most prestigious online publications:
“Even members of the Israeli political elite use the term apartheid to describe the system they administer — the latest being the current defence minister (and former prime minister) Ehud Barak who stated: “If there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic… If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state.”
Shulamit Aloni, who once served as Minister of Education under Yitzhak Rabin, wrote: “The state of Israel practises its own, quite violent form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.” And in November of 2007, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “If the day comes when the two state solution collapses, and we face a South African style struggle for equal voting rights, then as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”
Michael Ben-Yair, Israel’s attorney general from 1993 to 1996, described Israel’s approach to the Palestinian territories captured in 1967 as apartheid in 2002:
“We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities… We developed two judicial systems: one — progressive, liberal in Israel. The other — cruel, injurious in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture.”"
The above quote is the core of the Tyee piece by Murray Dobbin. The rest can be seen here.
Complicated….!
From what I read, the 780000 Arabs, presumably Palestinians resident as citizens of Israel have equal voting-rights.
This kyboshes the apartheid-tag in Israel proper, but reinforces it in Israel’s illegally occupied teritories, or in the daily mistreatment of 115000 Palestinians who do Israel’s dirty work for them, similar to Mexicans in California.
The native people of South Africa did NOT have a vote. The illegal Boer invaders (when will we call them for what they are, and give up this “colonisation” euphemism) allowed them only to vote in their tribal heritage groups, which would be like EU saying the voting rights of Scots is limited to their clan of origin.
And from earlier this year, hard evidence of how it can only get worse:…..”Israeli police have barred men under 50 from attending prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem Al-Quds on Sunday due to fear of another round of clashes.
On Friday, Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian worshippers after Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, injuring one Palestinian and arresting three others.
In a measure meant to prevent more violence, on Saturday the Israeli police issued an order stating that no male under the age of 50 and no visitors from other religions will be allowed to enter Islam’s third holiest site for prayers on Sunday. Women will not be affected by the order.
Tension has risen since March 5, when Israeli police attacked Muslim worshippers after Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and imposed indefinite restrictions.
And the situation took a turn for the worse following Israel’s announcement last Tuesday that it plans to build another 1,600 homes for settlers in mostly Arab East Jerusalem Al-Quds, which Palestinians say should be the capital of their future state.
Israel’s illegal settlement construction continues despite international calls for a complete freeze on building on occupied Palestinian territories.
Israeli officials have insisted that they will not accept a ‘complete freeze’ on settlement construction and that the plan to build homes for settlers in East Jerusalem Al-Quds will not be cancelled….”
I didn’t see any reference to this police-attack from Joe Biden in his recent Israel cozyfest.
Can you imagine if the OPP tried such a move againt worshippers at a Toronto mosque?
The settlements in combination with the segregation of Palestinians into enclaves is a source of anti-Semitism.