Polaris gets it....it's so true. Peace can be reached and EASLY. They just want to have it. Unfortunitely the only peace Israel wants is a "piece" of land...I to apologize if the truth hurts, oh yeah, and I'm not an anti-Semite either
Aside from the tennis match that people love to play between Israel and the Palestinians I'd really like to go to Israel some day. I hear the women are quite striking and uniquely beautiful.
...
Same here. I would love to visit Jeruselum... visit the great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt... all that stuff.
I'd like to visit the Palestinian territories. I plan to next year.
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Israel approves more construction in West Bank settlement
Approval for building of 112 new flats in Beitar Illit comes despite partial curbs on settlement construction announced by Israeli government
* Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem - guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 March 2010 09.42 GMT
'The Israeli defence ministry today authorised further construction in a Jewish settlement on the occupied West Bank.
The decision came prior to the arrival in Israel of the US vice-president, Joe Biden, who is expected to announce a new round of indirect peace talks.
Approval for 112 new flats in Beitar Illit, an ultra-Orthodox settlement near Bethlehem, was given despite a 10-month partial curb on settlement construction announced by the Israeli government under heavy US pressure in November.
The decision to approve the building work appeared to be an attempt to appease members of Israel's rightwing coalition government, but was greeted with dismay by Palestinian officials.
George Mitchell, the US special envoy, has spent months attempting to get Israelis and Palestinians to restart negotiations, and was hoping a new round of indirect so-called "proximity" talks would begin today.
"If the Israeli government wants to sabotage Mitchell's efforts by taking such steps, let's talk to Mitchell about maybe not doing this if the price is so high," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said.
For many months, Palestinian officials had resisted any return to negotiations with Israel, saying all settlement construction should first be halted in line with the obligations of the US "road map" of 2003.
All settlements on occupied territory are illegal under international law.
Finally, under international pressure, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was persuaded to enter a four-month period of shuttle diplomacy, led by Mitchell and due to start in the coming days.
Although the US administration had last year demanded Israel halt all settlement building, it eventually welcomed the partial curbs imposed by the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
The temporary curbs did not apply to east Jerusalem, public buildings or around 3,000 flats whose construction was already under way.
The Israeli defence ministry said the Beitar Illit flats had been approved under the previous Israeli government and that construction needed to happen now for unspecified security reasons.
However, Hagit Ofran, of the Israeli group Peace Now, which monitors and opposes settlements, said the construction was in direct contradiction to Netanyahu's settlement curbs which prevented building of any flats – even if already approved – on which work had not yet started.
"It is a very unfortunate welcome that the government of Israel is giving to the vice-president," she said.
"It's as if they want to make it look like they want peace but on the other hand to torpedo the chance for these talks to succeed."
Last week, another plan for 600 new flats in the east Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Zeev passed through an initial stage of the approval process.
Excuse me. The purpose of this thread is to provide a forum for saying nice things about Israel. I'd like my thread back. I believe Pepe was the one sponsoring the idea of keeping threads tied down to their intended subjects. Can I get a second, Pepe?
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Excuse me. The purpose of this thread is to provide a forum for saying nice things about Israel. I'd like my thread back. I believe Pepe was the one sponsoring the idea of keeping threads tied down to their intended subjects. Can I get a second, Pepe?
it wasn't my idea, it is the forum rules, i'm sorry you are so unhappy with the rules someone else came up with, maybe they just have a deep seated hatred for jews and don't realize how anti-semitic their rules are?
anyway, there is a difference: in my thread about what the UN envoy said about Gaza you and some others kept wanting to bring up why don't i post about Cyprus, which you may be unaware of this fact but Cyprus has fuckall to do with what the UN said about Gaza being an open air prison. this is a thread about Israel and if they are the greatest....so far it seems like the replies are about Israel.
now, if i kept harassing you in this thread about why you only start threads about Israel and not Cyprus while implying this is done only because you 'possibly' have a deep seated hatred for muslims and just don't yet realize it the situation would be comparable but then we have reality....
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
My bad. I guess I wasn't clear when I started this thread. THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD IS TO PROVIDE A FORUM FOR POSITIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT ISRAEL. There, now it should be clear. Please stick to the subject of the thread from this point forward.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
My bad. I guess I wasn't clear when I started this thread. THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD IS TO PROVIDE A FORUM FOR POSITIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT ISRAEL. There, now it should be clear. Please stick to the subject of the thread from this point forward.
My bad. I guess I wasn't clear when I started this thread. THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD IS TO PROVIDE A FORUM FOR POSITIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT ISRAEL. There, now it should be clear. Please stick to the subject of the thread from this point forward.
This is gonna be a short thread then.
i think the positives have been covered already...
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
how many israeli civilians have died due to rocket attacks, suicide bombings, and/or anything related to palestinian actions in the past decade? ... then compare it to how many have died in israel say due to heart disease ...
the issue isn't whether they should negotiate a peace deal - the issue is whether the powers that be want to negotiate a peace deal ... why would they? ... take away this supposed "fear" - what does israel have to gain? ... i know they have everything to lose ... they have to give back land they've stolen, they won't be able to continue to expand like they're doing now and they'll have to treat palestinians as equals ...
a peace deal can easily be reached - there is int'l consensus on a starting point ... yet, nothing is happening all the while - occupation, oppression and expansion continue ...
Your heart attack point makes little sense to me, as heart disease is the number one killer in ALL Western countries and one could use this type of comment to debunk fear about anything else (e.g., "Why are people scared of guns, they should be scared of bacon!") ... I can agree with the basic idea that Israel could choose to stop settlement expansion and will need to do so if real peace is going to come about. How this translates into "nobody in Israel is scared" is less clear to me. Are you really arguing that an entire group of people is solely motivated by expansionism?
Your heart attack point makes little sense to me, as heart disease is the number one killer in ALL Western countries and one could use this type of comment to debunk fear about anything else (e.g., "Why are people scared of guns, they should be scared of bacon!") ... I can agree with the basic idea that Israel could choose to stop settlement expansion and will need to do so if real peace is going to come about. How this translates into "nobody in Israel is scared" is less clear to me. Are you really arguing that an entire group of people is solely motivated by expansionism?
compare it to whatever the heck you want ... i just picked something out of my head ... point is that casualty rates in Israel are blown out of proportion to perpetuate their actions ...
i never said nobody is scared ... but to say that israelis live in some cloud of fear due to the threat of palestinians is neither reflected in the general public's day to day lives nor any statistics ...
my position is this: the israeli gov't is heavily influenced by right wing extremists ... these people hate palestinians and are not interested in negotiating a peace deal ... again - as stated previously, any negotiated peace deal is sure to see israel have to give more than they receive ... hence the lack of motivation by the israelis to engage in significant talks ... the best thing that could happen to them is if a rocket comes flying from anywhere because it is their sole justification for their security checkpoints and lack of compromise currently ...
i will apologize to the OP who now wants this thread to be about how great israel is ...
0
g under p
Surfing The far side of THE Sombrero Galaxy Posts: 18,200
My bad. I guess I wasn't clear when I started this thread. THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD IS TO PROVIDE A FORUM FOR POSITIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT ISRAEL. There, now it should be clear. Please stick to the subject of the thread from this point forward.
Isarel has to stop being the bully of the Middle East along with the US. You are living in a dream world looking for positivity but Matisyahu has hope with this song...
Sometimes I lay under the moon
And I thank God I'm breathin'
Then I pray don't take me soon
'Cause I am here for a reason
Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know someday it'll all turn around because
All my life I been waitin' for
I been prayin' for, for the people to say
That we don't want to fight no more
They'll be no more wars
And our children will play, one day
It's not about win or lose 'cause we all lose
When they feed on the souls of the innocent blood
Drenched pavement keep on movin'
Though the waters stay ragin'
And in this life you may lose your way
It might drive you crazy
But don't let it phase you, no way
Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know someday it'll all turn around because
All my life I been waitin' for
I been prayin' for, for the people to say
That we don't want to fight no more
They'll be no more wars
And our children will play, one day
One day this all will change
Treat people the same
Stop with the violence down with the hate
One day we'll all be free and proud
To be under the same sun
Singing songs of freedom like
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
you should watch this, it's a very hopeful documentary that people on both sides want peace and reconciliation. it's time for the government to stop dragging their feet and stalling to take more and more land, either you want peace or you don't, in which case just admit it.
anyway, these people all lost someone(s) in their family to violence from one side or the other but still want to peace.
i forgot who it was but someone in it makes a good point that at 1 point the french, english and germans all hated each other and killed each other for a long time but they eventually learned to get over it and made peace without borders and walls
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
My bad. I guess I wasn't clear when I started this thread. THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD IS TO PROVIDE A FORUM FOR POSITIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT ISRAEL. There, now it should be clear. Please stick to the subject of the thread from this point forward.
-- Article 3 prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," a routine element of Palestinian life under Israel's occupation.
-- Article 32 forbids assassinations, and any brutalization of the civilian population, including their treatment at checkpoints and in "security searches."
-- Article 33 prohibiting pillage would obtain to Israel's extensive use of West Bank and Gazan water resources, especially as they are denied the local population. It also prohibits the use of collective punishment, as represented by the imposition of closure, curfew, house demolitions and many other routine actions of the Occupation Authorities.
-- Article 39 stipulates: "Protected persons [residents of occupied lands] who, as a result of the war, have lost their gainful employment, shall be granted the opportunity to find paid employment." It thereby prohibits the imposition a permanent "closure" on the Occupied Territories, such as Israel has done since 1993.
-- Article 49 forbids deportations and any "forcible transfers," which would include such common practices as revoking Jerusalem IDs or banning Palestinians from returning from work, study or travel abroad. It also stipulates that "The Occupying Power shall not…transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies" - a clear ban on settlements.
-- Article 53 reads: "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons…is prohibited." Under this provision the practice of demolishing Palestinian houses is banned, but so is the wholesale destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure (including its civil society institutions and records in Ramallah) destroyed in the reoccupation of March-April 2002..
-- Article 64 forbids changes in the local legal system that, among other things, alienate the local population from its land and property, as Israel has done through massive land expropriations.
-- Article 146 holds accountable individuals who have committed "grave breaches" of the Convention.
According to Article 147, this includes many acts routinely practiced under the Occupation, such as willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury, unlawful deportation, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property. Israeli courts have thus far failed to charge or prosecute Israeli officials, military personnel or police who have committed such acts.
-- The PLO also bears a measure of responsibility for the violations of its own people's rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention. According to Article 8, the PLO had no right in the Oslo Agreements to abrogate their rights and suspend the applicability of the Convention, since "Protected persons may in no circumstances renounce in part or in entirety the rights secured to them by the present Convention." Had international humanitarian law been the basis of the Oslo peace process rather than power-negotiations, the Occupation would have ended and the conditions for a just peace would have been established, since virtually every element of Israel's occupation violates a provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The International humanitarian law provides a map for the equitable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian "conflict." By guaranteeing the collective rights of both peoples to self-determination and prohibiting occupation and the perpetuation of refugee status, it leaves only the details of an agreement to be worked out by negotiations. Boundaries, the just resolution of the refugee issue based on the Right of Return and individual choice and the other "final status issues" can be resolved only if they are addressed in the context of human rights and international humanitarian law -- and not as mere by-products of power. Nothing is being asked of Israel that is not asked of any other country -- accountability under covenants of human rights formulated and adopted by the international community, which Israel pledged to respect as a condition for its creation by the UN and upon which Israel itself has signed.
As it is, Israel refuses to abide by international law and treats both the Palestinians under its control and the international community attempting to intervene with absolute impunity. The refusal of the international community to intervene makes it complicit in the violations of human rights and war crimes that Israel is committing in the Occupied Territories.
Israel: End Crackdown on Anti-Wall Activists
Peaceful Advocates Detained on Spurious Charges, Denied Due Process
MARCH 5, 2010
(Jerusalem) - Israel should immediately end its arbitrary detention of Palestinians protesting the separation barrier, Human Rights Watch said today. Israel is building most of the barrier inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, in violation of international humanitarian law. In recent months, Israeli military authorities have arbitrarily arrested and denied due process rights to several dozen Palestinian anti-wall protesters.
Israel has detained Palestinians who advocate non-violent protests against the separation barrier and charged them based on questionable evidence, including allegedly coerced confessions. Israeli authorities have also denied detainees from villages that have staged protests against the barrier, including children, access to lawyers and family members. Many of the protests have been in villages that lost substantial amounts of land when the barrier was built.
"Israel is arresting people for peacefully protesting a barrier built illegally on their lands that harms their livelihoods," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The Israeli authorities are effectively banning peaceful expression of political speech by bringing spurious charges against demonstrators, plus detaining children and adults without basic due process protections."
Demonstrations against the separation barrier often turn violent, with Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. Israeli troops have regularly responded by using stun and tear gas grenades to disperse protesters, and the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has documented the Israeli military's use of live and rubber-coated bullets on several occasions. Violence at demonstrations may result in the arrest of those who participate in or incite violence, but it does not justify the arrest of activists who have simply called for or supported peaceful protests against the wall, Human Rights Watch said.
In December 2009, military prosecutors charged Abdallah Abu Rahme, a high-school teacher in the West Bank village of Bil'in who is a leading advocate of non-violent resistance, with illegal possession of weapons in connection with an art exhibit, in the shape of a peace sign, that he built out of used Israeli army bullets and tear gas canisters. The weapons charge states that Abu Rahme, a member of Bil'in's Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, used "M16 bullets and gas and stun grenades" for "an exhibition [that] showed people what means the security forces employ."
A military court also charged him with throwing stones at soldiers and incitement for organizing demonstrations that included stone throwing. An Israeli protester, Jonathan Pollack, acknowledged Palestinian youths often have thrown stones but told Human Rights Watch that he had attended "dozens" of protests with Abu Rahme and had never seen him throw stones. Abu Rahme remains in detention.
The Israeli military in August detained Mohammed Khatib, a leader of the Bil'in Popular Committee and the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which organize protests against the separation barrier, and charged him with "stone throwing" at a Bil'in demonstration in November 2008. Khatib's passport shows that he was on New Caledonia, a Pacific island, when the alleged incident occurred. He was released on August 9, 2009, on condition that he present himself at a police station at the time of weekly anti-wall protests, effectively barring him from participating, his lawyers said.
The military detained him again and charged Khatib with incitement on January 28, 2010, a day after the Israeli news website Ynet quoted him as saying: "We are on the eve of an intifada." His lawyer said that security services justified the detention on the grounds of "incitement materials" confiscated from his home, which proved to be records of his trial. He was released on February 3. Khatib has published articles calling for non-violent protests, including in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Nation magazine. Khatib has also been active in lobbying for divestment from companies whose operations support violations of international law by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Military authorities also detained Zeydoun Srour, a member of the Popular Committee against the Wall in Ni'lin, on January 12, charging him with throwing stones during a demonstration, despite a letter from his employer and stamped and dated forms signed by Srour showing that he was working his normal shift at the time of the alleged incident.
"Israel's security concerns do not justify detaining or prosecuting peaceful Palestinian activists," Whitson said. "The Israeli government should immediately order an end to ongoing harassment of Palestinians who peacefully protest the separation barrier."
Mohammad Srour, also a member of the Popular Committee in Ni'lin, was arrested on July 20 by the Israeli army while returning from Geneva, where he appeared before the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (the Goldstone Commission). Srour's testimony to the UN mission described the fatal shooting by Israeli forces of two Ni'lin residents on December 28, 2008, at a demonstration against Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Srour was taken to Ofer prison for interrogation and was released on bail three days later without having been charged. In its report to the Human Rights Council, the Goldstone Commission expressed its concern that Srour's detention "may have been a consequence of his appearance before the Mission."
Cases brought against Palestinians for throwing stones and cases under the military's overbroad incitement law frequently raise serious due process concerns, Human Rights Watch said. Prosecutions of anti-wall activists have been based on testimony from witnesses who say their statements were obtained under coercive threats. A16-year-old witness against Mohammed Khatib testified on January 4 that he signed a false statement claiming that Khatib was throwing stones at a demonstration only after his interrogator "cursed me and told me that I should either sign or he would beat me," according to a military-court transcript.
Another 16-year-old from Bil'in said he signed a false statement alleging that Bil'in's Popular Committee members incited others to throw stones because his interrogator threatened to accuse him of "many things that I did and they were not true, that I had gas grenades, Molotovs, that I threw stones, and I was afraid of that."
Other Palestinians detained in anti-wall demonstrations have also alleged coercion by Israeli interrogators. A man whom lawyers say is mentally challenged testified on January 21 that he had falsely confessed to throwing a Molotov bomb at an Israeli army jeep after soldiers placed him inside a cockroach-infested cell, threatened to throw boiling water on him, and burned him with lit cigarettes, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The Israeli military had no record of a jeep being attacked, Haaretz reported.
The detained activists are from Ni'lin, Bil'in, and several other Palestinian villages inside the West Bank that have been directly affected by Israel's separation barrier. The barrier - in some places a fence, in others an eight-meter-high concrete wall with guard towers - was ostensibly built to protect against suicide bombers. However, unlike a similar barrier between Israel and Gaza, it does not follow the 1967 border between Israel and the West Bank. Instead, 85 percent of the barrier's route lies inside the West Bank, separating Palestinian residents from their lands, restricting their movement, and in some places effectively confiscating occupied territory, all unlawful under international humanitarian law.
Lawyers for detained activists also told Human Rights Watch of cases in which Israeli security services raided several West Bank villages that have been the site of anti-wall demonstrations and detained and interrogated residents, including children, and denied them access to lawyers and family members. Israeli military orders require allowing detainees to contact lawyers before interrogation and allowing detained children to have family members present.
Nery Ramati, a lawyer representing several detainees, told Human Rights Watch of three cases in which Israeli authorities refused to allow him to speak to boys in detention, all ages 14 and 15, from the villages of Bil'in and Budrus, or to allow the boys' relatives to be present, before their interrogation at the Shaar Benyamin police station. Military courts authorized the detention of one boy for a month for allegedly throwing stones at the separation barrier. The court ruled that there was no alternative to detention, but ignored the fact that Israeli movement restrictions had prevented the boy's father and uncle from presenting evidence of an alternative to detention to the court. The boy was held in jail for an entire month, until his uncle was able to come from Ramallah.
In several cases, Israeli military authorities took children to a building operated by the Israeli Shin Bet security agency in the Ofer military camp to which lawyers and family members are denied access. Under international treaties to which Israel is a party, children may be detained only as a last resort and for the shortest possible period of time.
Under laws applicable in Israel and to Israeli settlers in the West Bank, a child is anyone under 18 years old, a standard consistent with international law. Military laws applicable to Palestinians in the West Bank, however, define anyone over 16 as an adult. Israeli law requires the prosecution to justify that the detention of an Israeli child is "necessary" to prevent the child from committing illegal acts until the trial is over, requires the court to consider documentation from a social worker about how detention will affect the child, and limits the period of pre-sentence detention to nine months. Israeli military laws provide none of these safeguards for Palestinian children and allow pre-sentence detention of up to two years.
Israeli military authorities in recent months placed two anti-wall activists in administrative detention, failing to charge them with any crime and detaining them on the basis of secret evidence they were not allowed to see or challenge in court. The military detained Mohammad Othman, 34, an activist with the "Stop the Wall" organization, on September 22, 2009 when he returned to the West Bank from a trip to Norway, where he spoke about the separation barrier and urged boycotting companies that support Israeli human rights violations. An Israeli military court barred Othman from seeing his lawyer and family for two weeks during his 113-day administrative detention, before his release on January 12.
The Israeli authorities also detained Jamal Juma'a, 47, the coordinator of the "Stop the Wall" campaign, on December 16, 2009 and denied him access to his lawyer for nine days, except for a brief visit at a court hearing during which Juma'a was blindfolded. Israel barred international observers from attending a court hearing before Juma'a's release on January 12. Both men publicly advocated non-violent protest, including an article Juma'a published on the Huffington Post website on October 28, 2009.
Israeli military authorities have also repeatedly raided the West Bank offices of organizations involved in non-violent advocacy against the separation barrier. In February, the military raided the offices of Stop the Wall and the International Solidarity Movement, both located in Ramallah. (Israel ostensibly ceded Ramallah and other areas of the West Bank to the control of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Agreements of 1995.)
Background
Israeli military authorities have detained scores of Palestinians, including children, involved in protests against the wall. According to the Palestinian prisoners' rights group Addameer, 35 residents of Bil'in have been arrested since June 2009, most during nighttime raids; 113 have been arrested from the neighboring village of Ni'ilin in the last 18 months.
Israel applies military orders, issued by the commander of the occupied territory, as law in the West Bank. Article 7(a) of Military Order 101 of 1967 criminalizes as "incitement" any act of "attempting, whether verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order." Military Order 378 of 1970 imposes sentences of up to 20 years for throwing stones.
Both Israeli and international courts have found the route of the separation barrier in the West Bank to be illegal. The International Court of Justice ruled in a 2004 advisory opinion that the wall's route was illegal because its construction inside the West Bank was not justified by security concerns and contributed to violations of international humanitarian law applicable to occupied territory by impeding Palestinians' freedom of movement, destroying property, and contributing to unlawful Israeli settlement practices. Israel's High Court of Justice has ruled that the wall must be rerouted in several places, including near Bil'in and Jayyous, because the harm caused to Palestinians was disproportionate, although the rulings would allow the barrier to remain inside the West Bank in these and other areas.
The activists whom Israel has arrested in recent months organized protests in areas directly affected by Israel's separation barrier. In Jayyous, home to Mohammad Othman. the wall cut the village off from 75 percent of its farmland, with the aim of facilitating the expansion of a settlement, Zufim, on that land, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem says. "Stop the Wall" supported marches by civilian protesters against the separation barrier in Jayyous. In response to a petition from the village, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the Israel Defense Forces to re-route the wall around Jayyous on the grounds that the prior route was due to Zufim's expansion plans. The Israeli military rerouted the wall in one area around Zufim after a court proceeding, but has not rerouted the barrier elsewhere.
Abdallah Abu Rahme is from Bil'in, a village where the wall cut off 50 percent of the land. The Israeli settlement of Mattityahu East is being built on the land to which the village no longer has access. In September 2007, after years of protests organized by Bil'in's Popular Committee, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the separation barrier in Bil'in must be rerouted to allow access to more of Bil'in's land, and the military recently began survey work preliminary to rerouting the barrier.
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
"Where does it not represent you?
In the occupation policy, in the settlement policy, in the policy of racism and discrimination. Eighty-percent unemployment among women; the many employers who do not hire Arabs. The development budget - hardly 4 percent of it reaches the Arab local authorities. Upper Nazareth is almost swallowing up Nazareth because it is expanding so much, and Nazareth has no lands to expand onto. Nazareth does not have an industrial zone. Education - I don't study my past, my identity - I study the history of the Jewish people. I also see the teachers' fear of teaching our history, the fear that the Education Ministry will dismiss them."
Apartheid is a situation where a minority population segregates and controls a majority population, denying them a voice in the politics of the country. It also means that all of this is done out of racist motives. Within Israel proper Arabs are not the majority, and they have the vote, so whatever issues of discrimination there are in Israel, the country does not practice apartheid. As for the West Bank, the situation there more closely resembles South African Apartheid, except for the key differences that 1) Israel is not acting out of racist motives, and 2) Israel has repeatedly and explicitly stated that virtually all of the West Bank will become part of the future state of Palestine (and not remain a permanent, and politically unrepresented, part of Israel.)
I won't deny that Israel does bad things, but labeling it as practicing Apartheid is factually wrong. It is nothing but a baldly political effort at attacking the legitimacy of the country, and every time you repeat this slander you make it less likely that any moderate person will take you seriously.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Apartheid is a situation where a minority population segregates and controls a majority population, denying them a voice in the politics of the country. It also means that all of this is done out of racist motives. Within Israel proper Arabs are not the majority, and they have the vote, so whatever issues of discrimination there are in Israel, the country does not practice apartheid. As for the West Bank, the situation there more closely resembles South African Apartheid, except for the key differences that 1) Israel is not acting out of racist motives, and 2) Israel has repeatedly and explicitly stated that virtually all of the West Bank will become part of the future state of Palestine (and not remain a permanent, and politically unrepresented, part of Israel.)
I won't deny that Israel does bad things, but labeling it as practicing Apartheid is factually wrong. It is nothing but a baldly political effort at attacking the legitimacy of the country, and every time you repeat this slander you make it less likely that any moderate person will take you seriously.
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
You should learn to tell the difference between an op-ed (what you linked to, which reflects the opinion of the author), and an editorial (which reflects the opinion of the paper). Furthermore, without getting into any of the author's specific claims, many of which I agree with, I'll just say that the author of this article is just as wrong in his (mis)use of the term "apartheid" as outlaw is. If "apartheid" means discrimination of any kind for any reason, which is essentially how your author, and outlaw, and I guess you yourself are using it, well then the whole world practices apartheid, and the term itself has become meaningless.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Article II of the ICSPCA defines the crime of apartheid as follows:
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid,
Article II[1]
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term 'the crime of apartheid', which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person
By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
[edit]ICC definition of the crime of apartheid
Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as:
Article 7
Crimes against humanity
For the purpose of this Statute, 'crime against humanity' means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
Murder;
Extermination;
Enslavement;
Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
Torture;
Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
Enforced disappearance of persons;
The crime of apartheid;
Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.[12]
Later in Article 7, the crime of apartheid is defined as:
The 'crime of apartheid' means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.[12]
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Israel is a democracy in which Arabs vote - Not an apartheid State
By Benjamin Pogrund
Apartheid is dead in South Africa but the word is alive in the world, especially as an epithet of abuse for Israel. Israel is accused by some of being “the new apartheid” state. If true, it would be a grave charge, justifying international condemnation and sanctions. But it isn’t true. Anyone who knows what apartheid was, and who knows Israel today, is aware of that. Use of the apartheid label is at best ignorant and naïve and at worst cynical and manipulative.
Either way, its inappropriate use cheapens the meaning of the apartheid that South Africans suffered for so long. Just as overuse of “Nazi” has robbed that once-dreaded word of much of its meaning, as happened during the Gaza Strip evacuation in August 2005: the Jewish settlers who yelled “Nazis” at the Jewish soldiers who were evicting them betrayed and diminished the Holocaust which had murderously swept over Europe’s Jews 50 years earlier.
The word "apartheid" was coined in the 1920s for Calvinist religious purposes but became widely known through the general election in 1948 as the expression of Afrikaner nationalist political, social and economic policy. It can be defined as racial separation and discrimination, institutionalised by law in every aspect of everyday life, imposed by the white minority and derived from belief in white racial superiority.
The description of Israel as an “emerging apartheid state” began to roll perhaps around 2000 and gained wider currency during the regional conferences leading up to the UN Anti-racism conference in Durban in August/September 2001. The anti-racism conference of NGOs adopted resolutions condemning Israel as an “apartheid state” and called for an international policy of total isolation “as in the case of South Africa which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes (and) the full cessation of all links…”. There were also repeated references to “genocide” in descriptions of Israel’s behaviour towards Palestinians, plus denunciations of Zionism, Israel’s founding philosophy, as “racism” in a transparent attempt to reinstate the now rescinded 1975 UN resolution condemning Zionism as a crime against humanity akin to apartheid.
The sponsors of these statements and their supporters were so wild and off the mark in their language and actions that they discredited themselves. In addition, that is, to creating near-total distraction from the anti-racism cause which was the purpose of their being there. The conference of governments that immediately followed the NGO meeting rejected virtually every one of the attacks on Israel. Later, South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Aziz Pahad, spoke of the “disgraceful events” surrounding the NGO conference and said: “I wish to make it unequivocally clear that the South African government recognises that part of that component was hijacked and used by some with an anti-Israel agenda to turn it into an anti-Semitic event.”
So how does Israel stand in regard to the apartheid and racist claims?
First, Israel inside the Green Line (the de facto border after the 1967 war)
Arabs are a substantial minority, about 20 per cent of the population. In theory they have full citizenship rights. In practice they suffer extensive discrimination, ranging from denial of land use, diminished job opportunities and lesser social benefits, to reports of a family ordered off a beach and children evicted from a park. Only some 5,05 per cent of the 55 500 civil servants are Arabs. Arab villages are often under-funded and suffer from poor services and roads. Schools receive smaller amounts of government revenue, so their facilities are poorer.
None of this is acceptable and especially in a state that presents itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. But is it comparable with pre-1994 South Africa? Under apartheid, remember, no detail of life was immune to discrimination by law. Skin colour determined every single person’s life, literally from birth until death: where you were born, where you went to school, what job you had, which bus you used, what park bench you sat on and in which cemetery you were buried. In Israel, discrimination occurs despite equality in law; it is extensive, it is buttressed by custom, but it is not remotely comparable with the South African panoply of discrimination enforced by parliamentary legislation. The difference is fundamental.
The Israeli situation can perhaps be better likened to the United States: blacks enjoyed rights under the Constitution but the rights were not enforced for decades; it took the Supreme Court’s historic judgement in Brown vs Board of Education in 1954 to begin the process of applying the law.
The difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasised at a very human level: Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, with the same facilities, attended by the same doctors and nurses, with the mothers recovering in adjoining beds in a ward. Two years ago I had major surgery in a Jerusalem hospital: the surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab, the doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on the same trains, buses and taxis, and visit each other’s homes.
Could any of this possibly have happened under apartheid? Of course not.
A crucial, indeed fundamental, indicator of the status of Israel’s minority — and another non-comparison between apartheid South Africa and Israel — is that Arabs have the vote. Blacks did not. The vote means citizenship and power to change. Arab citizens lack full power as a minority community but they have the right and the power to unite as a group and to ally with others.
Nor does “Zionism is racism” stand up to scrutiny. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted for partition of the then Palestine so as to create a state for Jews and a state for Arabs. For Jews it was Zionism come true — the return to their ancestral home and the creation of a refuge from centuries-old persecution. They accepted partition but Arabs did not. Israel now has a Jewish majority and they have the right to decide how to order the society, including defining citizenship. If the majority wish to restrict immigration and citizenship to Jews that may be incompatible with a strict definition of the universality of humankind. But it is the right of the majority. Just as it is the right of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states not to allow Christians as citizens, or the right of Ghana and other African states to reject or restrict whites as citizens, or the right of South Africa to have a non-racial citizenship policy. It’s the norm for countries to have citizenship laws and immigration practices which do not subscribe to universal ideals, but which are, on the contrary, based on their perceptions of colour or religion or economic class or whatever. Europe demonstrates that every day in dealing with would-be economic migrants.
Israel’s “Law of Return”, giving every Jew anywhere in the world the right to immigration — apart from exceptional cases relating to known criminals and kindred miscreants — is part of the majority’s right to decide whom to admit. It stems from the original purpose in creating a Jewish state, or a state for the Jews. Orthodox rabbis in Israel have a controlling influence in deciding who is a Jew. Descent is matrilineal. It is a religious issue — not an “apartheid” one as some claim — which is being fought over among Jews, with the Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism demanding a role.
At the same time, it is clearly unfair from the victims’ point of view for Israel to give automatic entry to Jews from anywhere while denying the “Right of Return” to Palestinians who fled or were expelled in the wars of 1948 and 1967, and their descendants. This unfairness, to put it at its mildest, is a tragic consequence of war. Again, however, it is not unique to Israel. The same has happened in recent times, often on far greater scales, in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, India and Pakistan, to list but a few parallel situations.
In any event, what is racism? Under apartheid it was skin colour. Applied to Israel that’s a joke: for proof of that, just look at a crowd of Israeli Jews and their gradations in skin-colour from the “blackest” to the “whitest”. In international usage, “racism” has broadened and now seems to cover any prejudice or discrimination against another group. Under this definition, Israel, a young country that was founded less than 60 years ago, is a hotbed of discrimination and complaints about discrimination. Arabs suffer most but there are constant complaints of discrimination and unfair treatment from (Oriental) Sephardic Jews and (Western) Ashkenazi Jews, as well as religious and secular Jews. There is no shortage of abrasive reports claiming discrimination. One illustration: three prestigious Ashkenazi religious seminaries for girls were reported to maintain a quota whereby only 30 per cent of Sephardic origin are admitted because they are viewed as inferior; this was described as progress because previously the quota was 17 per cent.
The non-comparison is seen yet again in the possibilities of change. In South Africa, change for the better was simply not possible during at least the first 30 years of Afrikaner Nationalist rule. Even if a court occasionally blew a hole in an apartheid law, the all-white parliament rapidly enacted legislation to close the loophole. In contrast, change is possible in Israel, and change is happening. Gains range from the first hiring of Arabs by the parastatal Israeli Electric Corporation, through equality in budgets for Muslim cemeteries, to affirmative action in government service such as last year’s appointment of the first Arab judge to the High Court of Justice. Change is imperfect and too slow and there is backsliding, but it is happening.
Even on the critical issue of land: with most of Israel reserved for Jews, an Arab nurse, Adel Kaadan, has been striving for a decade to move into the Jewish town of Katzir. The High Court opened the way for him but bureaucratic tricks have kept him out. It seems he is now on the verge of success — and more cases are in the pipeline to challenge land discrimination.
Second, the West Bank
It is occupied by Israel. No occupation can be benign. Israeli harshness and misdeeds are reported day in and day out by Israeli media. Everyone is suffering, Palestinians as victims and Israelis as perpetrators. Death and maiming haunts everyone in the occupied territories and in Israel itself. Occupation is brutalising and corrupting both Palestinians and Israelis. The damage done to the fabric of both societies, moral and material, is incalculable.
But it is not apartheid. Palestinians are not oppressed on racial grounds as Arabs, but, rather, as competitors — until now, at the losing end — in a national/religious conflict for land.
The word “Bantustan” is often used to describe Israel’s policy about a future Palestinian state. It might look like that, superficially. But the root causes — and even more, the intentions — are different. White South Africans invented the Bantustans to pen blacks into defined areas that served as reservoirs of labour; blacks were allowed to leave only when needed to work in white South Africa’s factories, farms, offices and homes. The Israeli aim is the exact opposite: it is to keep Palestinians out, having as little to do with them as possible, and letting in as few as possible to work. Instead, workers from other countries are imported to do the jobs that Israelis will not do.
If Israel were to annex the West Bank and control voteless Palestinians as a source of cheap labour — or for religious messianic reasons or strategic reasons — that could indeed be analogous to apartheid. But it is not the intention except in the eyes of a minority — settlers and extremists who speak of “transfer” to clear Palestinians out of the West Bank, or who desire a disenfranchised Palestinian population. The majority of Israelis — 60 to 70 per cent, opinion polls consistently show — want to get out of the West Bank, with divergences of opinion only on where the final borders with a Palestinian state should be drawn.
The separation barrier/wall/fence currently being built is part of this scheme. Its immediate purpose is to prevent Palestinian suicide-bombers from entering Israel. That aim enjoys popular Israeli support. Had it been confined to that and had the barrier run along the Green Line it would have been an ugly blot on the landscape as well as a statement of the failure to achieve peace. However, the barrier has gone further: the Israeli government is using it as a land grab, intruding into the territory that everyone knows should be the future Palestinian state. About eight per cent of that Palestinian land is inside the barrier, on the Israeli side. One of the effects is gross disruption of the lives of thousands of Palestinians who face extreme difficulty in gaining access to jobs, hospitals, schools and their fields.
The barrier/wall/fence, as it now is, is a repugnant aspect of Israeli policy, and all the more so because it is also meant to protect scores of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. But it is not apartheid. Calling it the “Apartheid Wall” is a debasement of the word for the sake of slick propaganda.
“Apartheid” is used in this case and elsewhere because it comes easily to hand: it is a lazy label for the complexities of the Middle East conflict. It is also used because, if it can be made to stick, then Israel can be made to appear to be as vile as was apartheid South Africa and seeking its destruction can be presented to the world as an equally moral cause.
Israel has withdrawn from the Gaza Strip (although consequent problems such as border control still have to resolved). Now the pressure is to end West Bank occupation. It must happen because it is the only way to secure peace with Palestinian and Israeli states living side by side. There’s a hard haul ahead, to negotiate evacuation and possible land swaps to compensate for land, such as in the towns which have been built with populations of up to 35 000 and which Israel wants to retain. It would, however, be unrealistic to believe that withdrawal from the West Bank will be enough in itself. Peace can only ultimately come when the rejectionists — the Palestinian organisations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Arab states like Iran — accept the fact of Israel’s existence.
Is a binational state the answer? On the face of it, of course. Unfortunately, and for the foreseeable future, it belongs to a never-never land. It looks more attractive the further one is from the Middle East. On the ground it enjoys support only from the extremes on both sides. It’s a non-starter for the vast majority of Israelis because it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Those who propagate from afar lack a sense of Jewish history and the survival ethos created by centuries of persecution. Nor do most Palestinians want it. Why should they drown themselves in a joint state which will be dominated by Jews in every walk of life, whether the economy, government or the professions? Rather their own Palestinian pond in which they will be the masters.
Instead of one-sided attacks on Israel, which are not only counter-productive but raise worrying questions about motives, there should be an unequivocal commitment to peace. Genuine peace efforts should have twin aims: first, to persuade Israel to end the occupation and help a viable Palestinian state to come into being; and second, to persuade the rejectionists to change so that Israelis need no longer fear annihilation if they let down their guard.
The difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasised at a very human level: Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, with the same facilities, attended by the same doctors and nurses, with the mothers recovering in adjoining beds in a ward. Two years ago I had major surgery in a Jerusalem hospital: the surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab, the doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on the same trains, buses and taxis, and visit each other’s homes.
The term Apartheid applies to the occupied territories.
The word “Bantustan” is often used to describe Israel’s policy about a future Palestinian state. It might look like that, superficially. But the root causes — and even more, the intentions — are different. White South Africans invented the Bantustans to pen blacks into defined areas that served as reservoirs of labour; blacks were allowed to leave only when needed to work in white South Africa’s factories, farms, offices and homes. The Israeli aim is the exact opposite: it is to keep Palestinians out, having as little to do with them as possible, and letting in as few as possible to work.
The definition of what constitutes Apartheid has nothing to do with creating reservoirs of labour. Next the author will say that because the Palestinians aren't black Africans that the term Apartheid doesn't apply.
If Israel were to annex the West Bank and control voteless Palestinians...for religious messianic reasons or strategic reasons — that could indeed be analogous to apartheid.
But it is not the intention except in the eyes of a minority — settlers and extremists who speak of “transfer” to clear Palestinians out of the West Bank, or who desire a disenfranchised Palestinian population. The majority of Israelis — 60 to 70 per cent, opinion polls consistently show — want to get out of the West Bank, with divergences of opinion only on where the final borders with a Palestinian state should be drawn.
Except they are not a minority. The settler movement is a powerful force and it's now gained even more support by the hawks in the current Israeli leadership, such as Netanyahu and Leiberman.
'The majority of Israeli Jews are pro-settlement and wary of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, according to a poll conducted by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research, a research institute at Tel Aviv University that favors a two-state solution...'
'Israeli support for a proposed unilateral withdrawal from parts of the occupied West Bank has tumbled to 37 per cent, a poll published on Friday showed, less than two-thirds of the backing it had four months ago. A survey in the Haaretz newspaper found just 37 per cent of Israelis support the plan while 56 per cent are opposed to it...'
The difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasised at a very human level: Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, with the same facilities, attended by the same doctors and nurses, with the mothers recovering in adjoining beds in a ward. Two years ago I had major surgery in a Jerusalem hospital: the surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab, the doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on the same trains, buses and taxis, and visit each other’s homes.
The term Apartheid applies to the occupied territories.
Nice try.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the common sentiment expressed on here is "Israel is an apartheid state", yes? Its clearly not, based on this guy's arguments. As for the occupied territories themselves, what's the evidence that 1) this sort of racially-based separation occurs to the extent that the label apartheid implies, and 2) that the oppression experienced in the occupied territories is motivated solely or even largely by racial differences? First of all, apartheid a culturally-specific term that applies to the previous South African situation .. Even allowing for the use of this term in other national contexts, how do we know the oppression (which is not the same thing as apartheid) is racial per se? Pardon me, but have any of you been to Israel and maybe noticed all the brown or at least dusky-skinned people there? Do we focus on skin color because its easy to focus on, or because its the real reason for the oppression? I am not going to argue that race plays NO role (assuming for a moment that we're talking real racial differences, which in the Palestinian/Israeli case is actually quite debatable), but its clearly not the only or even the main factor.
First of all, apartheid a culturally-specific term that applies to the previous South African situation ..
Strange that even Israelis themselves recognize that the term Apartheid applies to the occupied territories:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and ... id_analogy
Jamal Zahalka, an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset argued that an apartheid system has already taken shape in that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are separated into "cantons" and Palestinians are required to carry permits to travel between them.[167] Azmi Bishara, a former Knesset member, argued that the Palestinian situation had been caused by "colonialist apartheid."[168]
Michael Ben-Yair, attorney-general of Israel from 1993 to 1996 referred to Israel establishing, "an apartheid regime in the occupied territories", in an essay published in Haaretz.[169]
Ehud Olmert, then Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, commented in April 2004 that; "More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle - and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state."[170] Olmert made a similar remark in November 2007 as Prime Minister: "If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished."[171][172]
Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak used the analogy when speaking in a national security conference in Israel. According to Barak, unless Israel makes peace with the Palestinians it will be faced with either a state with no Jewish majority or an "apartheid" regime. "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic," Barak said. "If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state." [173]
Some Israelis have compared the separation plan to apartheid, such as political scientist Meron Benvenisti,[109] and journalist Amira Hass.[174] Ami Ayalon, a former admiral, claiming it "ha[d] some apartheid characteristics."[175] Shulamit Aloni, former education minister and leader of Meretz, said that the state of Israel is "practicing its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population."[176]
A major 2002 study of Israeli settlement practices by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem concluded: "Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa." A more recent B'Tselem publication on the road system Israel has established in the West Bank concluded that it "bears striking similarities to the racist Apartheid regime," and even "entails a greater degree of arbitrariness than was the case with the regime that existed in South Africa."[177]
Academic and political activist Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen who describes himself as an "anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew",[178] has written several books on the subject, including Israel: An Apartheid State in 1987.[179]
Israeli politician and former Knesset member Yossi Sarid criticised discriminatory marriage law, exemption of Orthodox Jews from military service, and banning of Arabs from purchasing Jewish National Fund land as racist in a 2007 Ynetnews article entitled Our apartheid state.[8] He later compared a further array of Israeli practices including the West Bank barrier, separate roads, 'cheap hard labour', and Palestinian enclaves to apartheid in a 2008 Ha'aretz column entitled Yes, it is apartheid. Sarid wrote 'what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck - it is apartheid. Nor does it even solve the problem of fear' and added, 'One essential difference remains between South Africa and Israel: There a small minority dominated a large majority, and here we have almost a tie. But the tiebreaker is already darkening on the horizon.' [180]
Daphna Golan-Agnon, co-founder of B'Tselem and founding director of Bat Shalom writes in her 2002 book Next Year in Jerusalem, "I'm not sure if the use of the term apartheid helps us to understand the discrimination against Palestinians in Israel or the oppression against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. I'm not sure the discussion about how we are like or unlike South Africa helps move us forward to a solution. But the comparison reminds us that hundreds of laws do not make discrimination just and that the international community, the same international community we want to belong to, did not permit the perpetuation of apartheid. And it doesn't matter how we explain it and how many articles are written by Israeli scholars and lawyers—there are two groups living in this small piece of land, and one enjoys rights and liberty while the other does not."[181]
In his article "Is it Apartheid?" Israeli anti-Zionist activist Professor Moshé Machover states "... talk of Israeli 'apartheid' serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."[182]
Comments
I'd like to visit the Palestinian territories. I plan to next year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyKWNtmm5cg
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ma ... -west-bank
Israel approves more construction in West Bank settlement
Approval for building of 112 new flats in Beitar Illit comes despite partial curbs on settlement construction announced by Israeli government
* Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem - guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 March 2010 09.42 GMT
'The Israeli defence ministry today authorised further construction in a Jewish settlement on the occupied West Bank.
The decision came prior to the arrival in Israel of the US vice-president, Joe Biden, who is expected to announce a new round of indirect peace talks.
Approval for 112 new flats in Beitar Illit, an ultra-Orthodox settlement near Bethlehem, was given despite a 10-month partial curb on settlement construction announced by the Israeli government under heavy US pressure in November.
The decision to approve the building work appeared to be an attempt to appease members of Israel's rightwing coalition government, but was greeted with dismay by Palestinian officials.
George Mitchell, the US special envoy, has spent months attempting to get Israelis and Palestinians to restart negotiations, and was hoping a new round of indirect so-called "proximity" talks would begin today.
"If the Israeli government wants to sabotage Mitchell's efforts by taking such steps, let's talk to Mitchell about maybe not doing this if the price is so high," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said.
For many months, Palestinian officials had resisted any return to negotiations with Israel, saying all settlement construction should first be halted in line with the obligations of the US "road map" of 2003.
All settlements on occupied territory are illegal under international law.
Finally, under international pressure, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was persuaded to enter a four-month period of shuttle diplomacy, led by Mitchell and due to start in the coming days.
Although the US administration had last year demanded Israel halt all settlement building, it eventually welcomed the partial curbs imposed by the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
The temporary curbs did not apply to east Jerusalem, public buildings or around 3,000 flats whose construction was already under way.
The Israeli defence ministry said the Beitar Illit flats had been approved under the previous Israeli government and that construction needed to happen now for unspecified security reasons.
However, Hagit Ofran, of the Israeli group Peace Now, which monitors and opposes settlements, said the construction was in direct contradiction to Netanyahu's settlement curbs which prevented building of any flats – even if already approved – on which work had not yet started.
"It is a very unfortunate welcome that the government of Israel is giving to the vice-president," she said.
"It's as if they want to make it look like they want peace but on the other hand to torpedo the chance for these talks to succeed."
Last week, another plan for 600 new flats in the east Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Zeev passed through an initial stage of the approval process.
That wasn't specified with your first post. We're taking it as debating whether Israel is the greatest or not. Giving our opinion, whatever it may be.
it wasn't my idea, it is the forum rules, i'm sorry you are so unhappy with the rules someone else came up with, maybe they just have a deep seated hatred for jews and don't realize how anti-semitic their rules are?
anyway, there is a difference: in my thread about what the UN envoy said about Gaza you and some others kept wanting to bring up why don't i post about Cyprus, which you may be unaware of this fact but Cyprus has fuckall to do with what the UN said about Gaza being an open air prison. this is a thread about Israel and if they are the greatest....so far it seems like the replies are about Israel.
now, if i kept harassing you in this thread about why you only start threads about Israel and not Cyprus while implying this is done only because you 'possibly' have a deep seated hatred for muslims and just don't yet realize it the situation would be comparable but then we have reality....
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
This is gonna be a short thread then.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Your heart attack point makes little sense to me, as heart disease is the number one killer in ALL Western countries and one could use this type of comment to debunk fear about anything else (e.g., "Why are people scared of guns, they should be scared of bacon!") ... I can agree with the basic idea that Israel could choose to stop settlement expansion and will need to do so if real peace is going to come about. How this translates into "nobody in Israel is scared" is less clear to me. Are you really arguing that an entire group of people is solely motivated by expansionism?
compare it to whatever the heck you want ... i just picked something out of my head ... point is that casualty rates in Israel are blown out of proportion to perpetuate their actions ...
i never said nobody is scared ... but to say that israelis live in some cloud of fear due to the threat of palestinians is neither reflected in the general public's day to day lives nor any statistics ...
my position is this: the israeli gov't is heavily influenced by right wing extremists ... these people hate palestinians and are not interested in negotiating a peace deal ... again - as stated previously, any negotiated peace deal is sure to see israel have to give more than they receive ... hence the lack of motivation by the israelis to engage in significant talks ... the best thing that could happen to them is if a rocket comes flying from anywhere because it is their sole justification for their security checkpoints and lack of compromise currently ...
i will apologize to the OP who now wants this thread to be about how great israel is ...
Isarel has to stop being the bully of the Middle East along with the US. You are living in a dream world looking for positivity but Matisyahu has hope with this song...
*ONE DAY...MATISYAHU
Sometimes I lay under the moon
And I thank God I'm breathin'
Then I pray don't take me soon
'Cause I am here for a reason
Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know someday it'll all turn around because
All my life I been waitin' for
I been prayin' for, for the people to say
That we don't want to fight no more
They'll be no more wars
And our children will play, one day
It's not about win or lose 'cause we all lose
When they feed on the souls of the innocent blood
Drenched pavement keep on movin'
Though the waters stay ragin'
And in this life you may lose your way
It might drive you crazy
But don't let it phase you, no way
Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know someday it'll all turn around because
All my life I been waitin' for
I been prayin' for, for the people to say
That we don't want to fight no more
They'll be no more wars
And our children will play, one day
One day this all will change
Treat people the same
Stop with the violence down with the hate
One day we'll all be free and proud
To be under the same sun
Singing songs of freedom like
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
you should watch this, it's a very hopeful documentary that people on both sides want peace and reconciliation. it's time for the government to stop dragging their feet and stalling to take more and more land, either you want peace or you don't, in which case just admit it.
anyway, these people all lost someone(s) in their family to violence from one side or the other but still want to peace.
i forgot who it was but someone in it makes a good point that at 1 point the french, english and germans all hated each other and killed each other for a long time but they eventually learned to get over it and made peace without borders and walls
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/184
-- Article 3 prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," a routine element of Palestinian life under Israel's occupation.
-- Article 32 forbids assassinations, and any brutalization of the civilian population, including their treatment at checkpoints and in "security searches."
-- Article 33 prohibiting pillage would obtain to Israel's extensive use of West Bank and Gazan water resources, especially as they are denied the local population. It also prohibits the use of collective punishment, as represented by the imposition of closure, curfew, house demolitions and many other routine actions of the Occupation Authorities.
-- Article 39 stipulates: "Protected persons [residents of occupied lands] who, as a result of the war, have lost their gainful employment, shall be granted the opportunity to find paid employment." It thereby prohibits the imposition a permanent "closure" on the Occupied Territories, such as Israel has done since 1993.
-- Article 49 forbids deportations and any "forcible transfers," which would include such common practices as revoking Jerusalem IDs or banning Palestinians from returning from work, study or travel abroad. It also stipulates that "The Occupying Power shall not…transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies" - a clear ban on settlements.
-- Article 53 reads: "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons…is prohibited." Under this provision the practice of demolishing Palestinian houses is banned, but so is the wholesale destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure (including its civil society institutions and records in Ramallah) destroyed in the reoccupation of March-April 2002..
-- Article 64 forbids changes in the local legal system that, among other things, alienate the local population from its land and property, as Israel has done through massive land expropriations.
-- Article 146 holds accountable individuals who have committed "grave breaches" of the Convention.
According to Article 147, this includes many acts routinely practiced under the Occupation, such as willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury, unlawful deportation, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property. Israeli courts have thus far failed to charge or prosecute Israeli officials, military personnel or police who have committed such acts.
-- The PLO also bears a measure of responsibility for the violations of its own people's rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention. According to Article 8, the PLO had no right in the Oslo Agreements to abrogate their rights and suspend the applicability of the Convention, since "Protected persons may in no circumstances renounce in part or in entirety the rights secured to them by the present Convention." Had international humanitarian law been the basis of the Oslo peace process rather than power-negotiations, the Occupation would have ended and the conditions for a just peace would have been established, since virtually every element of Israel's occupation violates a provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The International humanitarian law provides a map for the equitable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian "conflict." By guaranteeing the collective rights of both peoples to self-determination and prohibiting occupation and the perpetuation of refugee status, it leaves only the details of an agreement to be worked out by negotiations. Boundaries, the just resolution of the refugee issue based on the Right of Return and individual choice and the other "final status issues" can be resolved only if they are addressed in the context of human rights and international humanitarian law -- and not as mere by-products of power. Nothing is being asked of Israel that is not asked of any other country -- accountability under covenants of human rights formulated and adopted by the international community, which Israel pledged to respect as a condition for its creation by the UN and upon which Israel itself has signed.
As it is, Israel refuses to abide by international law and treats both the Palestinians under its control and the international community attempting to intervene with absolute impunity. The refusal of the international community to intervene makes it complicit in the violations of human rights and war crimes that Israel is committing in the Occupied Territories.
they are also pioneers in suppressing non violent protest
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/03/05/i ... -activists
Israel: End Crackdown on Anti-Wall Activists
Peaceful Advocates Detained on Spurious Charges, Denied Due Process
MARCH 5, 2010
(Jerusalem) - Israel should immediately end its arbitrary detention of Palestinians protesting the separation barrier, Human Rights Watch said today. Israel is building most of the barrier inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, in violation of international humanitarian law. In recent months, Israeli military authorities have arbitrarily arrested and denied due process rights to several dozen Palestinian anti-wall protesters.
Israel has detained Palestinians who advocate non-violent protests against the separation barrier and charged them based on questionable evidence, including allegedly coerced confessions. Israeli authorities have also denied detainees from villages that have staged protests against the barrier, including children, access to lawyers and family members. Many of the protests have been in villages that lost substantial amounts of land when the barrier was built.
"Israel is arresting people for peacefully protesting a barrier built illegally on their lands that harms their livelihoods," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The Israeli authorities are effectively banning peaceful expression of political speech by bringing spurious charges against demonstrators, plus detaining children and adults without basic due process protections."
Demonstrations against the separation barrier often turn violent, with Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. Israeli troops have regularly responded by using stun and tear gas grenades to disperse protesters, and the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has documented the Israeli military's use of live and rubber-coated bullets on several occasions. Violence at demonstrations may result in the arrest of those who participate in or incite violence, but it does not justify the arrest of activists who have simply called for or supported peaceful protests against the wall, Human Rights Watch said.
In December 2009, military prosecutors charged Abdallah Abu Rahme, a high-school teacher in the West Bank village of Bil'in who is a leading advocate of non-violent resistance, with illegal possession of weapons in connection with an art exhibit, in the shape of a peace sign, that he built out of used Israeli army bullets and tear gas canisters. The weapons charge states that Abu Rahme, a member of Bil'in's Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, used "M16 bullets and gas and stun grenades" for "an exhibition [that] showed people what means the security forces employ."
A military court also charged him with throwing stones at soldiers and incitement for organizing demonstrations that included stone throwing. An Israeli protester, Jonathan Pollack, acknowledged Palestinian youths often have thrown stones but told Human Rights Watch that he had attended "dozens" of protests with Abu Rahme and had never seen him throw stones. Abu Rahme remains in detention.
The Israeli military in August detained Mohammed Khatib, a leader of the Bil'in Popular Committee and the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which organize protests against the separation barrier, and charged him with "stone throwing" at a Bil'in demonstration in November 2008. Khatib's passport shows that he was on New Caledonia, a Pacific island, when the alleged incident occurred. He was released on August 9, 2009, on condition that he present himself at a police station at the time of weekly anti-wall protests, effectively barring him from participating, his lawyers said.
The military detained him again and charged Khatib with incitement on January 28, 2010, a day after the Israeli news website Ynet quoted him as saying: "We are on the eve of an intifada." His lawyer said that security services justified the detention on the grounds of "incitement materials" confiscated from his home, which proved to be records of his trial. He was released on February 3. Khatib has published articles calling for non-violent protests, including in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Nation magazine. Khatib has also been active in lobbying for divestment from companies whose operations support violations of international law by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Military authorities also detained Zeydoun Srour, a member of the Popular Committee against the Wall in Ni'lin, on January 12, charging him with throwing stones during a demonstration, despite a letter from his employer and stamped and dated forms signed by Srour showing that he was working his normal shift at the time of the alleged incident.
"Israel's security concerns do not justify detaining or prosecuting peaceful Palestinian activists," Whitson said. "The Israeli government should immediately order an end to ongoing harassment of Palestinians who peacefully protest the separation barrier."
Mohammad Srour, also a member of the Popular Committee in Ni'lin, was arrested on July 20 by the Israeli army while returning from Geneva, where he appeared before the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (the Goldstone Commission). Srour's testimony to the UN mission described the fatal shooting by Israeli forces of two Ni'lin residents on December 28, 2008, at a demonstration against Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Srour was taken to Ofer prison for interrogation and was released on bail three days later without having been charged. In its report to the Human Rights Council, the Goldstone Commission expressed its concern that Srour's detention "may have been a consequence of his appearance before the Mission."
Cases brought against Palestinians for throwing stones and cases under the military's overbroad incitement law frequently raise serious due process concerns, Human Rights Watch said. Prosecutions of anti-wall activists have been based on testimony from witnesses who say their statements were obtained under coercive threats. A16-year-old witness against Mohammed Khatib testified on January 4 that he signed a false statement claiming that Khatib was throwing stones at a demonstration only after his interrogator "cursed me and told me that I should either sign or he would beat me," according to a military-court transcript.
Another 16-year-old from Bil'in said he signed a false statement alleging that Bil'in's Popular Committee members incited others to throw stones because his interrogator threatened to accuse him of "many things that I did and they were not true, that I had gas grenades, Molotovs, that I threw stones, and I was afraid of that."
Other Palestinians detained in anti-wall demonstrations have also alleged coercion by Israeli interrogators. A man whom lawyers say is mentally challenged testified on January 21 that he had falsely confessed to throwing a Molotov bomb at an Israeli army jeep after soldiers placed him inside a cockroach-infested cell, threatened to throw boiling water on him, and burned him with lit cigarettes, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The Israeli military had no record of a jeep being attacked, Haaretz reported.
The detained activists are from Ni'lin, Bil'in, and several other Palestinian villages inside the West Bank that have been directly affected by Israel's separation barrier. The barrier - in some places a fence, in others an eight-meter-high concrete wall with guard towers - was ostensibly built to protect against suicide bombers. However, unlike a similar barrier between Israel and Gaza, it does not follow the 1967 border between Israel and the West Bank. Instead, 85 percent of the barrier's route lies inside the West Bank, separating Palestinian residents from their lands, restricting their movement, and in some places effectively confiscating occupied territory, all unlawful under international humanitarian law.
Lawyers for detained activists also told Human Rights Watch of cases in which Israeli security services raided several West Bank villages that have been the site of anti-wall demonstrations and detained and interrogated residents, including children, and denied them access to lawyers and family members. Israeli military orders require allowing detainees to contact lawyers before interrogation and allowing detained children to have family members present.
Nery Ramati, a lawyer representing several detainees, told Human Rights Watch of three cases in which Israeli authorities refused to allow him to speak to boys in detention, all ages 14 and 15, from the villages of Bil'in and Budrus, or to allow the boys' relatives to be present, before their interrogation at the Shaar Benyamin police station. Military courts authorized the detention of one boy for a month for allegedly throwing stones at the separation barrier. The court ruled that there was no alternative to detention, but ignored the fact that Israeli movement restrictions had prevented the boy's father and uncle from presenting evidence of an alternative to detention to the court. The boy was held in jail for an entire month, until his uncle was able to come from Ramallah.
In several cases, Israeli military authorities took children to a building operated by the Israeli Shin Bet security agency in the Ofer military camp to which lawyers and family members are denied access. Under international treaties to which Israel is a party, children may be detained only as a last resort and for the shortest possible period of time.
Under laws applicable in Israel and to Israeli settlers in the West Bank, a child is anyone under 18 years old, a standard consistent with international law. Military laws applicable to Palestinians in the West Bank, however, define anyone over 16 as an adult. Israeli law requires the prosecution to justify that the detention of an Israeli child is "necessary" to prevent the child from committing illegal acts until the trial is over, requires the court to consider documentation from a social worker about how detention will affect the child, and limits the period of pre-sentence detention to nine months. Israeli military laws provide none of these safeguards for Palestinian children and allow pre-sentence detention of up to two years.
Israeli military authorities in recent months placed two anti-wall activists in administrative detention, failing to charge them with any crime and detaining them on the basis of secret evidence they were not allowed to see or challenge in court. The military detained Mohammad Othman, 34, an activist with the "Stop the Wall" organization, on September 22, 2009 when he returned to the West Bank from a trip to Norway, where he spoke about the separation barrier and urged boycotting companies that support Israeli human rights violations. An Israeli military court barred Othman from seeing his lawyer and family for two weeks during his 113-day administrative detention, before his release on January 12.
The Israeli authorities also detained Jamal Juma'a, 47, the coordinator of the "Stop the Wall" campaign, on December 16, 2009 and denied him access to his lawyer for nine days, except for a brief visit at a court hearing during which Juma'a was blindfolded. Israel barred international observers from attending a court hearing before Juma'a's release on January 12. Both men publicly advocated non-violent protest, including an article Juma'a published on the Huffington Post website on October 28, 2009.
Israeli military authorities have also repeatedly raided the West Bank offices of organizations involved in non-violent advocacy against the separation barrier. In February, the military raided the offices of Stop the Wall and the International Solidarity Movement, both located in Ramallah. (Israel ostensibly ceded Ramallah and other areas of the West Bank to the control of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Agreements of 1995.)
Background
Israeli military authorities have detained scores of Palestinians, including children, involved in protests against the wall. According to the Palestinian prisoners' rights group Addameer, 35 residents of Bil'in have been arrested since June 2009, most during nighttime raids; 113 have been arrested from the neighboring village of Ni'ilin in the last 18 months.
Israel applies military orders, issued by the commander of the occupied territory, as law in the West Bank. Article 7(a) of Military Order 101 of 1967 criminalizes as "incitement" any act of "attempting, whether verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order." Military Order 378 of 1970 imposes sentences of up to 20 years for throwing stones.
Both Israeli and international courts have found the route of the separation barrier in the West Bank to be illegal. The International Court of Justice ruled in a 2004 advisory opinion that the wall's route was illegal because its construction inside the West Bank was not justified by security concerns and contributed to violations of international humanitarian law applicable to occupied territory by impeding Palestinians' freedom of movement, destroying property, and contributing to unlawful Israeli settlement practices. Israel's High Court of Justice has ruled that the wall must be rerouted in several places, including near Bil'in and Jayyous, because the harm caused to Palestinians was disproportionate, although the rulings would allow the barrier to remain inside the West Bank in these and other areas.
The activists whom Israel has arrested in recent months organized protests in areas directly affected by Israel's separation barrier. In Jayyous, home to Mohammad Othman. the wall cut the village off from 75 percent of its farmland, with the aim of facilitating the expansion of a settlement, Zufim, on that land, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem says. "Stop the Wall" supported marches by civilian protesters against the separation barrier in Jayyous. In response to a petition from the village, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the Israel Defense Forces to re-route the wall around Jayyous on the grounds that the prior route was due to Zufim's expansion plans. The Israeli military rerouted the wall in one area around Zufim after a court proceeding, but has not rerouted the barrier elsewhere.
Abdallah Abu Rahme is from Bil'in, a village where the wall cut off 50 percent of the land. The Israeli settlement of Mattityahu East is being built on the land to which the village no longer has access. In September 2007, after years of protests organized by Bil'in's Popular Committee, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the separation barrier in Bil'in must be rerouted to allow access to more of Bil'in's land, and the military recently began survey work preliminary to rerouting the barrier.
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
"Where does it not represent you?
In the occupation policy, in the settlement policy, in the policy of racism and discrimination. Eighty-percent unemployment among women; the many employers who do not hire Arabs. The development budget - hardly 4 percent of it reaches the Arab local authorities. Upper Nazareth is almost swallowing up Nazareth because it is expanding so much, and Nazareth has no lands to expand onto. Nazareth does not have an industrial zone. Education - I don't study my past, my identity - I study the history of the Jewish people. I also see the teachers' fear of teaching our history, the fear that the Education Ministry will dismiss them."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155132.html
I won't deny that Israel does bad things, but labeling it as practicing Apartheid is factually wrong. It is nothing but a baldly political effort at attacking the legitimacy of the country, and every time you repeat this slander you make it less likely that any moderate person will take you seriously.
you should tell haaretz how you feel....
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1153555.html
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
ICSPCA definition of the crime of apartheid
Article II of the ICSPCA defines the crime of apartheid as follows:
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid,
Article II[1]
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term 'the crime of apartheid', which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person
By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
[edit]ICC definition of the crime of apartheid
Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as:
Article 7
Crimes against humanity
For the purpose of this Statute, 'crime against humanity' means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
Murder;
Extermination;
Enslavement;
Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
Torture;
Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
Enforced disappearance of persons;
The crime of apartheid;
Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.[12]
Later in Article 7, the crime of apartheid is defined as:
The 'crime of apartheid' means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.[12]
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Israel is a democracy in which Arabs vote - Not an apartheid State
By Benjamin Pogrund
Apartheid is dead in South Africa but the word is alive in the world, especially as an epithet of abuse for Israel. Israel is accused by some of being “the new apartheid” state. If true, it would be a grave charge, justifying international condemnation and sanctions. But it isn’t true. Anyone who knows what apartheid was, and who knows Israel today, is aware of that. Use of the apartheid label is at best ignorant and naïve and at worst cynical and manipulative.
Either way, its inappropriate use cheapens the meaning of the apartheid that South Africans suffered for so long. Just as overuse of “Nazi” has robbed that once-dreaded word of much of its meaning, as happened during the Gaza Strip evacuation in August 2005: the Jewish settlers who yelled “Nazis” at the Jewish soldiers who were evicting them betrayed and diminished the Holocaust which had murderously swept over Europe’s Jews 50 years earlier.
The word "apartheid" was coined in the 1920s for Calvinist religious purposes but became widely known through the general election in 1948 as the expression of Afrikaner nationalist political, social and economic policy. It can be defined as racial separation and discrimination, institutionalised by law in every aspect of everyday life, imposed by the white minority and derived from belief in white racial superiority.
The description of Israel as an “emerging apartheid state” began to roll perhaps around 2000 and gained wider currency during the regional conferences leading up to the UN Anti-racism conference in Durban in August/September 2001. The anti-racism conference of NGOs adopted resolutions condemning Israel as an “apartheid state” and called for an international policy of total isolation “as in the case of South Africa which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes (and) the full cessation of all links…”. There were also repeated references to “genocide” in descriptions of Israel’s behaviour towards Palestinians, plus denunciations of Zionism, Israel’s founding philosophy, as “racism” in a transparent attempt to reinstate the now rescinded 1975 UN resolution condemning Zionism as a crime against humanity akin to apartheid.
The sponsors of these statements and their supporters were so wild and off the mark in their language and actions that they discredited themselves. In addition, that is, to creating near-total distraction from the anti-racism cause which was the purpose of their being there. The conference of governments that immediately followed the NGO meeting rejected virtually every one of the attacks on Israel. Later, South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Aziz Pahad, spoke of the “disgraceful events” surrounding the NGO conference and said: “I wish to make it unequivocally clear that the South African government recognises that part of that component was hijacked and used by some with an anti-Israel agenda to turn it into an anti-Semitic event.”
So how does Israel stand in regard to the apartheid and racist claims?
First, Israel inside the Green Line (the de facto border after the 1967 war)
Arabs are a substantial minority, about 20 per cent of the population. In theory they have full citizenship rights. In practice they suffer extensive discrimination, ranging from denial of land use, diminished job opportunities and lesser social benefits, to reports of a family ordered off a beach and children evicted from a park. Only some 5,05 per cent of the 55 500 civil servants are Arabs. Arab villages are often under-funded and suffer from poor services and roads. Schools receive smaller amounts of government revenue, so their facilities are poorer.
None of this is acceptable and especially in a state that presents itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. But is it comparable with pre-1994 South Africa? Under apartheid, remember, no detail of life was immune to discrimination by law. Skin colour determined every single person’s life, literally from birth until death: where you were born, where you went to school, what job you had, which bus you used, what park bench you sat on and in which cemetery you were buried. In Israel, discrimination occurs despite equality in law; it is extensive, it is buttressed by custom, but it is not remotely comparable with the South African panoply of discrimination enforced by parliamentary legislation. The difference is fundamental.
The Israeli situation can perhaps be better likened to the United States: blacks enjoyed rights under the Constitution but the rights were not enforced for decades; it took the Supreme Court’s historic judgement in Brown vs Board of Education in 1954 to begin the process of applying the law.
The difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasised at a very human level: Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, with the same facilities, attended by the same doctors and nurses, with the mothers recovering in adjoining beds in a ward. Two years ago I had major surgery in a Jerusalem hospital: the surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab, the doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on the same trains, buses and taxis, and visit each other’s homes.
Could any of this possibly have happened under apartheid? Of course not.
A crucial, indeed fundamental, indicator of the status of Israel’s minority — and another non-comparison between apartheid South Africa and Israel — is that Arabs have the vote. Blacks did not. The vote means citizenship and power to change. Arab citizens lack full power as a minority community but they have the right and the power to unite as a group and to ally with others.
Nor does “Zionism is racism” stand up to scrutiny. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted for partition of the then Palestine so as to create a state for Jews and a state for Arabs. For Jews it was Zionism come true — the return to their ancestral home and the creation of a refuge from centuries-old persecution. They accepted partition but Arabs did not. Israel now has a Jewish majority and they have the right to decide how to order the society, including defining citizenship. If the majority wish to restrict immigration and citizenship to Jews that may be incompatible with a strict definition of the universality of humankind. But it is the right of the majority. Just as it is the right of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states not to allow Christians as citizens, or the right of Ghana and other African states to reject or restrict whites as citizens, or the right of South Africa to have a non-racial citizenship policy. It’s the norm for countries to have citizenship laws and immigration practices which do not subscribe to universal ideals, but which are, on the contrary, based on their perceptions of colour or religion or economic class or whatever. Europe demonstrates that every day in dealing with would-be economic migrants.
Israel’s “Law of Return”, giving every Jew anywhere in the world the right to immigration — apart from exceptional cases relating to known criminals and kindred miscreants — is part of the majority’s right to decide whom to admit. It stems from the original purpose in creating a Jewish state, or a state for the Jews. Orthodox rabbis in Israel have a controlling influence in deciding who is a Jew. Descent is matrilineal. It is a religious issue — not an “apartheid” one as some claim — which is being fought over among Jews, with the Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism demanding a role.
At the same time, it is clearly unfair from the victims’ point of view for Israel to give automatic entry to Jews from anywhere while denying the “Right of Return” to Palestinians who fled or were expelled in the wars of 1948 and 1967, and their descendants. This unfairness, to put it at its mildest, is a tragic consequence of war. Again, however, it is not unique to Israel. The same has happened in recent times, often on far greater scales, in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, India and Pakistan, to list but a few parallel situations.
In any event, what is racism? Under apartheid it was skin colour. Applied to Israel that’s a joke: for proof of that, just look at a crowd of Israeli Jews and their gradations in skin-colour from the “blackest” to the “whitest”. In international usage, “racism” has broadened and now seems to cover any prejudice or discrimination against another group. Under this definition, Israel, a young country that was founded less than 60 years ago, is a hotbed of discrimination and complaints about discrimination. Arabs suffer most but there are constant complaints of discrimination and unfair treatment from (Oriental) Sephardic Jews and (Western) Ashkenazi Jews, as well as religious and secular Jews. There is no shortage of abrasive reports claiming discrimination. One illustration: three prestigious Ashkenazi religious seminaries for girls were reported to maintain a quota whereby only 30 per cent of Sephardic origin are admitted because they are viewed as inferior; this was described as progress because previously the quota was 17 per cent.
The non-comparison is seen yet again in the possibilities of change. In South Africa, change for the better was simply not possible during at least the first 30 years of Afrikaner Nationalist rule. Even if a court occasionally blew a hole in an apartheid law, the all-white parliament rapidly enacted legislation to close the loophole. In contrast, change is possible in Israel, and change is happening. Gains range from the first hiring of Arabs by the parastatal Israeli Electric Corporation, through equality in budgets for Muslim cemeteries, to affirmative action in government service such as last year’s appointment of the first Arab judge to the High Court of Justice. Change is imperfect and too slow and there is backsliding, but it is happening.
Even on the critical issue of land: with most of Israel reserved for Jews, an Arab nurse, Adel Kaadan, has been striving for a decade to move into the Jewish town of Katzir. The High Court opened the way for him but bureaucratic tricks have kept him out. It seems he is now on the verge of success — and more cases are in the pipeline to challenge land discrimination.
Second, the West Bank
It is occupied by Israel. No occupation can be benign. Israeli harshness and misdeeds are reported day in and day out by Israeli media. Everyone is suffering, Palestinians as victims and Israelis as perpetrators. Death and maiming haunts everyone in the occupied territories and in Israel itself. Occupation is brutalising and corrupting both Palestinians and Israelis. The damage done to the fabric of both societies, moral and material, is incalculable.
But it is not apartheid. Palestinians are not oppressed on racial grounds as Arabs, but, rather, as competitors — until now, at the losing end — in a national/religious conflict for land.
The word “Bantustan” is often used to describe Israel’s policy about a future Palestinian state. It might look like that, superficially. But the root causes — and even more, the intentions — are different. White South Africans invented the Bantustans to pen blacks into defined areas that served as reservoirs of labour; blacks were allowed to leave only when needed to work in white South Africa’s factories, farms, offices and homes. The Israeli aim is the exact opposite: it is to keep Palestinians out, having as little to do with them as possible, and letting in as few as possible to work. Instead, workers from other countries are imported to do the jobs that Israelis will not do.
If Israel were to annex the West Bank and control voteless Palestinians as a source of cheap labour — or for religious messianic reasons or strategic reasons — that could indeed be analogous to apartheid. But it is not the intention except in the eyes of a minority — settlers and extremists who speak of “transfer” to clear Palestinians out of the West Bank, or who desire a disenfranchised Palestinian population. The majority of Israelis — 60 to 70 per cent, opinion polls consistently show — want to get out of the West Bank, with divergences of opinion only on where the final borders with a Palestinian state should be drawn.
The separation barrier/wall/fence currently being built is part of this scheme. Its immediate purpose is to prevent Palestinian suicide-bombers from entering Israel. That aim enjoys popular Israeli support. Had it been confined to that and had the barrier run along the Green Line it would have been an ugly blot on the landscape as well as a statement of the failure to achieve peace. However, the barrier has gone further: the Israeli government is using it as a land grab, intruding into the territory that everyone knows should be the future Palestinian state. About eight per cent of that Palestinian land is inside the barrier, on the Israeli side. One of the effects is gross disruption of the lives of thousands of Palestinians who face extreme difficulty in gaining access to jobs, hospitals, schools and their fields.
The barrier/wall/fence, as it now is, is a repugnant aspect of Israeli policy, and all the more so because it is also meant to protect scores of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. But it is not apartheid. Calling it the “Apartheid Wall” is a debasement of the word for the sake of slick propaganda.
“Apartheid” is used in this case and elsewhere because it comes easily to hand: it is a lazy label for the complexities of the Middle East conflict. It is also used because, if it can be made to stick, then Israel can be made to appear to be as vile as was apartheid South Africa and seeking its destruction can be presented to the world as an equally moral cause.
Israel has withdrawn from the Gaza Strip (although consequent problems such as border control still have to resolved). Now the pressure is to end West Bank occupation. It must happen because it is the only way to secure peace with Palestinian and Israeli states living side by side. There’s a hard haul ahead, to negotiate evacuation and possible land swaps to compensate for land, such as in the towns which have been built with populations of up to 35 000 and which Israel wants to retain. It would, however, be unrealistic to believe that withdrawal from the West Bank will be enough in itself. Peace can only ultimately come when the rejectionists — the Palestinian organisations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Arab states like Iran — accept the fact of Israel’s existence.
Is a binational state the answer? On the face of it, of course. Unfortunately, and for the foreseeable future, it belongs to a never-never land. It looks more attractive the further one is from the Middle East. On the ground it enjoys support only from the extremes on both sides. It’s a non-starter for the vast majority of Israelis because it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Those who propagate from afar lack a sense of Jewish history and the survival ethos created by centuries of persecution. Nor do most Palestinians want it. Why should they drown themselves in a joint state which will be dominated by Jews in every walk of life, whether the economy, government or the professions? Rather their own Palestinian pond in which they will be the masters.
Instead of one-sided attacks on Israel, which are not only counter-productive but raise worrying questions about motives, there should be an unequivocal commitment to peace. Genuine peace efforts should have twin aims: first, to persuade Israel to end the occupation and help a viable Palestinian state to come into being; and second, to persuade the rejectionists to change so that Israelis need no longer fear annihilation if they let down their guard.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... Sm9huSdfBg
The term Apartheid applies to the occupied territories.
Nice try.
The definition of what constitutes Apartheid has nothing to do with creating reservoirs of labour. Next the author will say that because the Palestinians aren't black Africans that the term Apartheid doesn't apply.
Which is exactly what's happening.
Except they are not a minority. The settler movement is a powerful force and it's now gained even more support by the hawks in the current Israeli leadership, such as Netanyahu and Leiberman.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P1-151582968.html
Most Israeli Jews back settlements, consider West Bank 'liberated'
Jerusalem Post | April 16, 2008 |
'The majority of Israeli Jews are pro-settlement and wary of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, according to a poll conducted by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research, a research institute at Tel Aviv University that favors a two-state solution...'
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/poll- ... -pul/6112/
Poll shows Israeli support for West Bank pullout falls
Saturday , Jun 10, 2006
'Israeli support for a proposed unilateral withdrawal from parts of the occupied West Bank has tumbled to 37 per cent, a poll published on Friday showed, less than two-thirds of the backing it had four months ago. A survey in the Haaretz newspaper found just 37 per cent of Israelis support the plan while 56 per cent are opposed to it...'
Correct me if I am wrong, but the common sentiment expressed on here is "Israel is an apartheid state", yes? Its clearly not, based on this guy's arguments. As for the occupied territories themselves, what's the evidence that 1) this sort of racially-based separation occurs to the extent that the label apartheid implies, and 2) that the oppression experienced in the occupied territories is motivated solely or even largely by racial differences? First of all, apartheid a culturally-specific term that applies to the previous South African situation .. Even allowing for the use of this term in other national contexts, how do we know the oppression (which is not the same thing as apartheid) is racial per se? Pardon me, but have any of you been to Israel and maybe noticed all the brown or at least dusky-skinned people there? Do we focus on skin color because its easy to focus on, or because its the real reason for the oppression? I am not going to argue that race plays NO role (assuming for a moment that we're talking real racial differences, which in the Palestinian/Israeli case is actually quite debatable), but its clearly not the only or even the main factor.
Strange that even Israelis themselves recognize that the term Apartheid applies to the occupied territories:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and ... id_analogy
Jamal Zahalka, an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset argued that an apartheid system has already taken shape in that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are separated into "cantons" and Palestinians are required to carry permits to travel between them.[167] Azmi Bishara, a former Knesset member, argued that the Palestinian situation had been caused by "colonialist apartheid."[168]
Michael Ben-Yair, attorney-general of Israel from 1993 to 1996 referred to Israel establishing, "an apartheid regime in the occupied territories", in an essay published in Haaretz.[169]
Ehud Olmert, then Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, commented in April 2004 that; "More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle - and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state."[170] Olmert made a similar remark in November 2007 as Prime Minister: "If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished."[171][172]
Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak used the analogy when speaking in a national security conference in Israel. According to Barak, unless Israel makes peace with the Palestinians it will be faced with either a state with no Jewish majority or an "apartheid" regime. "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic," Barak said. "If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state." [173]
Some Israelis have compared the separation plan to apartheid, such as political scientist Meron Benvenisti,[109] and journalist Amira Hass.[174] Ami Ayalon, a former admiral, claiming it "ha[d] some apartheid characteristics."[175] Shulamit Aloni, former education minister and leader of Meretz, said that the state of Israel is "practicing its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population."[176]
A major 2002 study of Israeli settlement practices by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem concluded: "Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa." A more recent B'Tselem publication on the road system Israel has established in the West Bank concluded that it "bears striking similarities to the racist Apartheid regime," and even "entails a greater degree of arbitrariness than was the case with the regime that existed in South Africa."[177]
Academic and political activist Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen who describes himself as an "anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew",[178] has written several books on the subject, including Israel: An Apartheid State in 1987.[179]
Israeli politician and former Knesset member Yossi Sarid criticised discriminatory marriage law, exemption of Orthodox Jews from military service, and banning of Arabs from purchasing Jewish National Fund land as racist in a 2007 Ynetnews article entitled Our apartheid state.[8] He later compared a further array of Israeli practices including the West Bank barrier, separate roads, 'cheap hard labour', and Palestinian enclaves to apartheid in a 2008 Ha'aretz column entitled Yes, it is apartheid. Sarid wrote 'what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck - it is apartheid. Nor does it even solve the problem of fear' and added, 'One essential difference remains between South Africa and Israel: There a small minority dominated a large majority, and here we have almost a tie. But the tiebreaker is already darkening on the horizon.' [180]
Daphna Golan-Agnon, co-founder of B'Tselem and founding director of Bat Shalom writes in her 2002 book Next Year in Jerusalem, "I'm not sure if the use of the term apartheid helps us to understand the discrimination against Palestinians in Israel or the oppression against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. I'm not sure the discussion about how we are like or unlike South Africa helps move us forward to a solution. But the comparison reminds us that hundreds of laws do not make discrimination just and that the international community, the same international community we want to belong to, did not permit the perpetuation of apartheid. And it doesn't matter how we explain it and how many articles are written by Israeli scholars and lawyers—there are two groups living in this small piece of land, and one enjoys rights and liberty while the other does not."[181]
In his article "Is it Apartheid?" Israeli anti-Zionist activist Professor Moshé Machover states "... talk of Israeli 'apartheid' serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."[182]