The words “apartheid” and “Israel” keep coming up in relation to each other, and people keep saying that it isn’t helpful at all. I don’t know whether it is helpful or not, but there’s a reason that it keeps happening. Whether the comparison is made by Ehud Barak, Jimmy Carter, or John Kerry, it always means the same thing. If the people living in Gaza and the West Bank don’t gain some kind of political independence including the right to both elect their leaders and have those leaders free to implement their policies, then they will be in a situation similar to how blacks were treated in South Africa prior to the end of the Afrikaner regime. People talk about a two-state solution for a reason. If there is only one state, that state is going to be Israel. And Israel allows Arabs to have citizenship and to vote, but they will never allow West Bank and Gazan Arabs to vote.
What I think is unhelpful is to keep trying to make people shut up about apartheid. Either Israel wants to govern all of Palestine as an apartheid state or they don’t. If they don’t, then they should stop dithering about a two-state solution. They should also stop using Hamas as an excuse not to negotiate. It’s better for Hamas and Fatah to be working together because that means that they have the capability of making concessions that the other side will keep. Endlessly repeating that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel precludes the possibility that Hamas might change its mind about that.
How about we just call it bullshit? That way we can express our disgust over Israel’s policies without any distracting historical analogies.
The problem with your comment is, it’s not bullshit at all, it’s quite apropos, and very helpful in getting people to understand just what’s been done to the Palestinians. The comparison is quite valid on a number of levels; for example the chopped-up bits of territory where Israel is willing to allow “self-rule” on the West Bank resemble nothing so much as Bantustans. And it’s a comparison left-wing Israelis have been making themselves for many years now. If the Israeli government wants to stop being accused of practicing apartheid, it should stop practicing apartheid.
I think SS meant that Israel’s occupation regime is “bullshit”.
Correct.
Noted, thank you. But I will continue to regard the occupation as a specific kind of bullshit, namely, apartheid.
The fact that many people would like to kill Jews, regardless of what happens in Israel, is unfortunate but unsurprising. It’s a given. Waiting for that to change before altering policies is just a way of saying, ‘we’re too scared to change policies.’
Sadly, it’s extremely difficult to address ‘too terrified’ via rational policymaking.
Oh are the poor widdle Zionists’ feelings hurt? Kerry did make an error though. Israel can’t “become” something that it already is and has been since its founding.
I want someone to draw me an actual legitimate two state on a map. The settlements have made it impossible. And even with two states, Israel proper will still be an apartheid state. Could there be a reason Donald Sterling invoked Israel as an example and excuse for his own racism? They treat blacks like shit.
Anyone else notice that moderate politicians are being assassinated in eastern Ukraine? Anyone else notice that Kiev has been sending in teams of their elite to “kidnap” mayors?
Cui bono?
My diary today – German Documentary About Deadly Sniper Attacks in Kiev.
Further reading @MoA – Ukraine: Useless Sanctions And Then What?
“It’s better for Hamas and Fatah to be working together”
That’s how radical movements come to an end–they assimilate into the political process. If you want to get rid of Hamas as a radical movement, they’ll have to be accepted into the political process.
Without defending the status quo, was it apartheid when Jordan owned the West Bank?
Kind of a weird question because you’re comparing a monarchy to a democracy.
When Jordan owned the West Bank, the Palestinians were the subjects of the king. It was probably preferable to most Palestinians to the status quo because at least their King was an Arab, but it’s still comparing apples to oranges.
For most Americans, what happen in and to Israel is more of a concern than what happens in Palestine. Does Israel want to remain a “Jewish state”? Do they want to continue to allow non-Jewish citizenship and political participation? At some point, those two things will be incompatible with demographic reality.
I don’t think the way Israel treats the people of the West Bank and Gaza is worse than how most people are treated in neighboring Arab countries, but Israel is supposed to be a democratic state that honors human rights.
“Not as bad as Saudi Arabia” is not exactly the most ambitious slogan.
I guess I’m thinking about it from the perspective of the Palestinians in terms of their day-to-day lives more than in terms of the governmental structure above them. If they lacked self determination under Jordan and under Israel then is there a material difference? May be, I’m just wondering to what extent, if any.
King Playstation and Queen Youtube are hated just as much as the Israeli government from my experiences. Of course this could be the same discrepancy as seen in Iran with pro-western Tehran and theocratic support in the rural villages.
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○ The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
○ Saudi Says Iraq’s Arab Allies Will Pay for Choosing Wrong Side in Persian Gulf War – 1991
○ From Transjordan to Jordanian occupation of the West Bank – 1948 to 1967
Concerning the West Bank, it was not under Jordanian occupation, as you alluded to. Jordanians did not confiscate Palestinian lands to build settlements on them. Moreover, Palestinians were treated as equal citizens after they had been granted the Jordanian citizenship in 1954. It was never a military occupation like with Israel.
I didn’t say that the West Bank was under Jordanian occupation – I said that it WAS Jordan. Were the Palestinians seeking independence from Jordan prior to Jordan invading Israel?
Have you ever read Hanan Ashrawi’s autobiography?
She was a small child when Jordan occupied then annexed the West Bank, and one of the most memorable parts of the book is her childish remembrances of being under Jordanian rule.
She remembers there was something that agitated the grownups in her family, but about which they only whispered, and they always fell silent when the children entered the room. But she didn’t know what it was.
She knew it was something terrible, because she remembers lying awake in bed at night, listening to the Jordanian secret police vehicles screeching down the road, and wondering at which house they would stop at. Then they would stop, and she would hear banging and yelling and crying, but she’d never know whose father had been taken until the next morning at school, when you could tell from whichever kid was crying.
And then one night, the unthinkable happened, and they came to her house, and took away her father. And she was horrified, because she was a well brought up young lady, who thought that police took away people who were really naughty, like thieves, and she was embarrassed to think that her father was one, and didn’t want to have to go to school and face everyone.
The next morning at school, she was trying to sit quietly, not attracting attention, when she was horrified to hear her teacher telling her to stand up in front of the class. And while she stood there, her teacher explained to the class that Hanan’s father had been taken away by the secret police, but that was nothing to be ashamed of, because Dr Ashrawi was a fine man, who had done nothing wrong, but whose arrest was a sign instead of the wickedness of the times they were living in.
And that was when Hanan Ashrawi found out what it was that Palestinian grown ups used to talk about in whispers and fall silent over when she entered the room. She found out there were crimes that were nothing to do with stealing, but were to do with what people believed – like her father, who’d been arrested for secretly continuing meetings of the Palestinian nationalist groups he had participated in before the Jordanian occupation began. And she was so relieved that her dad wasn’t a bad man after all, that she burst into tears in front of the whole class, and her teacher let her go and sit down.
So yes, I guess there were Palestinians still seeking Palestinian independence from Jordan, just as they seek it now from Israel.
I think the material difference is under Jordanian rule Palestinians didn’t have self determination as Palestinians, but they did have an opportunity to stay on their own land, gain Jordanian citizenship, vote for the government that ruled over them, etc.
Under Israeli rule, they can never have any of this, because Israel rules the West Bank with the intention of incorporating it into its “Jewish state”. The imperatives of Zionism mean that millions of West Bank Palestinians can not be allowed to stay on their own land, cannot have an equal vote, cannot ever become citizens. Because if they do, they will simply vote themselves free of Zionist rule, and that is the end of the “Jewish state”. So ultimately there is no role for them, except to disappear. And to make you disappear, your land will be progressively seized and your opportunities of a normal life progressively narrowed, until your daily life is so unbearable that you finally give up and leave.
This is the policy Moshe Dayan was describing when he said Israel should tell the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories: “that we have no solution, that you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wants to can leave – and we will see where this process leads … In five years we may have 200,000 less people – and that is a matter of enormous importance”.
So I guess this is the material difference in daily life: under Jordanian rule you live a generally normal everyday life, and the ultimate goal is that you will embrace Jordanian nationality. Under Israeli rule, you are constantly squeezed, because the ultimate goal is that you cease to exist, and make way for people of the “right” ethnic religious heritage.
Probably neither option is appealing to a Palestinian nationalist, but the ideology that requires your own non-existence makes Palestinian independence more urgent that it seemed under Jordanian rule.
Well put.
Well put. I was going to write a much shorter short hand version of this, mostly encapsulating your first paragraph, but I’m glad I didn’t and you filled in everything else.
Was it apartheid when the US pushed Native Americans into reservations?
Unfortunately, the US, Israel, and apartheid South Africa are brothers under the skin.
I think there is some sense of similarity between the situations of Israel and Palestine to the US and Native Americans, but the difference to me is that the Native Americans were sovereign in their own land while the Palestinians were subject to Jordanians in Jordan’s West Bank and to Egyptians in Gaza prior to being subject to Israel. I think there’s a difference between subjugating a sovereign people and maintaining the current status of a subject people. I’m not saying that either is right (or wrong), only that there are many similar situations around the globe (e.g. Uyghurs in China) but this seems to get a lot of bile while others get a pass.
What do to with conquered people was a difficult question until the modern era when the response became “don’t conquer people.”
Do you phsyiscally genocide them?
Do you culturally genocide them?
Do you keep them in Ottoman-style Millets that none the less enforce separate status?
That is a conundrum, one that I don’t have an easy (or hard) answer to. It’s especially difficult in this situation where Israel was attacked in ’67 and drove the attackers far back into the attackers’ own territory. I don’t have an easy answer as to what Israel should (or shouldn’t) do with the captured territory and the people that are/were in it, but I don’t approach this issue with righteous indignation as if I do. I see way too much of that, from both sides of the issue. My honest evaluation of the situation is that little will change over the next few generations and the West Bank will become equivalent to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California after the Mexican-American War.
The difference between the West Bank and Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California is that the population in those areas of the U.S. was so small that they could be incorporated into the U.S. and become citizens without changing the overall demographic look of the United States.
If you incorporate the West Bank into Israel however, the Jewish population becomes a minority, which is absolutely unacceptable to Zionism. You simply cannot normalize the situation in the West Bank the way it was normalized in the American southwest, because there are too many of the “wrong” sort of people for the annexing state to absorb. (Unless you simply leave people of the “wrong” ethnic-religious background disenfranchised from ever voting for the government that rules over them, which takes us back to apartheid, where this thread began.)
This is where all the comparisons between Israel and the U.S. fall flat. The U.S. belongs to that group of settler states (like Australia, NZ, Canada) that decisively established itself early in its colonization period, and numerically swamped competing populations so they could ultimately be made citizens without threatening the system the incomers had put in place. So today the function as normal, liberal democracies.
Zionism never had the numbers to do that in a place as heavily populated with non-Jews as Palestine. It is one of those states that was strong enough to initially establish itself, but not numerically strong enough to incorporate the indigenous people that remained, without changing its own identity. So it asserts its sectarian rule through increasingly draconian “security measures” in the face of an endless “demographic threat”. Other settler states that followed the same pattern – because they faced the same problem – would be the Crusader Kingdoms, French Algeria, Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa.
I don’t see how this situation normalizes itself into the American southwest, when the ingredients are so dissimilar.
Actually at the time of the establishment of the Crusader kingdoms the population of the area was about 50/50 Christian/Muslim now of course they were mostly Orthodox but accommodations were made in that regard by most of the Crusaders (especially after incidents like if the Catholics botched major religious ceremonies).
Ah, but let me add that kind of thing was the norm all over the western (Muslim/Christian) world at the time. The Muslim population of the Crusader states had very little to do with their eventual fall. Very few groups were strong enough demographically to swamp anyone so I’m not sure that’s really the best example.
Well, no. This is what apartheid is:
According to the 1998 Rome Statute, the “crime of apartheid” is defined as “inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized 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.”
Jordanian rule over the West Bank involved the Sunni Arab regime of Jordan claiming sovereignty over the Sunni Arab people of the West Bank, without their consent. It is correct to call it an “occupation”, but not apartheid because there is no racial motivation behind Jordan’s claim to sovereignty. So, it can’t by definition be apartheid.
No, it wasn’t apartheid because the Palestinians living on the West Bank were treated like any other subject of the Jordanian crown. They were permitted to conduct their lives like any other subject. That’s what differentiates the current and projected situation for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories from the citizens of Israel. That is also what prompts sage observers to express concern that if changes don’t occur that Israel will stumble into a full-blown apartheid structure, which will make continued US support very difficult.
Permit me to ask a counter counter-factual. What does Israel do if the Palestinians demand full Israeli citizenship for all of the residents in the Occupied Territories and the refugee camps, in exchange for all of the land? At some point the Palestinian leadership will abandon the two-state solution quest because it has become impractiacable and seek an alternative one-state solution. So what does an Israeli government do to avoid demonstrating that it is, in fact, an apartheid regime at that point?
I say good for John Kerry for being willing to call it Apartheid in public. That, followed by “If you don’t move off the mark soon, I will unveil my own plan and you will have to take it or leave it”.
And if you don’t take it – I’m looking at you, Israel – the United States is willing to call Israel an Apartheid State and you will lose the unconditional support you have come to take for granted.
For decades, the United States has been standing in the way of Israel experiencing the natural consequences of its actions. I read this statement by Kerry as a warning shot for Israel, and I say it’s about time. The way I see it, Kerry has basically laid out the natural consequences for Israel in advance, so they can take that into consideration before they make a public decision.
Peace or Apartheid is right.
Another “profile in courage” moment: John Kerry Apologises for Israel Apartheid remarks as quickly as Chris Christie apologized to Adelson for referring to “occupied territories.”
All’s you can conclude is that this ongoing Likudnik freakout over Apartheid analogies means the tactic is more effective in moving public opinion than Netanyahu would like. Thus, it must be suppressed as part of the debate, most especially in America. So much for our damaging ally’s solicitude for free speech. Every unflattering analogy (however plausible) is verboten.
Israel’s strong support for democracy also can be seen in its demand that a major political party not be permitted to exist in the likely democratic system of a (would-be) nation. Israel accords to itself the right to police Palestinian “democracy” and certify political parties, apparently. A position to which the great Spreader of Democracy has acceded.
But that Kerry said this is quite remarkable, he must surely know the deluge of faux outrage this will spark.
LOL did Netanyahu forget the meeting in November 2012?
○ Hamas and Israel Agree to a Ceasefire Brokered by Egypt’s Morsi
Since then, the Egyptian people have overthrown Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood is banned, Hamas (linked to Muslim Brothers) has lost its major funder the Emir of Qatar, the MB party and Erdogan in Turkey have some major domestic and foreign policy issues (Assad won’t fall). Seems a good moment for a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. In the past, Netanyahu refused peace talks because “the Palestinian people weren’t united.” He got a gift from heaven.
My previous diary – Peace In Palestine Between Hamas and PA of Fatah.
From a pro-Israel, Likud mouthpiece …
○ Fear Inc: Funding Islamophobia in America
○ MK Moshe Feiglin is banned from Britain but is coming to Canada. Why?
○ Kerry Says the “A-word” and Abbas says the “H-Word”
Some portions from my diary – Obama’s Middle-East Policy In A Holding Pattern.
Israel is a Terrorist State. The Mother of All Terrorist States. An utterly foreign occupier perpetrating an American Taxpayer conceived, financed and morally sanctioned genocide upon the indigenous descendants of the “biblical hebrew”. It has no “right” to exist and this world will never know Peace until it does not.
Animals, less than sufficiently evolved, less than human, bow down to gods. Human Beings, do not.
No fear.
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○ Kahanists don’t need to be terrorists anymore, since the State has become them
○ Harper’s planeload
Or they don’t?
What evidence is there than any sizable number of Israelis let alone a majority don’t? I’ve read more stuff about how even otherwise liberal Israelis see the Palestinians as unequal.
What did we call it when Nazis stuck Jews into specific areas that were well-guarded and under control of the Nazi government, with the occupants having no rights?
I’d say the West Bank is just a really big concentration camp, and that the Israelis are just committing genocide of Palestinians in slow-motion so as not to upset people who might otherwise raise their eyes from their smartphones if Palestinians were being systematically imprisoned and murdered simply because of their ethnicity.
But I’m just an anti-American radical for disagreeing with Israeli policy, because Freedumb.