That Israel has become an apartheid state is so self-evident that it is impossible to put the fact back in the box. Sky News’ Sam Kiley said it a year ago, and that was almost as surprising as Kerry’s rush of honesty. A state which has hundreds of laws defining the rights and obligations of its different groups of citizens by their ethnicity, enforcing zoning and separate education and public service provisio, and even limiting the right of defined ethnic groups to live with their spouses, is a state which can be characterized by no other word than Apartheid. Israel’s claims to be a democracy exactly echo the similar claim of apartheid South Africa.
I am however delighted if the neo-con plan for a “two state” solution is now dead, because that plan was precisely the same plan that South Africa had for its “Bantustan” reserves for black people. The only difference being that Israel has been much more vicious, herded the indigenous population into much smaller and less viable areas than was allowed to the “Bantustans”, subjected them to appalling economic blockade and then continually ripped away more and more of their small amount of land on a daily basis.
The difference between apartheid South Africa’s Bantustans and the “two state solution”, is that the Israel version is, incredibly, even worse, even more evil.
As in South Africa, the ONLY acceptable solution for Israel/Palestine is freedom and majority rule. People of goodwill should never again be sidetracked into pursuing the kind of apartheid solutions being pushed by Tony Blair.
Kerry did ‘Teshuvah’ after he was chased by Jewish organisations lead by AIPAC. In a statement released by the State Department, Kerry lashed out against “partisan political” attacks against him, but acknowledged his comments last week to a closed international forum could have been misinterpreted. While he pointedly did not apologize for the remarks, he stressed he was, and is, a strong supporter of Israel, which he called a “vibrant democracy.” He said his remarks were only an expression of his firm belief that a two-state resolution is the only viable way to end the long-running conflict. And, he stressed, he does not believe Israel is, or is definitely track to become, an “apartheid state.”
There is no secret to the truth that, Kerry loves Israel. But his belief in Israel being a “vibrant democracy” is laughable. Some radical Zionists like Marianne Williamson and IIan Pappe have admitted that Israel is NOT a democracy.
http://rehmat1.com/2014/04/29/kerry-does-teshuvah-but-refuses-to-resign/
If Blair’s for, I’m against.
Ray McGovern’s latest article comprehensively documents that John Kerry is an appalling swine, liar and Neo-Con tool. So let’s not mistakenly give him the remotest iota of credit for this monumental gaffe.
– “The still-influential neoconservatives, and the “tough” White House women and men, all lusting for a U.S. attack on Syria.” –
“Killing the Obama-Putin Trust,” by Ray McGovern, 29th April, 2014 – ICH –
– http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38363.htm
More –
“Secretary of State Kerry gets to say whatever half-truth or fiction comes into his head about Syria, Russia or other “designated villains,” but when he cites the inconvenient truth of Israeli “apartheid,” he must scramble as fast as he can to retract and apologize.”
– “Kerry Grovels over Israeli ‘Apartheid’, “ by Robert Parry, 29th April 2014 – ICH –
– http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38364.htm
No change there then, for tools of the fascist US Empire. ; )
Abbas seems to have chosen the wrong model.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/21/the-similarities-between-mahmoud-abbas-and-mangosuthu-buthelezi/
“It is somewhat ironic that Mahmoud Abbas made his position clear in South Africa whilst his hosts and people across the world were mourning the loss – but also celebrating the life – of a man and his movement which had most forcefully pushed for BDS against the apartheid regime and helped bring it down. Another irony is that the apartheid structures were dismantled soon after the signing of the Oslo Accords of 1993; clearly Yasser Arafat and the PLO leadership had chosen a very different path to that taken by Mandela and his ANC colleagues. Indeed, rather than emulating Mandela, both Arafat and Abbas followed the path of Mandela’s rival, leader of the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Mangosuthu Buthelezi.”
The fake outrage over Kerry saying Israel/Palestine could end up in an Apartheid style struggle ignores the fact that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said exactly the same thing a few years ago. Also ignores Bishop Desmond Tutu comparing the occupied territories to Apartheid after visiting them
Apartheid, you should be so lucky. The Zionazis have long since leapfrogged those accusations and become full-fledged genocidaires.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=692696
When Bibi and his SS wind up in the dock in their own international tribunal, they won’t be there for apartheid. They’ll be there for genocide.
More ethnic cleansing than genocide – they’re not trying to kill all Palestinians, just to kill enough and make the rest hungry and poor and frightened enough to try to get them all to go into exile as refugees in other countries, so there’ll never be either a real Palestinian state or a single state solution. If that results in an increase in support for exremists among Palestinians (as its bound to) the Israeli government can then also use that as an excuse (though there are plenty of extremists in government in Israel too)
Anyone who knows the history of Zionism, the creation of Israel and the Palestinian struggle that says a two state solution is, or ever was viable, is dishonest in the extreme.
It was never on the cards.
I don’t believe (and I live in hope) that there ever will be a “Jewish state” run by Jews for the benefit of Jews.
Zionism is by its very nature a racist ideology and no other country should recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
You cannot have a Jewish AND democratic state, it’s an oxymoron.
There can only be a one state solution based on equality and democracy for all the citizens.
A problem that the Israeli government would face in a future one state democracy is terrorism; not from Palestinians, but Zionist Jews within the extremist “settlers” and “pioneers”.
A situation entirely created by the Zionists themselves.
Mais non, M. McF. genocide is “to destroy, in whole OR in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” says Genocide Convention Article II.
Yup, it’s genocide.
Edit, I feel for the girl attacked by quad bikers on her way from school. Not all Jewish people are bad and I know there is a Jewish man helping children get to school by his presence I saw on one video. Unfortunately he is in a minority.
On the bigger picture I have long believed that that Israel will keep on expanding for as far as it can go and its ambition is to create a United States of Israel based on the failed US model. To do so it has had to, with the help of its allies, create failed states in the Middle East like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and so on because while these countries are engaged in civil war they are hardly likely to challenge Israel, which then only has to keep and eye on Iran until another phase of the expansion is embarked upon.
This is not appropriate here so I’ve put it on a Ukraine blog.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/04/simon-ostrovsky/#comment-455080
I am never going to live in Palestine, so I have no right to prescribe solutions for the people who do and will. However, my opinion, for what it is worth, is that a two state solution is nuts. We are, after all, talking about a Wales-/Rhode Island-sized bit of soil. Two languages, two education systems, two air-traffic controls, two environmental policies, two foreign policies …
I haven’t been kicked off my land, so to a Palestinian this may sound too glib, but people who have no choice but to live together might as well do so in peace and harmony and adopt administrative systems which are useful and appropriate for that immutable situation. Rightly or wrongly, accurately or otherwise I call it Unionism; Oops!
This is disgusting, John Goss:
“Not all Jewish people are bad and I know there is a Jewish man helping children get to school by his presence I saw on one video. Unfortunately he is in a minority.”
Not all Jewish people are bad, but most are? How dare you. Substitute ‘Muslims’ or ‘Saudi Arabians’ for ‘Jewish’ and see how your world view stacks up, why don’t you?
NB I had stopped commenting but plainly I should also stop dropping by to read these comments.
@ John Goss: sorry, I’m sure that if you reflected, you would come up with reasons as to why that person would be visibly in the minority – eg propaganda, fear etc.
Technicolour, I appreciate your comments.
I dunno. I mean, I hear you loud and clear on the bad faith with which recent peace initiatives have been put forward, but I don’t see why you’d want to rule out a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one.
At the very least, on the principle of self-determination, if Palestinians want a country of their own within, say, the borders of the 1967 agreement, why shouldn’t that be considered a viable starting point for a discussion?
A fully democratic greater Israel/Palestine what-have-you, that would be ideal, but if the Palestinians and Israelis both decide they want their own countries, I’d fully accept that. Wouldn’t you?
“At the very least, on the principle of self-determination, if Palestinians want a country of their own within, say, the borders of the 1967 agreement, why shouldn’t that be considered a viable starting point for a discussion?”
– find it hard to disagree.
(OT, sorry)
On the subject of Patrick Mercer, who lost his parliamentary seat after being filmed appearing to accept £4000 to lobby for business interests in Fiji, in breach of Commons rules.
On Thursday, 8 July 2004, Patrick Mercer had this to say in connection with the torture of Salahuddin Amin, in connection with Operation Crevice (‘fertiliser bomb plot’)
“About two weeks ago, I had the enormous privilege of being briefed by the [British] high commissioner and his staff in Islamabad. They hinted that the operation was much more complex than anything that the open sources in this country had been able to tell us. They told me, or rather hinted, that there had been a very successful operation by British agencies in combination with local agencies in Pakistan. They also said that a much worse event, the details of which I was not told, had been planned, which, if it had gone ahead, would have devastated large parts of this country”.
Describing torture as ‘very successful operation by British agencies in combination with local agencies in Pakistan‘ is shocking. Amin’s ‘testimony’, derived from his torture in Pakistan with British agents complicity, swung the Crevice case convictions alongside the ‘supergrass’ evidence of (now a free man) Mohammed Junaid Babar.
Ex Pat –
i posted some links under the Robert Parry/ICH piece, pointing to another “inconvenient truth” leaked almost simultaneously – LA Clippers Donald Sterling saying:
in Israel, “the blacks are just treated like dogs”
as expected, majority of the MSM conveniently avoided having to publish/air this quote from the longer tape. no NYT/WaPo. Reuters cleverly not using the quote. AP? can’t find a mention there. SPLC – no statement? ADL – actual release didn’t address the quote, tho some MSM quoting ADL referred to the quote in headlines or text to give the impression they were.
Mondoweiss: NBA owner Sterling reportedly sought to justify his racism by citing Israeli racism
COMMENT BY TAXI: I’ve read several mainstream articles on the racist mister Sterling, but none of them mention his ‘israel’ explanation from the now infamous taped conversation with his ex-girlfriend. I’ve even watched a couple of videos purporting to be the FULL transcribed conversation (typed up on video screen for clarity) and it appears that his reference to israel has been completely edited out.
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/sterling-reportedly-israeli.html
sadly, most US anti-zionist websites have missed the opportunity to link these two “leaks”. it is the perfect time to re-post articles & video examples of israeli “apartheid in action” – not “apartheid to possibly come” – as regards the Palestinians plus vile racist incidents in Israel against blacks (whether Ethiopians/Sudanese, etc).
whether or not Kerry meant for his apartheid quote to be leaked & whether or not the Sterling case is a first amendment issue are secondary issues.
the perfect opportunity to break through the fake Israel/Palestinian narrative that has dominated western media for decades is being squandered.
Craig Rightly Points out –
The difference between apartheid South Africa’s Bantustans and the “two state solution”, is that the Israel version is, incredibly, even worse, even more evil.
To think that the U.S keep giving israel billions per year…even when there are Voices speaking out from on high in the states… Like J Carter saying exactly what Craig says –
“When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.”
Strange that i had Israel crimes on my mind as i drove home tonight… i was thinking of my wee granddaughter.. who marches up the road to play with my wee grandson… in a car free area… the ice cream van might come by..Chocolate or ice cream cones…. The children of Palestine are denied a bit of chocolate… EASTER EGGS ffs
There was a one state solution perfectly workable, once not all that long ago. That state was called Palestine. A viable Palestinian state alongside the Zionist excresence would need to be contiguous territory to function, incorporating Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and incorporating a deep water port and city at the Lebanese Border, reincorporating the scattered Palestinian groups as one, effectively forming a crescent shaped territory encircling the religious supremacist colonisers in their ghastly little ethnically pure enclave of their own desire and creation. The 1967 lines attained by armed conquest by the Israeli killing machines were really just the point where the Israelis had slow things down or it would become an urgent necessity for them to institute industrial scale slaughter and destruction of murdered human being’s bodies. Even the one-sided 1948 partition arrangement itself legitimised with UN approval, breathtaking theft of Palestinian land, homes, farms, business, shops, was immediately exceeded and mediteranean coastal towns like Haifa and Jaffa which prior to the Nakba had almost no Jewish inhabitants were taken by force and remained ghost towns for years while the former inhabitants perished in the desert of starvation and disease while the crops they’d planted rotted in the ground with no-one to tend and harvest them and their former homes if not particularly grand were razed. Much of that area given to the invaders by ‘the international community’ required expulsions, forcible removal and mass executions. It was known this would happen, no one can say this was any surprise, the bestiality of the Zionist’s aims and likely, inevitable means had been proclaimed publicly since the late 19th century, euphemisms such as ‘transfer’ transparently meant Palestinian blood would flow profusely. So I don’t view the 1967 Zionist armies and gangs territorial position, attained by force of arms against defenceless dwindling numbers of Palestinians for almost twenty years, as any fair starting position for discussion.
This concentration on the the most recent cruel wrong done to the Palestinians as uppermost concern, is effectively saying give up your legitimate just defensive life and way-of life, this identity preserving struggle entirely, in return for some pathetic concession: x extra pounds of margarine allowed into the Gaza strip per quarter or similar humiliations. This nonsense has to stop and the whole of the historic wrong done to these people addressed.
We all need to let a little bit of Palestinian art, music, culture, language, people, history, love, into out hearts and our lives; we all need to become a little bit more Palestinian, that way Palestine will live forever as that bountiful beautiful land of milk and honey, where the Arab and the Jew and the whole of humanity’s infinite variations once did and can again walk side by side smiling along those sun-kissed sea shores. For the whole Arab world too, who haven’t forgotten, Palestine was their seaside family holiday, their Blackpool, their Southend, their Brighton, their Saltcoats or Seamill, their place of religious and secular pilgrimage and innocent childlike discovery and pleasure, an oasis in a literal desert. The issue will never go away, and it never should, so get it sorted you Israelis or risk becoming an even sorrier cautionary tale of hubris and well-deserved nemesis in an insignificant footnote of the annals of history.
It is ‘full-fledged apartheid’ now but Americans can use a familiar term, ‘segregation’ — Mustafa Barghouthi
First, here is Mustafa Barghouthi talking to the Institute for Middle East Understanding yesterday on a conference call:
The difference between me and Secretary Kerry is that he is saying that if Israel does not allow a [Palestinian] state, it will become apartheid. And I am saying, it is already apartheid.
This occupation that has been there for 47 years has already transformed into a full fledged system of segregation and apartheid. And we will not accept that…
Americans can use another term, segregation. I think you know segregation more. Because that’s what you had in the United States, a system of segregation against people of African origin. But it is apartheid. And you cannot ignore– What does apartheid mean? Apartheid is a word from Afrikaaner language which means that you have two systems of laws for two people living in the same place. And that’s exactly what we have today in Palestine…
more on this Piece @
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/apartheid-segregation-barghouthi.html
Technicolour – I agree on John Goss’ comment. I know anti-semitic is a term that’s often used by the Israeli government wrongly to refer to any criticism of their actions, but to say most Jews are bad people is simply anti-semitic. There are plenty of Jews around the world who have nothing to do with Israeli government policy – and plenty of Israeli Jews who stand up for the rights of Palestinians, who call for negotiations even with Hamas, or even stand in front of bulldozers to try to prevent their homes being demolished, or help rebuild them afterwards.
Youtube: Israel’s War on Africans
72-minute slideshow about Israel’s treatment of non-Jewish African asylum-seekers, given at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada on March 9, 2014 • filmed by Jase Tanner • photography by Activestills • sponsored by Seriously Free Speech Committee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Y5dcaCyv4
not mainstream, but thankfully someone has connected the dots:
NY Times eXaminer: The Connection That Wasn’t Made: Sterling, Kerry and Israeli Apartheid
(NYTimes eXaminer An antidote to the “paper of record”):
By Michael M’Gehee
But what the Editorial Board of “the paper of record” finds “most disturbing” differs from what this particular writer finds most disturbing.
For the NYT editors the “most disturbing aspect” is that no one in the NBA was surprised at Sterling’s comments…
But, as usual, it is what is missing from the NYT piece that is more revealing that what is offered. While denouncing the tolerance of racism there is no mention of Israeli apartheid, which Sterling pointed to in defense of his racist opinions…
And while the racist policies of Israel is hardly limited to black Jews, at nearly the same time that Sterling made this comment another related item was in the news.
US Secretary of State John Kerry warned that if Israel did not make progress in a Middle East peace agreement then they would risk becoming an “apartheid state.”…
But, followed by a high-profile NBA team owner attempting to justify his racism by pointing to that of the racism which exists in Israel today, as well as John Kerry’s apartheid remark, what is truly “the most disturbing aspect” of all of this is how the mainstream media in the West, and not just the New York Times, failed to connect these dots and start a discussion on Zionism and apartheid in Israel.
https://www.nytexaminer.com/2014/04/the-connection-that-wasnt-made-sterling-kerry-and-israeli-apartheid/
Thanks for your clarioty Duncan, seconded. It is not acceptable to paint all those who oppose Israels zionists from within with the same brush, an uncalled for comment here.
We mmust be aware that loud voices against the continuing annexation and apartheid are heard, Israels population had enough of teasing talks of a peace that never comes.
My position was always for one Palestine, that those who lived together once, could easily achieve this again in an equal society. Weren’t it for the segregatious talk and for elevating people like Zev Jablonski, when he preached racial superiority and argued for the ghettorisation of society, apartheid for those other thinking people.
When Britain left Palestine, it left a battlefield too early when persistence and collaboration with the UN could have stopped arms coming into Palestine, dare I say the war with Jordan could have been prevented.
Now we have a blood red blot on the global landscape and can only hope that these two factions, as part of a negotiated peace process, decide to school their children in the same schools again, a long term start for change, after all Sharon is dead and he was the one who stopped this simple measure.
doooh, that is Zev Jabotinski I’m on about, sorry.
Ho hum.
how the mainstream media in the West, and not just the New York Times, failed to connect these dots and start a discussion on Zionism and apartheid in Israel.
Embedded PR. And what good would a discussion do? The legislators in the US, Dem and Rep, are deeply beholden to Jewish American donors pointed tactfully in their direction by AIPAC. When your campaign funds are dependent on not having a discussion, you don’t have a discussion. My belief is that if the US decided to withdraw its surging tides of aid to Israel, and insist it returned to something like its 1967 borders as a condition of (and before) any future support, the UK would wag its compliant tail and salute the decision, and the rest of Europe would not object. That is the only way a viable two-state solution could occur.
Obviously, that isn’t going to happen. That is not the sort of two-state solution Likud and its even nastier allies envisage; nor is it Martin Indyk’s (the ex – AIPAC US negotiator with Kerry). Indyk is or was on the board of the New Israel Fund, which appears to support a unitary state with equal civil rights – fair enough. But it’s been got at- example from Wiki here:
In 2003 and 2008, the Ford Foundation provided five-year grants worth $20 million each to NGOs in Israel through the New Israel Fund. The foundation was the focus of criticism because most of its donees are liberal. The foundation adopted new, stricter funding guidelines after the World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001, when many of its recipients supported resolutions that equated Israeli policies with apartheid. At the beginning of the second five-year grant, the Ford Foundation said it would not renew its grants to Israeli NGOs, which had provided roughly one-third of the New Israel Fund’s donor-advised giving, citing its policy of creating sustainable funding, which is also being applied to much of its NGO funding worldwide.
That necessary discussion…always mysteriously suppressed.
Some green shoots: Palestinians celebrate Easter in reclaimed Galilee village.
I love the picture of the women dancing.
http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinians-celebrate-easter-reclaimed-galilee-village/13339