Israeli citizens are getting vaccinated. But what of the Palestinians? Credit: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty
Arnold Schwarzenegger meant well, but there was nonetheless something ill-judged about his borrowing the term Kristallnacht to describe events at the Capitol. The murder of a hundred Jews, the destruction of 267 of synagogues, the transportation of 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps, the prelude to the Holocaust – it really isn’t in the same ball park. America, it isn’t always all about you. And borrowing this sort of language for domestic political purposes risks watering down the horror of the Holocaust.
A similar anxiety struck me with the recent borrowing of the term “apartheid” to describe Israel. “There is an undercurrent of disrespect directed to African people coming from the pro-Palestinian groupings, through the appropriation of our culture and lived experiences” claims South African, Vuyolwethu Mkhuseli Xulu. “The term ‘Apartheid’ has been taken from us with its true meaning being lost in translation.” He concludes: “Each people’s struggles should be addressed in their specificity and not blended with the experiences of others.” Well said.
On Tuesday, the broadly well-respected human rights organisation B’Tselem declared Israel to be an “apartheid regime”. “B’Tselem has come to this conclusion with a heavy heart and the utmost seriousness. After 32 years, it is not easy to make a paradigm shift. We live and work within Israeli society, we are an integral part of it, and we are well aware of the recoiling and revulsion that this word evokes in the public discourse,” writes B’Tselem board member, Orly Noy.
“Apartheid” used to be a taboo word that was only employed on the extreme Left, by those whose intention was to de-legitimise the very existence of Israel. And there will be those who will see the same aim at work within B’Tselem. But whether or not this is the case, it is also worth asking what is so different now, such that a body like B’Tselem has felt moved to change its language so dramatically and after over three decades of involvement in the region?
There is no doubt that the situation within the occupied territories continues to be desperate for Palestinians. “Israel may not have Jews-only benches, but it does have Jews-only roads in places like Hebron,” writes Noy. Within the occupied territories, very different laws apply to Jews and Palestinians, different rules about travel, different rules about where you can live. The occupation is a tragedy.
But the situation can be explained thus: Israel is a flourishing, fully functioning democracy for all its citizens within the Green Line, the historic internationally accepted borders of the state, plus an unfortunate occupation of the Palestinian territories — sadly needed for security reasons. Israel has a right to protect itself from external, existential threat, and occupation is a short-term — albeit overly long — pending situation waiting for a two-state peace settlement where both Israel and Palestine can exist secure within their own borders. In other words: Israel good, occupation bad. This is the story that many Israelis, especially progressive ones, have told themselves about their home. I subscribe to it myself.
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Subscribe‘But “Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers” was the Guardian’s take.’
Yet more lies from the Guardian, that most diminished and deceitful of news organs.
‘Green Line the historical international borders of the state! No. It’s the cease fire line of 1948 which the Arab side never accepted as anything more than that. The Arabs have been offered a state many times and have repeatedly refused to accept it. What’s more there may be a road in Hebron which Palestinian cannot use , but there are multiple roads which Israelis are forbidden from using as they lead to Area A & Israelis using them are at risk of death. Apartheid so called is rampant on the Palestinian side!_
Would members of this pathetic virtue-signalling bunch of naive twits prefer to live in any other Middle Eastern country?
Only In Israel do they enjoy the freedom to spout this ignorant, offensive drivel.
“If it chooses to be wholly multi-cultural, it can be democratic and safe.” No it can’t, that’s why it exists.
I think there may be a typo here. UEA is the acronym for the University of East Anglia. Having attended this university I would be very surprised if it had come to any kind of peace deal with Israel.
Perhaps the Giles means UAE?
Well it wouldn’t surprise me if the leftie, virtue signalling UEA had a offshoot of its creative writing course in Gaza.
You undermine your views with comments like this; they indicate a large biassed axe to grind!
Well, of course it’s a typo!
Israel describes itself as the state of Jews worldwide, not the state of its citizens, and it takes that role very seriously. There is really no getting around the fact that this makes it an ethnic, racially based entity, and that is a simple statement of fact, not opinion.
So because of the holocaust it is not possible for anyone to disagree with what Israel does for ever and ever and ever?
Strange question to put to me. I would have thought my post indicated I do not give free passes to the Israelis. However, to answer it, no, the holocaust does not mean that. It’s often used for that purpose, but no, it doesn’t mean that.
Holocaust is not a particularly Jewish experience. Tens of millions also suffered holocaust experiences at the hands of the Germans and Japanese in World War Two.
Holocaust has a long history in human experience and continues to this day.
Perhaps what is surprising, is that given the importance the Jewish experience of holocaust has to followers of Judaism, many Israelis and their supporters, they can treat the Palestinian Muslims and Christians as they do today.
Germans discriminated against non-Aryans because they considered them to be inferior. Israel discriminates against Palestinian non-Jews because they consider them to be inferior.
We humans are nothing if not slow learners.
this is now disgusting.
The Holocaust is a specific term – referring to the attempt to single out just one group of
people – Jews – for total extermination, and nrearly succeded, 72% of pre-war European Jewry were murdered.
Of course millions of others were killed in world war 2, but they are not referred to as a holocaust because the same specific narrow intention didn’t apply.
But your suggestion that there is a comparison between the murder of 6 million Jews and the Israeli attempts to defend itself against arab terrorism is absolutely disgusting, odious.
Only if it is legitimate and not fuelled with anti semitic hatred.
Unfortunately, any criticism is “fuelled with anti-Semitic hatred” and none of it is “legitimate”.
well said
really?? do you believe such nonsense??
no, criticism is accepted if it is fair and balanced, not if it is based on falsehood, or as at the UN where there are committees devoted solely to criticizing Israel and not even looking at countries with horrendous records of treatment of citizens.
Is that why the freest Muslims in the Middle East are the ones who live in Israel? There are Arabs in the nation’s legislature. Perhaps you can demonstrate which Muslim nation treats Jews in similar fashion.
Do Iranian Jews get treated badly?
Well, there are very few left – around 8000 – they tend to be presented by the regime as an example of tolerance – they are allocated one seat in parliament for example, and can practice their religion, and are not treated brutally so long as they do not oppose the regime. Obviously they are not free to have anything to do with zionism or Israel. There is a lot of social prejudice – partly because Shia Muslims were convinced that Jews were a source of pollution. It’s not now as as bad as in the 19th century and early 20th century when many Iranian Jews were already moving into Ottoman territory to what became Palestine/Israel.
Sounds no worse than you say Muslims are treated in Israel, considerably better than many would describe their situation.
again, you have no idea of the reality, you just have swallowed the untruthful propaganda,
So the Iranians are more enlightened than the Israelis. Then again, it is an ancient culture and has had thousands of years of practice. Israel is the new bolshy kid on the block.
I think that’s a bit unfair, so much history and all too recent horror to take into account for their actions. That’s not to excuse them, but it needs to be taken into consideration when judging the situation.
All Arabs in Israel get the vaccination if they want to, can be elected to represent their people in government and can serve in the army which they do. In some ways the democratic position in Israel is becoming better than ours. They are ahead of the world in the vaccination programme and have it down to people in their fifties now. They also share their knowledge with Africa, Arab countries and lots of third world countries.
However, non-Jewish Israelis cannot bring spouses, parents, children to live with them.
Cannot work outside Israel and return.
Have inferior education and medical services.
Do not have the same freedom as to where they can live.
Read Israeli human rights groups if you want to know what non-Jewish Israelis cannot do. Being Arab is irrelevant.
I suggest you re-educate yourself and avoid these human wrongs groups which are biased and untruthful.
Yawn…
Serve in the IDF against their own families? Such a deal.
No Judaism, no Jews. It is a religion. Most Jews do not live in UN Mandated Israel, never did and never will.
Religious ethnicity is common to all religions and is not racially based. Some groups within religions, all of them, who consistently intermarry can have specific racial ancestry, but most do not. Jews take converts, just like any religion.
Jews, like all religions comprise all so-called races and hundreds of nationalities. They are no more an entity than Christians, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists.
That is a simple statement of fact and reality.
Actually, it isn’t. To be born a Jew, you must be born of a Jewish mother. That’s an absolute, so yes, it’s an ethnicity. While it is true that converts are accepted, this is only at the end of a long and arduous process materially designed to discourage anyone (particularly men) from applying. Essentially, converts are not wanted or welcome.
rubbish, If you visit Israel or explore its reality you will find as many have already pointed out, that unlike most Arab countries in the area, Arabs. Christians, Muslims, can all become Israeli citizens with the same voting rights, eligibility to stand for parliament, positons in juidiciary, academia, business, etc, etc, and there are no signs making separations or forbidding any non-Jews from all public places.
While I tale Fraser’s point about the way words are thrown around without much nuance to add political impact, it’s also the case that here can be connections between the experiences of distinct political groups. He makes one himself in comparing what a one-state solution would be like with Iraq. There were, and continue to be, nations that take the apartheid system as an inspiration for how they might deal with their minority cultures.
That being said, it’s rarely so clearly said that maintaining a Jewish ethnic majority is the fundamental reason for preferring certain solutions over others. And right there is the reason that the left continues to have elements that are not so sympathetic with the concept – they are disinclined to approve of the principle of membership of a nation state being based mainly on ethnicity, whether it is Jewish, Scottish, or French. Which may be a more consistent position than that I suspect the author holds, where ethnic nationalism in some places is abhorred, but not in Israel.
Exactly. Race is a cultural concept, there is no biological basis for race. No state should be biased towards one culture/religion and oppress others. Saudi Arabia and Israel have a lot in common.
rubbish, there are Israeli women in every area of public life and there has even been a woman Ptrime Minister, Golda Meir, remember her?
In Saudi Arabia women are only just being allowed to drive!!!!
Dont ask Sheedy about the rights of minorities in KSA! He will spout drivel.
So you are opposed to the existence of 3 score muslim majority states that recognise only Islam as the state religion?
I agree that there is no biological basis for ‘race’ – but try convincing humans of that.
Indeed. Which complements the Zionists’ ready adaptation of lebensraum as an overarching imperative. Not the least of the modern state of Israel’s characteristics learnt from the Nazis.
History—Irony be thy name. Hypocrisy too.
Jewish is a religion. Scottish and French are nationalities. Jewish is not a nationality.
You can be a theocracy with a dominant religion which gives superior rights to followers like Saudi Arabia and Israel, but you cannot turn a religion into a nationality. If Israel changed its name to Jewdistan then yes, you could have Jew as a nationality. However, if such a Jewdistan were a democracy then everyone would be a Jew, regardless of religion – Christians, Muslims, Hindus all Jews.
However, Israel is not called Jewdistan and Jew is taken to mean a follower of Judaism. That is and always has been its meaning.
All religions have ethnic qualities but that does not make them a people or a nationality.
Without Judaism there would be no Jews. Ergo, Jews are members of a religion, end of story.
The Jews are a people. That’s probably difficult for you to conceptualise. Try.
“A people” is yet another fictive abstraction, like race and nationality.
Very invested in the Jews arent ya? This is what Palestinian ‘advocacy’ so often looks like and why it is recognised for its anti-semitism.
I’m sorry, but you’re wrong about Judaism being just a religion. It is patently untrue. Jews have their literature, their languages (spoken languages over the centuries, not just liturgical), even cuisines, as well as customs and traditions.
In Western Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Jews embraced the idea of being just a religion because they thought it would hasten their acceptance into their societies. But that was something new. And as for converts? Forced conversions? When? Where?
Hell, Jews even share their DNA, with Jews of many countries having more in common with each other than with their surrounding populations.
Israel doesn’t treat Judaism primarily as a religion, it’s a secular state. Which means the only way they have to define what it is to be a Jew, for political purposes, is ethnicity. You may feel that is justified or not, but no one has to be a practicing Jew to be accepted as Jewish for the purposed of the Israeli government.
This is not, however, how people construed by other to be Jews, were actually treated. Race and nationality are fictions, physically speaking, but they are believed in and acted upon, often violently, by a large number of people.
Ethno-nationalism exists in dozens of countries – Turkey to Malaysia (muslim majority countries predominate this category and cause untold suffering to minoritieswhich the progressive Left blithely ignores). Generally ethno-nationalism is a bad idea but if an exception can be made for any country – it should be Israel. The state exists as a safe haven for Jews. Full stop. Given the history of the jewish diaspora (not only in Europe but also the MENA region) and the singular dire persecution they suffered, I would cut them a lot of slack.
Especially when their minorities (Druze, arab, christian, Bahai) enjoy the kind of rights that minorities in even in Turkey can only dream of.
Yes, I think that is why many people have been sympathetic to the idea.
But it’s also important to understand that for those who are uncomfortable with the whole idea, this is not necessarily out of some specific problem with Judaism as a religion, or Jewish people generally. Nor is it necessarily about disliking specific actions of the government of Israel.
Many people, and particularly on the left, are very much against the idea of ethnicity as the centre of national citizenship, in any context, and there are significant historical reasons that they believe that to be true. It’s entirely unfair to accuse people who take that viewpoint of anti-Semitism, but it falls within many of the “official” outlines that people point to when trying to define what that means.
You could also ask the question more directly, whether the noble intentions you mention would be enough, long-term, to overcome the potential pitfalls of such a political approach. The fact is that you can make predictions either way that are based on reasonable political analysis.
I really think this disinclination to talk rationally about why the left distrusts ethnic states in relation to Israel does no one any favours. It certainly does not make it less likely that the fears such people have will come to fruition.
“There is an undercurrent of disrespect directed to African people coming from the pro-Palestinian groupings.”
I thought numerous South Africans have used the term to describe Israel’s policies, Archbishop Desmond Tutu (a Nobel Peace Prize winner) and Winnie Mandela among them. And a delegation of African National Congress veterans visiting Israel called the situation there a worse form of apartheid than that in South Africa against which they fought.
it is what is called bias or bigotry
Tutu is one of the nastiest anti-semites around – and not surprisingly he has brought up a daughter to be even more of a bigot
So far as I’m aware, it’s only his comments about Israel that have got him slagged off as an anti-Semite.
“In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil.
“I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders. What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.”
Do you know of any valid reason for thus insulting him?
He is a clown.
read carefully what he has said, especially after his visit to Gaza.
he is a nasty dishonest anti-semite, however more reasonable he might have been in his younger days,
Since the only reason Israel does not give equal rights to its citizens – take a look at the different regulations for Israeli non-Jews – and has refused to give the occupied Palestinians freedom and justice in a one-state solution, is because Israel believes Jews are superior and must remain a majority.
And you call Tutu a bigot? Pot, kettle, black.
nonsense,
palestinians are not “occupied” because there is no such thing as a palestinian state, or palestinian territory,
there are a group of people, fomerly living in the same area as Jews and administered after 1917 by a British mandate, and then in two major declarations, at San Remo and by the British government an area of land was granted for a Jewish state, and another for an Arab state.
For various reasons groups of Arabs refused to accept the notion of a Jewish state and thus to them any area in the middle east – or actually anywhere on the planet – is considered by them as “occupied territory” that they believe they are entitled to.
So far the modern State of Israel has had to fight 5 wars in its short life to defened itself against Arab intentions to destroy its people and leave a “river of blood from the Jordan to the sea”.
The modern State of Israel has grown and flourished while the less than 230,000 “palestinian” refugees who ran away from Israel in 1948 and have somehow grown to an alleged 5 million to be scattered around the middle east dependent upon corrupt organizations like UNRWA instead of the various Arab countries assimilating and integrating them.
Many western countries especially the EU have been complicit in this barely disguised anti-semitism and Jew hatred, but now, with the opening up of positive relationships between Israel and a number of Arab countries, there is a hope that major Arab countries will tell the palestinians to move on and sit down with the Israelis and take Israeli help to develop a modern peaceful state along the lines of the Trump-Kushner very reasonable proposals.
So much of the issue over the years has been the unwillingness of one single Arab state to take the Palestinians in. They knew the trouble that Arafat and his successors caused.
When you start saying things like “Palestinians don’t exist, so they don’t have human rights,” you’re not helping your argument.
If the situation in the occupied territories is so intolerable, perhaps its inhabitants, and especially its leaders, might consider the option of making a sincere peace with Israel. Until they do that, they reap what they sow.
Allow me an American analogy. The US loses a world war and the victors, acting under international law through a newly established League of Nations, decide to undo an historical injustice, say allowing the Cherokee Indian Nation to return to its historical homeland and become a nation once again. Having been expelled from their homeland and suffered all manner of violence and discrimination since, it was determined that safety lay in a state in which they were the majority – which seems an acceptable rationale.
At the same time, the victors break up the US into separate additional countries with the US itself now only a shadow of itself, New England perhaps. Yet, those new states attack the Cherokee with a view toward their annihilation because they are seen as interlopers who have colonized and reduced the good American people of a section of Georgia and North Carolina, or they dispute the fact that today’s Cherokee are the same as those who lived on the land centuries ago.
Somehow, the Cherokee repel the initial attack but lose some land from which all Cherokee (who had managed to stay in place even after the Trail of Tears removal) are expelled. Another attack is repelled but this time the Cherokee gain control over those lost lands. The non-Cherokee continue in their goal of ending Cherokee self-governance and refuse all attempts at settlement.
Once Jews are removed from the story, the issues tend to come into better focus, I think. Is there some accepted statute of limitations after which an imperial conquest can no longer be undone? Is there one that, upon its lapse, terminates an indigenous group’s status and connection to their ancestral homeland?
And, it seems to me anyway, the proper question to consider is not “why do the Jewish people get a state on lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire?” but “why do the Jewish people alone among the region’s indigenous people get a state while the Arabs, the 7th century conquerors out of Arabia who lost out to the Ottomans, have their lost conquests returned to them instead?”
If the idea is that nation states are somehow inherently bad things, then how do you justify being against Jewish nationalism while supporting a Palestinian nationalism?
I have twice visited a kibbutz at the edge of Gaza, separated by a very big wall from Gaza. As a very rare visitor from outside I got to meet the mayor and then followed a guided tour of the kibbutz farm. The centre had a large concrete, rocket-proof dome with pictures of butterflies stuck on it – the kindergarten. As a visitor I asked a lot of questions about problems from Gaza. Arabs were employed and came in every day and they had menial jobs. One of my contacts explained that he had two very close friends who lived over the ‘border’ but he dared not say this to his friends in the kibbutz.
This reminded me of an interview I had for a job in South Africa during the time of apartheid. The interviewer said that I could have sympathies with the situation of black people, I could even have ‘secret’ black friends. But I could not risk anyone else in the company finding this out. In fact, it would seem suspicious if I said anything positive about black people. I didn’t take the job.
They perhaps feel uncomfortable having friends who launched a war of annihilation against them and then voted for a terrorist organisation that continues to state its intention of doing so.
As mentioned in the article-its an existential threat-tends to clarify matters if thats what your facing!
Indeed.
Oh, you are referring to the 1948 Nakba, are you? Or the previous activities of the British versus the Palestinians in the 1930s as their resistance then became the precursor to 1948? The Palestinians knew what was coming. Hertzl knew what was coming when contacted by prominent Palestinians in the beginning decade of the 20th century. They foresaw correctly. Hertzl denied and worse, ignored their entreaties.
Both different situations. Israel have enemies all around them. When Britain was at war they had to be careful with German or Italian people for instance because of the war. What do you expect?
Britain wasn’t “careful” with Germans or Italians. As soon as war was declared they were locked up. My mother’s grocer was Italian but when taken before the local magistrate produced a birth certificate showing he had been born in Marseille where his parents were working. The magistrate immediately ordered his release saying he was an ally. He was able to go back to his shop but for the rest of his life was known as Frenche.
You have a rather confused analogy. Israel has enemies because it is a colonial state on someone else’s land.
The correct analogy would be if the Germans had succeeded in occupying and colonising the UK, would the Germans have enemies? You bet they would.
If the British had been occupied and colonised for 70 years by Germany, or Australia occupied and colonised by Japan for 70 years, do you think they would resist like the Palestinians? Would they also be called terrorists and told they were responsible for their plight? I doubt it.
Your analogy is incorrect. The UK was a nation when the Germans attempted to invade. Palestine was not, it was a land. That is also probably difficult for you to conceptualise. Try. To get you started, consider this question: If Israel is a colony, where is the motherland?
The USA of course! Duh. These lot dont want to recognise that there was a continuous jewish presence in the ME and of course Jerusalem. That the Ottoman empire dumped a lot of new Arab migrants into that area. That land is Judenfrei in their imagination. When archaeologists dig up artifacts that point to a historical jewish presence, they say it is planted by Netanyahu. They use the so-called biblical connection to disdain the zionist enterprise but ignore historical records and the remnant jewish communities.
again nonsense, it is not “someone else’s land” that is the propaganda nonsense you have swallowed without learning the real history,
Why are you not as invested in the colonial states in Irian Jaya or Tibet?
How virtuous of you.
No doubt the enemies of Israel have been enraged by the treaties between that country and Muslim countries in the Middle East.
All Israel wants is to be left in peace, but they will defend their rights with everything they have. Palestinians have been let down by their leaders and, as for Iran, ……….
Yes, the Palestinians have missed their chance. Fifty years of chances. The ME has moved on, Muslim countries are now more afraid of Iran than they are interested in the Palestinians. If it’s Iran you’re worried about, you could have no better friend in the region than Israel.
The Palestinians as a powerless occupied and colonised people never had any chance except that which their occupier gave them, and that was and remains nothing. In 70 years of subjugation, the Palestinians have never been offered a viable State. Satrapies, sure, bantustans, absolutely, but true freedom and independence, never. That is why one state is now the only solution.
The Muslim countries who have signed on with Israel have no doubt been bribed. It is meaningless theatre. The world at large which increasingly condemns the Israeli apartheid State and its occupation of Palestine, don’t actually care who signs up with Israel. The wrong remains and will be set to rights.
The Palestinians have had chance after chance. And they blew every one. The ME has moved on. The world celebrates the recognition of Israel by ME states that have never done so before now as well as the trade deals. It’s no longer about the Palestinians.
The Palestinians have NEVER been offered a viable State with contiguous borders, East Jerusalem as the capital, complete and total independence and full military control of their own air, land and sea space.
In short, they have never been offered a country – just a bantustan and they sensibly said no. The Palestinians have always had justice, time and numbers on their side and there will be one state, shared equally by the European colonisers and the indigenous Palestinians.
The world doesn’t give a toss about Israel, Palestine or the ME, but, more and more people around the world, including many Jews and more and more Americans, care very much about the pariah of an apartheid State that is Israel. Because it is a matter, not of politics but of justice, morality, integrity and common human decency, the power of those people and the BDS movement will crush Israel’s economy and it would not matter a toss if every Arab nation on earth, pretended to be its friend.
Isn’t there Jeremy Corbyn fansite for you to be gushing at? A Press TV programme to watch?
Did you hope to catch live Jews here?
I believe you are paraphrasing the detestable anti-semite corbyn!!!!
rubbish rubbish and more garbage
“colonizers” “occupied people” “never offered a viable state” “never offered freedom” – they have freedom now, it’s called the palestinian authority and in Gaza for 15 years it’s been called Hamas, total complete freedom,
if they choose to screw it up, if they waste the billions thrown at them on building tunnels into Israel to try to kidnap and murder Israelis, then I supose it might be reasonable and rational for Israel to develop methods to stop them.
the palestinians have been offered countless times the opportunity to sit down and negotiate with Israel – and their response/motto has been no, no, no.
Another consistent attribute you are exemplifying throughout this thread which has Nazi origins: “Keep repeating the lie, no matter how big. Eventually you will win.”
The Palestinians are the only occupied and colonised people in modern history to be blamed for their plight and held equally accountable with their oppressors.
Talk about adding insult to injury. The Palestinians are powerless. As the occupier Israel holds all responsibility and accountability for this appalling injustice. What gave European colonisers the right to take Palestine in the first place? The UN Mandate was certainly immoral and probably illegal and has never been tested in a court of law. Israel has no right to be in Palestine, but, we can accept, like other nations founded through colonisation that it exists, regardless of the wrongs inherent in its foundation.
If Israel wants to be left in peace it must do what all other colonisers have done, one state with equal rights for all.
It is important to make the distinction between Grand Apartheid and Petty Apartheid. Petty Apartheid was the manifestation of Grand Apartheid with things like, the pass acts, the immorality acts exclusion from sport etc. Grand Apartheid was the philosophy of Afrikaner intellectuals in the interwar years and started with the National Party election in 1948. The principle piece in this was the Group Areas Act which delineated various areas racially even when this involved uprooting massive numbers of people from where they had lived for generations. It offered the idea of giving Africans in some of the rural areas what passed off as independence except for the fact that they would be totally unsustainable economically and as a result Africans would be forced to be migrant workers in their own land living in townships in white areas with minimal civil rights. The fact that Grand Apartheid was never going to be realised and was crumbling by the 1980s should not let us forget what was intended.
I simply ask people to look at what is being proposed for the occupied lands in Israel and ask if the comparison is a reasonable one. I believe, for example, that any solution will keep the Jordan Valley in Israeli hands so they can control the water supply.
The Afrikaners believed that it was impossible for white people to live in a majority African country; by the 1990s they realised that they had no choice but to try. AS Fraser says, Israel has the same decision to make but has wasted longer than South Africa to make ir
Majority rule in a one state solution would be national suicide by Israel. You would have a trojan horse within your country. It is easy for us to criticise from our armchairs. SA is a different kettle of fish altogether.
South Africa and Israel made similar mistakes. They colonised countries where they would be a minority. South Africa at least had a De Klerk. Israel has no-one so enlightened although the Palestinians have a few Mandelas.
South Africa ended apartheid handing over control to the vastly larger group of indigenous peoples. Israel will have to do the same.
The lesson remains – if you are going to colonise in the modern age, take into account that justice will ultimately be done and you will be a minority.
Then again, as a real democracy it would not matter for Jews, Christians, Muslims in one State to be any sort of percentage, since in a democracy, religion is secondary to citizenship.
you have swallowed sick material disguised as rubbish.
you invoke various marxist notions such as “colonize” that you think explain the realities – they don’t and you talk about “indigenous peoples” unaware that the Jews are the indigenous peoples of Israel, not various marauding bedouin or other visiting Arabs.
Miko Peled unfortunately left Israel.
You just have to look at Syria and Iraq in recent years to see what minorities get under the sunni muslim bootheel. But I think these lot dont care about Jewish extermination.
Hold on everyone lots of sound comments here but I’m confused. Didn’t the alleged war criminal Blair go to the area to sort all this out? Took over a 5 star hotel had hundreds of staff and made all the right connections – so he said. Then again he said the next door neighbours had weapons of mass destruction, were a direct physical threat to the UK and needed regime change to improve the situation, so he said. Hundreds of thousands dead Iraqi’s later he said it was justified.
So didn’t he solve all the Middle East problems? Or did he not have time between his multi million dollar lecture tour gifted to him by Bush. Or was there no dodgy deals offered by the parties desperate to hear his solution ?
As I say I’m confused, perhaps we could beg good ole Tony to offer his views. (For a price?) Well I know what I think and I suspect many others on this site have similar views that would get us banned.
Perhaps leaving the people who live there to sort out their own problems might be an idea. Instead of uncountable numbers of experts spouting clap trap who have never been near the area or met the people.
Blair was a long time ago. But in the last four years, we have had progress in peace and trade deals between countries that had no previous diplomatic ties at all. That’s good. May it continue.
Giles understands what’s going on in Israel better than B’Tselem.
Rev Fraser, may I ask if it was your deliberate intention to stimulate the anti-semites to come out of the woodwork – because having followed at great length the comments on your article that certainly seems to have transpired.
In reading some of the comments, I’m reminded of LaFontaine’s fable of the Wolf and the Lamb. If your goal is to kill the lamb, pointing out the flaws in your justification for killing is a futile exercise. Facts are ignored or simply replaced with a more accommodating narrative to salve a guilty conscience.
So, outright falsehoods, vile exaggerations and clear double standards are standard issue weapons in the fight against Israel and its counterpart goal: to return the Jewish people to their “proper” historical role of a powerless and despised minority whose sole purpose in a secular world is to play the scapegoat for all manner of social ills – which in a sectarian world is seen as the Jews’ divinely imposed sanction for rejecting the Son of God or God’s messenger or [fill in the blank].
It’s an old habit and though we are told “old habits die hard” some like antisemitism have that protean quality that allows for its continuation through the ages while its “justifications” shift to fit current anxieties.
“Antisemite” — Only because YOU say so. You have reserved the right to presume to know what is in others’ hearts. And wrong you are as a fortuneteller.
How does Giles Fraser square his beliefs with the ever-expanding settlements and the Israeli government’s plans to annex the West Bank? All questions of morality aside, the Two State Solution is looking impossible at this point. It’s de facto all one country now, and people see that.
I am surprised that the author wrote such a confused and confusing article, full of inaccuracies.
When was Rev Fraser last in Israel? Did he walk in the streets, travel on public transport, go to restaurants (when they were still open) or supermarkets, or to the beach?
There is zero, zero “apartheid” in Israel. None. As anyone living in Israel can see on an everyday basis, and anyone who makes such an allegation either has never been there, or suffers from very severe visual impairment.
There are no signs saying “no arabs allowed” etc, there are Arabs in parliament – some of whom refuse to make the oath of alleigance – and Arabs in every walk of public life, judiciary, health care, academia, business, etc.
An overwhelming majority of Israelis now say ‘no’ to a “two-state delusion” because the other side has indicated no serious intention to try to negotiate a reasonable accomodation, and more recently because the palestinians – having been given literally billions of dollars to build a functioning entity – have failed miserably, but spent their money on paying terrorist families for harming or killing Jews, or their corrupt leaders siphoning off the money for their own personal excesses.
Israeli citizens of Arab background have been vaccinated as have Israelis of Jewish background, Arabs who live in the areas administered by the palestinian authority are totally responsible since the Oslo accords, for their own health care system.
No, biden is not “right” re the two-state delusion,
he and the EU who continue to parrott it are helping and enabling the palestinians to continue to fall farther and farther behind the rest of the world as they stew in their own grievance collection, wanting others to bail them out.
The Trump plan offered the palestinians a beginning – not an end, but a beginning – to start emerging from the mess. They rejected it immediately.
Much of the western media has been complicit in enabling the palestinian delusion to persist.
At least some others in the Arab world are waking up to the reality.
As for a “democratic” state, many Israelis think Israel at the moment is far too democratic, with its multiplicity of parties, daily demonstrations outside the prime minister’s office and home, a strong influential mostly left-wing media. and a heavily left-influenced supreme court.
There have been a number of Arab parties represented in Israel’s parliament.
The allegation of “apartheid state” lies somewhere between an outright untruth and blatant anti-semitism.
So you disagree with the article, you’re saying that most Israelis want a “Greater Israel”?
Oh, and disagreeing with the policies of the Israeli government does not equal anti-semitism.
My point exactly. Cries of ‘Anti-Semitism’ every time you disagree with Israel is the big problem for governments today.
It’s why Berger and his cohort are so keen on using it. Painting with a broad brush as the quintessential victim. Of course arguing with such tropists only leads to further frustration.
What signs do you see that Israel has any plans whatsoever for a coherent two state solution, as opposed to a “Bantustan solution”, like that proposed by Trump? And if that’s all it’s proposing, then Israel should not be surprised if it’s labeled an “Apartheid state”. And if Apartheid South Africa had vaccinated Whites in Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei but not Blacks, just as Israel has vaccinated Jewish settlers in the lands captured in 1967 but not 4.8 m Christians and Moslems, would anyone accept the excuse that health is the responsibility of the Bantustans and would anyone be celebrating the achievement?
What signs do you see of Palestinian (read: Hamas) acceptance of a two-state solution so long as one of those states is Israel? It’s amusing how Israel is accused of “apartheid” by the same people who refuse to consider how Jews, or any other minority, fares in most Muslim-run nations.
See the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, unanimously agreed by the Arab world including the PA.
the one that included demands Israel was not willing to accept? Israel thought a deal was done when Bill Clinton was still in office, but that fell apart.
In other words that two state solution was rejected by Israel. Where is the counter offer that might be remotely acceptable to the Arabs?
The saudi initiative included the “right of return”, which is a recipe for the end of Israel. The Israelis were right to reject it.
There is no deal acceptable to the Palestinians other than the elimination of Israel. Other “Arabs” in the region see Israel as a bulwark against Iran, hence the establishment of diplomatic ties and trade between Israel and various Muslim countries. We were always assured this would not be possible absent agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Obviously that assurance was wrong. The Palestinians now have zero leverage, they missed it.
The issue is not about Arabs, the issue is solely about non-Jews in the Israeli colonial State. It was never about Arabs or Palestinians because Israel offered immediate citizenship to all Palestinian Arab Jews. The only discrimination has ever been religious.
I used the term Arabs because the poster I was replying to did. Non Jews live peacefully in Israel.
Apples with apples.
Either Arabs – indigenous Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Europeans, the Israeli colonists, or Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis; or, Jews and Christians and Muslims; or Israelis and Palestinians.
Non-whites lived peacefully in apartheid South Africa also. I fail to see your point?
excellent reply
You’re mistaken: the Palestinian Authority and the PLO have confirmed they would accept a deal based on 1967 boundaries, the 2002 Arab Peace Proposal, i.e. well short of the elimination of Israel. The Arab countries which have now recognised Israel have done so conditionally on Israel not annexing the settlements in the Occupied Territories. That’s a big condition, and the current situation with continued occupation trying to be neither two states nor one is really not sustainable.
No, sorry you are incorrect. Israel has offered land for peace only to be repeatedly attacked. The Palestinians have never accepted the existence of Israel.
The current situation has been sustainable for more than 50 years. It’s too late to claim that anything in the ME depends on anything to do with the Palestinians. They had their chance. They blew chance after chance in fact. Today the issue is Iran.
I repeat: the PA and the PLO and the Arab world have all confirmed acceptance of Israel in 1967 boundaries. Israel at the moment is only offering a Bantustan “solution”, something no Palestinian leader could accept. You’re right that for over 50 years, they did not accept Israel, but since 2002 it’s Israel which has not accepted an independent Palestinian state, while at the same time refusing equal rights in the territory it rules. If this continues Israel will be an international pariah and will not have long term peace.
None has accepted the existence of Israel. That will be required. Also it will be required that they stop attacking Israel. If they want land they have to negotiate for it, they don’t get it any other way. That’s the law of war, when you attack another country and that country captures your territory, you must negotiate to get it back. It isn’t simply, returned to you since you attacked someone from it.
Israel is not only not a pariah, it’s increasingly seen as a bulwark against terror in the Middle East. By other middle eastern countries. No, it’s too late, the Palestinians had their chance, they had multiple chances and blew every one. The Palestinians are now the pariahs, even in the ME. Their fellow middle easterners are choosing their own safety and security over the Palestinians and their refusal to negotiate in good faith.
I got a real chuckle out of your “if this continues……” after 50 years.
The one that demanded Israel end the Occupation. Yes, that one.
The Bantustans, unlike the PA and Hamas, never had control over the provision of health care.
I think it was more a case of “if you want Health Care you are free to provided it”
drivel
The Africans do not own the word ‘Apartheid’ which rationally applies to the current situation in Israel/Palestine as anyone with a grain of common sense can see. What a pity to see an apologia for the Israeli state dressed up as journalism. And by a Briton too. Disappointing.
absolute bigoted nonsense
To make the apartheid claim against Israel you have to ignore the murderous intent of the Arab states and the Palestinians since 1948 (and before) and, even worse, the holocaust. Comparing Jewish nationalism to, say, French or British nationalism without consideration of modern Jewish history is, at best, entirely indifferent to Jewish concerns and suffering, and, at worst, antisemitic at its core.
But you’re right about Arnold’s “Kristallnacht” metaphor. The right one was “Reichstag Fire”.
The whole joke about this 2000 year long obession with issues related to Jewish people and their doings is that it is totally irrelevant, that is if you look at it in a scientific way instead of looking at it from the usual cultural/religious perspective. It’s a bit the same as with the coronacrisis. This virus is totally irrelevant, from a scientific point of view, because it poses not a single threat to the human race and by itself does not change a thing about daily human routine. Compared to the Spanish Flu (not to mention the black death) it is even hilarious when you think about our reaction to this virus. But then again, when people believe something is important it will become important. It does not only apply to the hassle about Israel/the Jews but it also applies to human activity and thinking in general: it is fuelled by self fulfilling prophecies. You just repeat something over and over again and before you know it people will keep talking about you for thousands of years. The only specific thing about the Jews is that they got caught up in the labour pains of the most powerful religion humankind has ever seen. Bad luck for the Jews, but now that christianity finally seems to move to the backdoor it is also time to finally shut the f*ck up about the Jews (or about the Palestinians for that matter because they would never have gotten any attention whatsoever if their oppressors would not have been Jewish but Chinese…and the least of their f*cking problems is getting a vaccine….). Get a life!
States that try to define themselves by race (biologically a nonsense), culture, or religion have no place in a modern world. Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc. should all be required to actively support the UN charter of Human Rights for all of their citizens, neighbours, and the world as a whole. If they fail to do so they should be censured and be severely limited in international trade. As South Africa was.
Call it Apartheid as a convenient summary of the Human Rights abuses.
Apartheid means separate development. It is where the most powerful group dictates to the less powerful what they can and cannot do and denies them full rights because it considers them to be inferior human beings.
Are non-Jewish Israelis the full equal of their Jewish fellow citizens? No, they are not. There are separate regulations which apply to them and separate educational and medical systems, inferior, compared to the rest.
Do Israelis talk about all citizens as one? No, they do not. They call non-Jewish Israelis, Arabs, to differentiate those Muslims and Christians from followers of Judaism. ‘Arab’ is a euphemism for non-Jew.
Are the occupied Palestinians considered equal as human beings by Israel? No, they are not. They are kept separate and crushed under military control because Israel does not want more non-Jews as citizens, believing in the superiority of Jews and the need for them to remain a majority.
It walks like a duck, it talks like a duck, it looks like a duck – it is a duck and Israel is an apartheid State.
Sorry but that is not what “apartheid” means. It happens to have an internationally accepted definition which is very different. And, as you have often expressed the view that the Jews are not a race but a group of adherents to a religion, whatever discrimination they may engage, however terrible, cannot constitute the crime of “apartheid””. You need to choose a consistent, evidence-based and logical argument to your anti-Israel views. Otherwise, one might be tempted to conclude that, for you, all’s fair in attacking the world’s only state for the Jewish people.
https://www.un.org/en/genoc…
Apartheid has a specific definition that is set out in a UN declaration and it is entirely different from your rather expansive definition. Simply put, if as you claim Jews are nothing more than an agglomeration of religious adherents and are not a “race” (however defined), then Israel may be guilty of discrimination (as could each and every democracy) but not of apartheid. And, if you described Arabs as a race, discrimination between Arab citizens and non-citizens of Israel – whether deemed justified or not – does not apartheid make.
The willful misuse of the term “apartheid” to apply to Israel only diminished the very real harms suffered by South Africans. It does nothing to help on-the-ground Palestinians chafing under their autocratic and kleptocratic rulers in the PA and Hamas.
When Israeli Arabs were asked whether they would prefer Palestinian citizenship in any final resolution where a border compromise would place them on the Palestine side of the line (meaning they would remain in place), they were virtually unanimous in their rejection of such an outcome. Could it be that they have a more realistic understanding of their lived reality in Israel than you?
Israel is a theocratic state… There’s a democracy there, provided you are Jewish. If you’re Christian, Moslem, Hindu or Buddhist, things are different, PARTICULARLY if you have a historical legal claim to annexed land… That’s when you’ll really be treated like a n****r. Appropriation of the West Bank was mostly about securing control of aquafers, not about security.
Good to agree with you on something.
Having ploughed through that article, it’s illogical at best, and sophistry at worst .
His argument distills to this : if you regard Israel + occupied territories as being one state then it is an Apartheid state. Whereas if you project to some hypothetical future 2 state solution ( which is what he wants ) it’s not an Apartheid state, ( durr…). And because he earnestly wants a (future) two state solution there is no ( present) apartheid.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/17/israelis-in-gods-name-why/
The original article mixes up Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. About 20% of Israel’s population is Arab. But among the youth especially the line is changing as some Israeli Arabs term themselves Palestinian Arabs. So what is a two state solution? Where do the Israeli Arabs belong?
There must be some interesting logical parallels with the partitioning of Ireland, and whether the U.K. government would have been justified to treat Ireland the same way Israel are treating Palestine …
NI isn’t ‘occupied’ it’s a fully fledged part of the UK.
I wasn’t very clear, I was thinking about how justified the U.K. would be occupying (southern) Irish territory during the Troubles …
Israel hasn’t occupied Egypt or Jordan. Your analogy iis false.
It’s a fully fledged part of the UK?
It’s only been a part of the UK for a hundred years, against the wishes of many of its citizens. With Brexit and other issues, there could soon be a majority wanting out of the union.
I was thinking about how justified the U.K. would be occupying (southern) Irish territory during the Troubles ..
Are you seriously comparing Irish relations with Britain to the murderous intent of the Arab World toward Israel since and before 1948? If so, you’re deluded.
It is important to get the language correct. Jew is a follower of a religion and Arab is a culture. Either use the terms for religions, as in Jews, Muslims and Christians, or use the terms for cultures, Arab Palestinians and European Israelis, because Europe is the origin of most Israelis who colonised Palestine.
Israel likes to refer to Palestinian non-Jews as Arabs because it avoids using the word Palestinian and it also avoids using the correct term and the reason for Israel’s discrimination – non-Jews.
Israel has no problem with Arabs or Palestinians, as long as they are Jews. It offered immediate citizenship to this group. The critical factor was and is – religion.
Israel is not a democracy because it does not give equal rights to its citizens who are non-Jews. That fact is consistently recorded by Israeli and international human rights groups. There are many regulations which apply only to non-Jews, i.e. forbidden from bringing spouses, parents or children to live with them in UN-Mandated Israel.
And then we get to Occupied Palestine, crushed under the Israeli military boot, where people are denied human and civil rights. And all because they are non-Jews.
The UN has defined racism as any form of discrimination and the fact Israel is bigoted in the name of religion while South Africa’s discrimination was based on race, does not change the fact that both stand as apartheid States.
Both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, declared Israel was an apartheid state and they should know. It is dishonest and delusional to deny the apartheid reality of Israel.
And neither does waving the Auschwitz flag work. Whatever happened to some Jews at the hands of the Nazis does not justify the colonisation of Palestine and the bigotry demonstrated toward its indigenous people because they are not followers of Judaism.
Let us remember, most Jews do not, never did and never will live in UN Mandated Israel or Occupied Palestine and even during the Second World War, most lived safely around the world, including in parts of Europe.
The concept that followers of Judaism needed their own country after World War Two, had no substance in 1947 and has even less so today. Religions do not get land rights, homelands or self-determination and that includes Judaism. However, even if they did, they certainly do not get the right to dispossess and brutalise others in the name of that cause.
That’s seems a rather Orientalist approach to the matter. Which other foreign minority would you say entirely misunderstands who they are or their own history?
Or are you suggesting that no one should be fooled by the tricky Jews who are trying to take advantage of some poor innocents and clear-eyed people such as yourself need to blow the tocsin?
You are entitled to your opinion, but you may wish to take on the adage that it’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, it’s what you know that isn’t so. Perhaps a bit more humility is in order.
You wrote that “even during the Second World War, most [Jews] lived safely around the world, including in parts of Europe.”
Is your argument really that because “only” about 1/3 of the world’s pre-WWII Jews were annihilated by Nazi Germany and its local collaborators, it must follow that every other Jew was living safely? One wonders where you are getting your information.
At the time, the majority of the world’s Jews lived in areas that were at one time or another conquered by the Germans who then sought to make their infamous final solution to the Jewish question a reality – and even if it interfered with their successful prosecution of their war. Proportionately very few Jews could be said to be living “safely” during that period. Second, the UK barred the doors of Palestine to all Jewish from anywhere, including those seeking to flee Europe for their lives (but, curiously, the UK allowed entry to any Arab foreigner who came and wished to stay).
In considering the general issue of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in a part of their historical homeland, it might help to read the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine which, by its nature, sets up the applicable international law – with which you are then free to disagree or even ignore, but which nevertheless grounds any serious argument.
excellent comment
While your comment is correct I would like to emphasize that the LoN mandate of 1922, the only valid international law to date, clearly defines Palestine, the territory between the river and the sea as Jewish homeland only where the minorities will have to have their civil rights respected.
My heart sinks reading this article. Nor can I believe Sam Bahour sympathetic.
Israel is a 19th century colonial race-state, engaged in a continuing territorial aggression with the critical assistance of the US Empire, against the virtually unarmed, impoverished rightful possessor, systematically “cleansing” more and more of their land and incorporating it. It is a criminal state with a cognate race theory to the Nazis that routinely practices tactics -indiscriminate killing of civilians, assassination, terror bombing, massive imprisonment and torture, diverting essential water supply, collective punishment- outlawed by the ruling of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Why was German discrimination against non-Aryans wrong, because they believed non-Aryans to be inferior human beings, and Israeli discrimination against non-Jews because they believe them to be inferior human beings, right?
Zionist Israel was founded on bigotry and there was never any chance of it being anything but an apartheid State.
We know the Israelis do not have a problem with Arabs or Palestinians because they gave immediate citizenship to Palestinian Arab Jews. The only thing Israelis have a problem with is non-Jews, and such religious bigotry has no place in a modern, democratic world. Israel is a religious theocracy like Saudi Arabia and not a democracy, despite its claims. If Israel was a democracy then religion would be irrelevant and all citizens would have full equality. If Israel was a democracy it would have done what all other nations founded through colonisation have done, created one state with equal rights for all, colonisers and indigenous alike.
Wow, really crawling out from the stones aren’t you all?
as I wrote above, I wonder if the Rev Fraser really intended his article to provoke the anti-semites to come out from their dung-heaps
There’s your superiority complex showing again. And again.