Opinion: U.S. should stand against apartheid in Israel

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By Sam Jadallah

(snip)

Freedom and equality must be centerpieces of American efforts to secure peace in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects this with misleading words and ongoing colonization of Palestinian territory. He offers caveats, limitations and conditions to ensure Palestinians will not realize fundamental aspirations and dreams.

His newest condition demands that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state, despite 20 percent of Israel's population being Palestinian. This demand is akin to George Wallace insisting Martin Luther King Jr. recognize the U.S. as a white state. Yet,
American leaders, who would never support the United States as a white state, uphold this in Israel despite such language implicitly relegating Palestinian citizens to inferior status.

Already, over 20 Israeli laws favor Jewish citizens and discriminate against Palestinians. And in the Israeli-controlled West Bank, Palestinians face segregated roads, unequal distribution of water and a dual system of law.

The question is how to break the impasse. I look to guidance Nelson Mandela offered from his prison cell. He asked, "What freedom am I being offered when I must ask permission to live in an urban area? What freedom am I being offered when I need a stamp in my pass to seek work?"

I have profound doubts as to Netanyahu's intentions when days ago a university student in Bethlehem was transferred back to Gaza because she was in the occupied West Bank "illegally." Israel's pass stamps for this young woman, Berlanty Azzam, are just as noxious as in apartheid South Africa.

Palestinian lives are increasingly shaped by stunting discrimination and despair. The time is long past for "economic progress," "easing travel restrictions" and other baby steps for Palestinians that avoid a just and legally based solution. Only a focus on the prize — freedom and equality, neither of which can be concessions — will prevent the situation from dramatically worsening, and rapidly.

Americans who fought Jim Crow or apartheid must reject today's version in the occupied Palestinian territories. America's leadership is based on promoting freedom and equality around the world, and we must start with our allies.

read on...
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_13802009

[ProgressiveMuslim]

1. Coming to an op-ed page near you!

Wow. Who would have thunk it.

Apartheid, anti-apartheid activity and BDS are becoming regular features in discussion of the I/P conflict.

The train has left the station and there is no going back.

[peacetalksforall]

2. I'm not sure which label to use, but what the leaders and supporters of

Jewish Israel have been doing is sick - really sick. And heartbreaking.

It is obvious that Jewish Israel is trying to squeeze the Palestinians out. Every action points to it.

At some point in history, they made a decision to make the Palestinians move out.

At another point in history, they made a decision to pretend that they were seeking peace and provide all the essential lip service to keep us giving them things and allowing favorable support inside the highest offices of this land, even though they are giving us lip service.

Now, they are moving with vengeance.

White phosphorus. Rabbis saying it is OK to kill them as well as gentiles.

Another new announcement of construction yesterday.

And they want total support from us the way they got it for five decades.

[oberliner]

3. What the hell is "Jewish Israel" ?

What do you mean by that?

[peacetalksforall]

4. I take if from the phrasing in the article. The 80%. Quoted:

"His newest condition demands that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state, despite 20 percent of Israel's population being Palestinian. This demand is akin to George Wallace insisting Martin Luther King Jr. recognize the U.S. as a white state. Yet,
American leaders, who would never support the United States as a white state, uphold this in Israel despite such language implicitly relegating Palestinian citizens to inferior status.

Already, over 20 Israeli laws favor Jewish citizens and discriminate against Palestinians. And in the Israeli-controlled West Bank, Palestinians face segregated roads, unequal distribution of water and a dual system of law."

I take it from what is going on now and what has been going on for decades - there is a division, no resolution, no desire to live in peace (with exceptions of both Jews and Moslems who live there who seek peace).

Can you suggest phrasing that makes the distinction between religions within Israel in a preferred way?

(I think of the time wasted fighting and all the preferences given over these decades, plus all the recent horror of Lebanon, the Gaza, and the homeless and exiled, living with bombing and without basics and it is obvious that one side has all the advantages - all, especially from the US.)

[oberliner]

6. Thank you for clarifying

Something like saying "White America" - yes?

[peacetalksforall]

7. I don't get what you're asking, so I think the answer is maybe.

[oberliner]

8. To be clearer

When you say "Jewish Israel" you are not talking about all Israelis, just the Jewish ones.

Similarly when someone says "White America" - they are only referring to the white people in America not everyone else.

[shaayecanaan]

5. It means...

you've been here a while and you're starting to get vexed and tired.

[shira]

9. apartheid and colonialism? who is the author of the OP trying to reach?

[FarrenH]

10. Oh, people like me

who were'nt calling it Apartheid, but "a complex situation" even 3 years ago, before the last of the scales fell away. Like it or not, Shira, it will only grow. Israel is an Apartheid state. You can't dupe the entire world forever.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

11. Once truth is spoken to power, it can never be put back in the bag.

This movement will grow and will ultimately culminate in the dismantling of Israel's apartheid system. There is no going back.

[Jim Sagle]

12. The clown who wrote it was half in the bag to start with.

[pelsar]

13. truth to power?

i never could figure out what that means.......truth has little "power" in this conflict, its a pretty flexible concept as i've witnessed here.

you and many seem to believe that the system in place is based on some kind of racist/religious reasoning.....and you have to believe that, since only that reasoning can justify the accusations against israel.

the second you place real israeli security in the formula (and that includs little ittsy bitsy noise makers)....then the whole formula changes and your "movement" wont get very far.....israelis wont accept getting killed for the sake of intl opinion (didnt work out too well last time for the relatives)

[Violet_Crumble]

17. About the phrase 'speaking truth to power'

The phrase "speaking truth to power" goes back to 1955, when the American Friends Service Committee published Speak Truth to Power, a pamphlet ii at proposed a new approach to the Cold War. Its title, which came to Friend Milton Mayer toward the end of the week in summer 1954 when the composing committee finished work on the document, has become almost a cliche; it has become common far beyond Quaker circles, often used by people who have no idea of its origins. (One current example: Anita Hill entitled her memoir of her sensational charges of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Speaking Truth to Power.)

To speak truth to power sounds so much like an integral part of Quakerism that some modem Friends have simply assumed the phrase goes back to the seventeenth century rather than arriving late in the middle of ours. It reflects what many contemporary Friends would like to believe is the characteristic Quaker stance toward political authority, hallowed in practice if not the exact words. Yet in its origins it was a political statement, entitling an explicitly political document.


http://www2.gol.com/users/quakers/living_the_truth.htm

[Vegasaurus]

15. Good luck with that

[oberliner]

14. What happened three years ago?

What made you decide to call it Apartheid rather than a complex situation?

[shira]

16. in other words, people who don't think the facts matter much and prefer narratives over reality