Zionists order Corbyn to follow John Vorster to Yad Vashem

This is interesting.  Having jumped through hoops to appease the UK's Zionist movement it turns out that Jeremy Corbyn may have disobeyed a direct order to indulge in a bit of holocaust hypocrisy at Israel's holocaust museum, Yad Vashem.  Here's The Guardian:

Jeremy Corbyn faced fresh criticism over his handling of antisemitism allegations after Labour’s sister party in Israel said it had had no reply to a letter its leader [Isaac Herzog] sent to him a month ago expressing dismay and inviting him to Jerusalem to see the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum.

Visits to Yad Vashem are something of a walk of shame given some of its past visitors.  Here's John Vorster, a one time president of apartheid era South Africa and a nazi internee during WWII:

The picture is from Yad Vashem's own website.

And apart from Israel's own leaders, Vorster isn't the only racist to have graced Yad Vashem with his presence.   Here's Poland's Michal Kaminski of the virulently nationalist, Civic Platform Party visited Yad Vashem too:

Here's Tony Greenstein on Kaminski:

Kaminski led the campaign against a national Polish apology for the burning alive of up to 900 Jews in Jedwabne by Poles in 1941 (see )  Kaminski was formerly a member of the fascist National Revival of Poland Party. 

Vorster and Kaminski are just the kind of people you might expect to turn up at the jewel in the Zionist crown.  That tribute to Jewish suffering that says that no-one else matters and Israel can do no wrong.

And so to Corbyn:

Herzog invited Corbyn to bring a delegation to Yad Vashem to witness that the last time the Jews were forcibly transported “it was not to Israel but to their deaths”. An Israeli Labour party official confirmed that it had “not had a reply” after rumours circulated in the Jewish community in London that no response had been received in Jerusalem or issued from London.

 So no answer from Corbyn so far so we can only hope that if he does ever answer he won't make that walk of shame.

But not content with implying that Corbyn has done something wrong, rather than the first thing he's done right since this whole orchestrated smear campaign began, Toby Helm (The Observer journo who wrote the piece) managed to take do something no self-respecting journalist should ever do.  He took a Zionist's words at face value.  Let's see that again:

the last time the Jews were forcibly transported “it was not to Israel but to their deaths”

Now that's just not true.  There have now been many instances of Jews being forced to go to Israel when they haven't wanted.  Even West Germany back in the 1980s handcuffed Soviet Jews and bundled them on to El Al planes bound for Israel.  Poland had an antisemitic campaign in the 1960s where an agreement with Golda Meir had Jews being forced to go to the Israel they didn't even approve of.  And with the collapse of the Soviet Union Jews who wished to go elsewhere once again found themselves being forced to go to Israel. For that unhappy episode, see 972 Mag.

Samuel L Jackson and the Apartheid Connection

Samuel L Jackson caused a fair bit of dismay among anti-racists on twitter just recently with this "selfie".

Celebrate Israel Parade in NY today pic.twitter.com/AIUVMRYou5
— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) June 1, 2014

Here are a couple of twitter responses I've taken from Ha'aretz:

@SamuelLJackson Uh. Why would you support something like this? Israel is an apartheid state.

@SamuelLJackson Wow, and I admired you :( Unfollow it is then....

@SamuelLJackson wow, pretty sad to hear that you support an apartheid state. You of all people.

That's just three of many responses from people who are clearly surprised at Jackson's, at best, cavalier attitude to racist statehood.  But I remember him promoting Barclays Bank and Barclays among people of my generation - ie, fifty somethings - will always be remembered as the apartheid bank.

Here's The Daily Telegraph from as far back as 2002 Jackson's role in a then new Barclays ad campaign:

What happens Hollywood star Samuel L Jackson (Pulp Fiction, the mad kilted drug dealer in 51st State) offers up a variety of soliloquies straight to camera about money.

One talks about whether money is really evil; another about how it's better to know who you're dealing with; and a third about how people instinctively mistrust advice about money.

 So, surprise surprise, it's all about money with advertising as with banking.

Now look at Barclays connection to apartheid South Africa.  This is from News24.com:

I remember well 1977 and the so-called Carlton conference, at which Botha summoned all the leaders of big business and asked them to help the regime to beat the international arms embargo imposed by the United Nations.

The Barclays pledge
 
After that meeting Barclays bank pledged a whopping R90m to the apartheid army for its defence force bonds, and I remember well The Citizen, ever the chief supporter and main praise-singer of the racist and oppressive apartheid regime, praising Barclays and carrying a cartoon showing two uniformed apartheid troopies lugging away a hefty Barclays cheque for R90m.

That bank was an unrepentant supporter of apartheid, and I would argue that their financial help for apartheid delayed our liberation by at least a generation.

Now it's just possible that Jackson knew nothing of Barclays' involvement with apartheid South Africa.  It's possible that he didn't know about Israel's support for the apartheid regime, including nuclear weapons collaboration.  It's also possible that he doesn't know that Israel is a colonial settler state based on ethnic cleansing and segregationist laws.  Israel does, after all, get a very favourable press in the USA.  But can he really be so ignorant that there is at least some controversy around Israel that might be worth checking out.

Back in the day, Samuel L Jackson worked for the apartheid bank for money but when he did a selfie at the Celebrate Israel Parade, he gave racists a freebie.  He could at least stand back and look at himself and stop being such a bad motherfucker.

De Klerk ought to know that apartheid is not simply about numbers

But apparently Mr De Klerk doesn't know that if this Jewish Telegraphic Agency headline is anything to go by:

De Klerk: Israel not an apartheid state, but could become one

We know where this is going but let's take a look anyway:

Israel could become an apartheid state without the creation of a Palestinian state, former South African leader F.W. de Klerk said on Israeli television.

 De Klerk, the last president in his country under apartheid, said in an interview Tuesday on Israel’s Channel 2 that it was “unfair” to call Israel an apartheid state now.

In Israel to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa, de Klerk said Israel may have to contend with one state for two peoples.

“The test will be does everybody living then in such a unitary state, will everybody have full political rights?” he said. “Will everybody enjoy their full human rights? If they will, it’s not an apartheid state.

So far, so bad.  Palestinian Arabs within Israel's pre-67 boundaries do not have the same rights as Jews in a variety of areas.  And even if they did, the Palestinians under occupation have endured their inferior status for nearly fifty years now. What will happen in the future to make that apartheid that hasn't been happening these last almost five decades.

And then there's the major issue of the people of Palestine who have been forced to leave their homeland since 1947.  Jews from all around the world have more right, under Israel's racist laws, to live in Palestine than the native non-Jewish population who have been forced to leave.  And if we do choose to live there we have more rights there than those who have managed to remain.

Many aspects of Israel's governance within its pre-1967 boundaries qualify for the apartheid label since apartheid is not about the quantity of the unjustly governed but the quality of the governance.  But of course it's chutzpah to describe Palestinians simply as a minority.  Taking all of them together, West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, the bits in between and those in exile, Palestinians are a majority and zionists subject them to minority rule.

Having said all that, the apartheid label has its limitations.  I already mentioned something far worse: it's the ethnic cleansing, stupid!

Yitzhak Shamir on Spitting Image back in the day

I found this on youtube just now. It's Spitting Image doing Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli Prime Minister, on BBC's Mastermind where contestants choose a specialist subject to answer questions on.

The programme ran from 1984 to 1996 and Shamir was Israel's PM from 1983 to 1984 and then again from 1986 to 1992.  I'm guessing this programme went out some time in the early 1990s when apartheid still ruled in South Africa and the intifada was in full swing in Palestine.

Spitting Image was enormously popular in the UK and it's not surprising it has a lengthy Wikipedia entry. What is surprising is that this Shamir Mastermind appearance doesn't warrant a mention in the Spitting Image entry's International Politicians section:

Spitting Image lampooned US President Ronald Reagan (voiced by Frank Welker in the Ronnie and Nancy special) as a bumbling, nuke-obsessed fool in comparison with his advisors Edwin Meese andCaspar Weinberger. Next to his bed were red buttons labelled 'Nuke' and 'Nurse'. His wife Nancy was the butt of cosmetic surgery jokes.

Mikhail Gorbachev had his forehead birthmark in the shape of hammer and sickle. All other Russians looked like Leonid Brezhnev, often said "da" ("yes") and talked about potatoes. In Russia it was snowing even indoors and the Soviet television had extremely low-tech visual effects.

François Mitterrand was wearing a beret and a garlic wreath. P. W. Botha was shown as a racist cleverly disguising his views (once he had a badge "anti-anti-apartheid"). Adolf Hitler incognito had a house at9 Downing Street. Some appearances were also made by Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

Other international caricatures included Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger; George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle; Konstantin Chernenko, Raisa Gorbachova and Boris Yeltsin.

No mention of Shamir. As it happens I couldn't imagine that piece appearing on UK mainstream television today what with comparing Israel unfavourably to apartheid South Africa and all but surely that makes it even more worthy of mention.

This is Zionism But don't call it Apartheid

I came to the infographic below via this tweet:

Discriminatory treatment of Palestinian children under Israeli law - infographic from @972mag #apartheid #Palestine goo.gl/kOCmN
— Gem (@whatgemmathinks) May 6, 2013

You'd think that Israel's treatment of Palestinian children might fall foul of some international humanitarian law about "cruel and unusual punishments" but of course there's nothing unusual about the way Israel treats them.It's been going on for decades.

The twitterer who linked to +972mag blogs at A Westerner in Palestine which is well worth a look at.

On the death of a Prime Minister

From Private Eye magazine, obviously.

Calling Israel an apartheid state not antisemitic but probably too polite

Here's another interesting thing that came out of the Fraser v UCU Employment Tribunal Judgment.  The tribunal clearly rejected, maybe ten times, the idea that support for the Palestinian cause or BDS amounted to racism against Jews but they avoided ruling on what constitutes antisemitism.

Here's what they said about that little difficulty:

For some sympathetic to Israel, what is seen as disproportionate or excessive attention to the Israel/Palestine conflict may constitute or evidence anti-Semitism, conscious or unconscious. For others, the determining factor is the tone or content of the language used, in particular where what are seen as anti-Semitic tropes are employed. Many sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, while not excluding the possibility that some criticism of Israel may be actuated by anti-Jewish prejudice, complain that the charge of anti-Semitism is largely raised as a device to distract attention from injustices (as they see them) perpetrated in the name of Israel.  Among the vast field of witnesses on the Claimant’s side, there was an interesting spread of opinions on where the line is, or should be, drawn. So, to take one of many examples, Mr Whine of the Community Security Trust, an organisation which provides security, training and advice for British Jews, did not consider that comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa were inherently antiSemitic, whereas the Claimant did. 

See that last bit?

Mr Whine of the Community Security Trust, an organisation which provides security, training and advice for British Jews, did not consider that comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa were inherently antiSemitic, whereas the Claimant did. 

And yet when a bunch of BICOM speakers engaged in a debate at Birmingham University participants weren't even allowed to ask if Israel is an apartheid state let alone answer in the affirmative.

At the time, Ben White explained why the A-word was banned:

Further crucial context is the adoption by the Birmingham student union in 2010 of the notoriously politicised and discredited ‘EUMC working definition of antisemitism’. This 2005 document, left to gather dust by the EUMC’s successor body the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), has been ably critiqued by Richard Kuper here, here, and here, and also by Antony Lerman here.

But now someone from the self-appointed defenders of the UK Jewish community against antisemitism have said that calling Israel an apartheid state isn't antisemitic.  So what was the problem?  In fairness, apartheid in South Africa meant white minority rule over the black majority whereas Jews are currently a majority in Israel.  Of course that majority is owed to ethnic cleansing which had been on-going for several decades now.

I don't suppose the CST's Michael Whine was being polite to Israel.  I think he may have taken stock of those zionist witnesses around him and decided they were so obviously lacking in integrity he didn't want to sacrifice his own reputation.

Obama thank you for supporting our apartheid state

A wonderful tweet from @Dalal:

#Obama thank you for supporting our Apartheid state: #Israel#ObamaInIsraelyoutu.be/nfIcql9DJPI
— Dalal (@DalalAlrmuny) March 23, 2013

See? Great stuff.

Anti-apartheid sports boycott and the lessons for Palestine Solidarity

Here's a good write-up of the meeting at SOAS I announced a few days ago:

Lessons of the anti-apartheid sports boycott for Palestinian solidarity

Posted on February 8, 2013by Gavin Brown

On Tuesday 5 February, Helen Yaffe represented the Non-Stop Against Apartheid project at a meeting organised by Football Beyond Borders at SOAS.  The meeting asked, “What can the boycott of the U21 UEFA Football Championships in Israel learn from the Anti-Apartheid Movement?” Here we offer a report on the evening’s discussions.

The meeting opened with the inspiring, informative and emotive film Have you heard from Johannesburg: Fair Play (2010) about the worldwide campaign to get apartheid South Africa banned from international sports competitions. It focused first on efforts, initiated by South African activist Dennis Brutus, to have the country expelled from the Olympics and later how activists mobilized to stop the South African rugby team – the Springboks – from playing in Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the late 1960s. Following the film, Patsy Pillar, a white South African woman, one of the founders of the exile-initiated boycott movement in Britain in 1959, reflected on how this strategy took roots in Britain and developed into an international solidarity movement.

Helen Yaffe’s presentation about the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group (CLAAG) briefly explained its origins and purpose, and summarized the types of boycott and solidarity actions the group engaged in. Illustrated with photos from the Non-Stop Picket,occupations of South African Airways and other protests, Helen then drew out the key principles and/or lessons which could be adopted in boycott campaigning:

• Boycotts should be part of active political campaign, not a passive action by individual consumers;
• Use all available channels simultaneously, from pressure group tactics to direct action in the streets;
• Make the campaign/boycott relevant to people in Britain by relating to racial, class and sexual oppression – identification will increase participation;
• Defence campaigns are vitally important – success brings publicity and builds confidence. (There were over 700 arrests on the Non-Stop Picket of the South African Embassy, but the group won 90% of court cases);
• Educate activists. They must know what they are fighting for and against, especially with regard to the role of British political/economic interests;
• Don’t be held back by disapproval from ‘respectable’ forces;
• Internal democracy encourages participation: Everyone should have speaking rights; there should be no censorship of literature or groups.

Springbok Reception Committee banner (Source: City Group)

Next Maha Rezeq, a Palestinian activist described how Palestinians grow up in struggle and affirmed the importance of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. The final panelist was Geoff Lee from the Red Card to Israel campaign, who detailed their work to date in demanding the relocation of the under 21s UEFA football championship, which is due to take place in Israel in June 2013. When he mentioned that UEFA are meeting in London on 24 May, it was suggested that this would provide an ideal opportunity for a vibrant protest, inspired by those thousands of courageous and uncompromising anti-apartheid activists in the late 1960s, to demand that the games are moved out of Israel.

The chair, Timesh Pillay, did an excellent job of opening, summarising and encouraging participation, and there were numerous questions and comments from the audience of around 50, mostly students, several specifically about the Red Card campaign. One of the more general questions asked whether the treatment of Palestinians by Israel could be compared to the apartheid system in South Africa. Helen referred to comments from Desmond Tutu, a black leader of the liberation movement in South Africa, who condemns ‘Israeli apartheid’, and she questioned the absence of a powerful boycott campaign against Israel like the one against apartheid in South Africa.

There are just four months left to build an effective boycott campaign to demand the relocation of the under 21s UEFA football championships. Individuals and groups are encouraged to get involved. The next meeting takes place at SOAS on Thursday 14 February at 7pm.

 Got that?  There's another meeting on 14th February 2013 at SOAS, presumably in the same room but I'll let you know.

ANC backs BDS at last

More good news.  According to the Jewish Chronicle, the African National Congress, South Africa's ruling party, has officially adopted a boycott of Israel as policy.  You'd think this was only natural given the ANC's struggle against settler colonialism and apartheid in its own country but you'd be wrong.

Back in 2004 Ehud Olmert visited South Africa to sign a trade agreement between the State of Israel and South Africa.  I reported it at the time but the links have all expired:

The new South Africa has signed a trade agreement with the last (hopefully) of the apartheid states. According to Reuters, Israel's Ehud Olmert hailed a "new" era of South Africa ties. All very strange when you consider that Israel had ties with South Africa through the whole of the apartheid era. What is new here is that the ANC seems to have lost its political memory.

I had to do a bit of a search for the old info and I came up with this from Fin24.com, a South African mostly business and financial news site:

South Africa's improved relationship with Israel took a concrete dimension this week with the conclusion of a trade agreement and the first official visit by a leading politician from the Jewish state in over a decade.

The then South African deputy foreign minister even jumped through a few hoops to defend the then government's position:

In Pretoria, deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad stressed in a meeting with pro-Palestinian groups on the eve of Olmert's arrival, was trying to be impartial by engaging both Tel Aviv and Palestinian groups.

So I don't know what's become of the agreement but here's the JC on the situation now:

South Africa’s ruling party announced that the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement will now form part of its official policy.

The African National Congress (ANC) endorsed the campaign in response to a call from pro-Palestinian activists, including BDS South Africa.

The resolution read: “The ANC is unequivocal in its support for the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination, and unapologetic in its view that the Palestinians are the victims and the oppressed in the conflict with Israel.”

Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, from BDS South Africa, said the move was “the most authoritative endorsement of the BDS against Israel campaign.”

 Let's hope it's not just lip service but you never know.....

Can you be anti-apartheid but pro-zionist?

Well you can certainly try if your name's Benjamin Pogrund. You see there's been a little wave of panic sweeping over the zionist movement since a poll established that rather a lot of Israelis favour a formalised apartheid system if they found themselves in a Jewish minority situation.  This is rather like saying that if the ethnic cleansing lets them down they could get really nasty.

But anyway, Benjamin Pogrund was born and grew up in the old apartheid South Africa and now he has exercised his privilege as a Jew to live in occupied Palestine, aka, The State of Israel.  Here he is in The Guardian's Comment is Free section explaining how his personal background equips him for this rather tricky hasbara exercise:

I know about apartheid. I was born in South Africa and spent 26 years as a journalist specialising in reporting apartheid; I have also written several books about it. I only left South Africa because my newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail, of which I was then deputy editor, was closed down by its commercial owners under pressure from the government. We paid the price for being the country's leading voice against apartheid.

I also am familiar with Israel. I have lived in Jerusalem since 1997 and for more than 12 years was founder director of the Yakar Center for Social Concern whose purpose was to promote dialogue between Jews and Christians, Jews and Muslims, and Israelis and Palestinians. I was surprised by the survey's findings: could it really be true that most Jews in Israel support apartheid?

Ultimately he is saying that Israel isn't an apartheid state and that its Jewish population doesn't particularly want it to be and he should know because he lived under apartheid as a dissident working for a dissident newspaper. As luck would have it, Ben White has made quite a speciality out of exposing the apartheid nature of the State of Israel before and after the occupation of 1967 and here he is on the al Jazeera website explaining what Benjamin Pogrund ought to know. It is not addressed to Pogrund but it could be. Here's a little taster:

Firstly, a clarification about terminology. To talk about Israeli apartheid is not to suggest a precise equivalence with the policies of the historic regime in South Africa. Rather, apartheid is a crime under international law independent of any comparison (see here, here, here, and here). As former UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard put it in the foreword to my first book: "It is Israel's own version of a system that has been universally condemned."

It is impossible to understand this "system" without remembering that its foundations were laid by the ethnic cleansing that took place in the Nakba. With the establishment of Israel in 1948, up to 90 per cent of the Palestinians who would have been inside the new state were expelled, their properties confiscated, and their return prevented. As these refugees were denied citizenship and their right to return ignored, Israel passed legislation to open up the new borders to Jews everywhere.

 Benjamin Pogrund has some form for this defence of zionism using his former opposition to apartheid.

Pot calls kettle an apartheid state

I've just seen this in the Jerusalem Post:

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon late Wednesday hit back against South Africa over its decision to mandate special labels on products coming from settlements, saying the decision proves the country is still an apartheid state.

"The changes that took place in South Africa over the years did not yield a truly fundamental change," Ayalon said. "South Africa remains an apartheid state."

 Pots, kettles, etc.

Was South Africa an apartheid state in 1967?

Well according to the Zionist Central Council of Manchester it can't have been.  I'm simply following the logic of their planned response to a Palestine Solidarity picket of the women's football match between Wales and Israel.  Here's Wrexham.com

Wrexham plays host to the Welsh womans football team’s European Championship qualifying match against Israel on Wednesday night at the Racecourse – kick off 6pm.

Tickets are free and can be ordered from this page on Glyndwr Uni’s site.

The ‘Palestine Solidarity Campaign’ is organising a protest picket of the game outside the stadium, saying “Palestinian teams have consistently been refused visas to travel to competitions, and restrictions on movement both within the West Bank and between the West Bank and Gaza further compound the difficulties that Palestinian footballers face. In 2006 the football stadium in Gaza was bombed by the Israeli Army.”

Now check out the ZCCM response:

The Zionist Central Council of Manchester are also urging their supporters to head to the Racecourse “with Israeli flags to show your support for the Israeli womens football team”, but also encouraging their supporters to “send the Palestine Solidarity Campaign a message that Israel is not an Apartheid country, but rather a country that has brought major advancements in technology and healthcare to the rest of the world. ”

The world's first ever heart transplant was performed by Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967.  No apartheid there then.

A quick word on Israeli apartheid

As with South Africa back in the bad old days, Israel's main mechanism for segregation within the pre-67 borders is the ID card.  Catch this throwaway line in a Guardian piece by Harriet Sherwood titled Israelis: Portrait of a people in tense times:

Despite his Israeli citizenship, Youssef does not consider himself as Israeli, but a Palestinian who lives in Israel. He shows his Israeli identity card. Until 2005, it used to categorise him as an "Arab", but after many court battles ID cards now show a row of asterisks for all Israeli citizens. However, Jews are identified as such by their date of birth, shown according to the Hebrew as well as Gregorian calendar.

That's a bizarre thing for a democracy to do.

Cornerstones of Israeli apartheid make for a one state solution

Here's a very useful article in Jadalliya which I just found via the Angry Arab News Service In it Noura Erakat explains why the singular legal regime necessitates one state solution by reference to the various laws and practices which allow for Jewish colonial settlement and the dispossession and segregation of the Palestinians:

The Law of Return (1950) defines a Jewish national as someone born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and is not a member of any other religion. Said nationality confers exclusive rights and privileges including the right to enter Israel at any time, to obtain citizenship at any time, and to live in Israel and/or the settlements in the West Bank. In practice, this distinction affords more rights to Jewish nationals living outside Israel who have never visited or cared to visit the State than it does the State’s own non-Jewish citizens. 

Israel’s efforts to maintain a Jewish majority drives its policy of forced population transfer throughout Mandate Palestine. Population transfer seeks to alter the demographic composition of an area by moving people into and/or out of the area. Specific components of the policy of population transfer amount to war crimes under the Rome Statute (arts. 7 and 8) and the Geneva Convention IV (arts. 49 and 147). The Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the former Commission on Human Rights has clearly defined population transfer as:

the movement of people as a consequence of political and/or economic processes in which the State Government or State-authorized agencies participate. These processes have a number of intended or unintended results that affect the human rights of the transferred population, as well as the inhabitants of an area into which settlers are transferred. (…) The State’s role may involve financial subsidies, planning, public information, military action, recruitment of settlers, legislation or other judicial action, and even the administration of justice.

This policy is as prevalent within the West Bank as it is within Israel. In both instances, it aims to facilitate the migration and settlement of Jewish nationals whilst ensuring their dominant and legal status at the expense of the rights of Palestinian Arabs in order to compel and/or enforce their forcible displacement. Said policy, together with other policies based on the distinction between Jewish nationals and non-Jewish nationals, specifically violates Articles II(c) and II(d) of the Apartheid Convention. 

Israel’s discriminatory land laws constitute a core component of the policy of population transfer. This litany of laws begins with the Absentee Property Law (1950), which authorized the State to establish a Custodian to confiscate the lands of those persons deemed absentees or present absentees. Absentees refers to those refugees who fled during the war and who were denied entry as a matter of fact. Similarly, present absentees refers to those Palestinians who fled their homes but remained within Israel, also known as internally displaced persons. They too were not permitted to lay claim to their homes and lands. Under the Absentee Property law, the Custodian transferred the lands to the Development Authority (DA) whose purpose was to “to work with relevant Government agencies to acquire and prepare lands for the benefit of newly arriving Jewish immigrants.” Under the law, the DA may transfer acquired land only to the State and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to be used for the exclusive benefit of the “Jewish people.” Through this land law, Israel has transferred ninety-three percent of Palestinian lands owned or collectively held by Palestinians before 1948 into ‘Israel lands’ and cannot be challenged in court because it has been nationalized. Consider that Palestinian-Israelis who constitute one-fifth of the population use or control 3.4 percent of the land today. 

And she concludes:

Beyond appropriate legal regimes is a question of pragmatism. While two-state adherents emphasize the pragmatic nature of the two-state solution relative to the idealistic proponents of a single and democratic state, the facts on the ground demonstrate firstly, the inextricable population distribution of Palestinian Arab and Jewish populations. Indeed, the Gaza Strip may be the only territory where there exists a homogenous population. In light of this, achieving a two-state solution will not only necessitate land swaps but population transfers of Jewish and Palestinian populations as well. Such transfers should be opposed by the international community as they are likely to fuel accelerated ethnic cleansing policies akin to those seen in the former Yugoslavia. Advocating for equality among citizens of a single state is arguably more practical than is supporting the forced removal of ethnic populations aimed at achieveing homogeneous ethno-national entities. In a quickly shifting Middle East where citizenship, democracy, and plurality have gained increasing salience it is especially troubliing to advocate for reverse trends in Israel and the OPT. Not only is the two-state solution insufficient to treat Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, but it is impracticable as well. 

 I wonder if Norman Finkelstein has read it...

Israel coordinates "freelance" hasbara

It appears that Israel is to coordinate this year's hasbara efforts to counter Israel Apartheid Week.  Here"s Ha'aretz:

New York City native Avi Abelow is leaving his job, his wife and four children in Efrat to visit the state of California for 10 days. His plan - and that of nearly 100 other Israelis who are boarding flights this week to 20 cities in Europe, Africa and North America - is to talk. And to talk a lot.

"This is definitely a very unique situation," says Abelow, a 37-year-old movie producer and independent advocate for Israel, whose "Israel Straight Talk" Facebook page boasts nearly 14,000 "likes." "I don't know how many other countries can have this phenomenon of people basically leaving their lives, not getting reimbursed for the time lost, and taking the time to talk about their country."

Abelow and his colleagues have been designated the "Faces of Israel" in a Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry initiative, which is deliberately timed to coincide with the eighth annual Israeli Apartheid Week in support of the Palestinian Civil Society's call for "Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions." A press release issued Wednesday by the ministry called it "anti-Israel Hate Week."

"Anti-Israel Hate Week"? I quite like anti-Israel week.

Ethiopians protest against racism in Israel

This reminds me of a joke I heard a long time ago about the Israeli Education Ministry ordering teachers to honour the legacy of the late Rahavam Ze'evi, an open advocate of the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine.  A teacher told the her class how courageous Ze'evi had been in advocating the, ahem, "Transfer" of the Palestinian population. A child said, "that's wonderful, Miss, when can we do that to the Ethiopians." The teacher said "don't be so racist in my class!"

Anyway, a couple of days ago Ha'aretz reported on a demo by Ethiopians and "representatives of various groups who feel weak in Israeli society."

"The phenomenon of racism harms us all, and it is impossible to separate the discrimination of Ethiopians in Israel from the discrimination of Arab residents or Russian-speakers," said Rabia Elsagir, a resident of Shfaram and member of The Coalition Against Racism in Israel, who attended the protest with a handful of people from the Arab sector.

There are of course many examples of racism in Israel but two more occurred just recently. One was the water throwing incident in the Knesset just the other day:




For a comment on this see Magnes Zionist.


The other is a further degeneration of the State of Israel into an explicitly apartheid situation within Israel itself and not simply between Israel and the occupied territories.  The Israeli High Court has now effectively ratified Israel's so-called Citizenship Law which spells out a crucial difference between the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Israel within the pre-67 boundaries.  Again here is Ha'aretz:

Israel’s High Court rejected on Wednesday petitions against the Citizenship Law, which prevents Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs from receiving Israeli citizenship or residency. Six judges voted to reject the petitions, while five voted to accept them.

Israel generally grants citizenship to spouses of Israelis in a gradual process. In the spirit of this process, a similar process was instituted for the naturalization of spouses of permanent residents, though the process is a little longer. A 2002 temporary order excluded Palestinian spouses from these processes and barred them from becoming Israeli citizens.

 And again Magnes Zionist has a scathing comment:

Yesterday, the State of Israel became the first western state whose High Court ruled that some citizens have fewer fundamental rights than other citizens based on their ethnicity. Actually, it had done so before, but yesterday it rejected  the most sustained challenge to the “Citizenship Law,” which bars the non-Israeli spouses of Israeli Palestinians from becoming citizens. So while an Israeli Jew from Brooklyn has the right of marrying anybody she likes, and having her spouse naturalized, a native Palestinian Israeli citizen cannot marry  a distant relative who lives in a town five minutes from her house – unless that relative was a Palestinian collaborator, working for the Israelis, and then, only by special approval of the Minister of Interior.

Yet another answer to Goldstone and all those who try to make out that Israel isn't an apartheid state.

Ask a man who knows: De Klerk answers Goldstone

I was sent this BBC Radio 4 programme recently. It actually went out on 29 December 2011. It has De Klerk, the last white president of South Africa, explaining why apartheid had no future, not in South Africa anyway.

What I supported as a younger politician was exactly what the whole world now supports for Israel and Palestine, namely separate nation states will be the solution. In our case we failed. There were three main reasons. We failed because the whites wanted too much land for themselves. We failed because the majority of blacks said this is not how we want our political rights. And we failed because we became economically totally integrated. We became an economic omelet and you can never again divide an omelet into the white and the yellow of the egg. And we realized in the early eighties we had landed in a place which has become morally unjustified.

Goldstone denied the apartheid analogy here.

A poster for the sport boycott of apartheid-era South Africa

Israeli pigs in action