#NewCNNShows Case of Emergency: Apartheid Israeli Style By Eileen Fleming Exclusive to The Arab Daily News Last week, the Pentagon criticized the Israeli military’s “civilian casualties in Gaza” as “too high” yet released more ammunition from the War Reserve Stockpile of Ammunition established in the 1990’s for use by both countries in “case of emergency” defense officials confirmed Wednesday. Defense Department spokesman Col. Steve Warren was quoted by The Stars and Stripes, “And it’s become clear that the Israelis need to do more…protecting civilian life.” Since Israel implemented Operation Protective Edge on July 8th more than 1,300 people, mostly Palestinian civilians have been killed in the relentless airstrikes and ground incursions. Warren was asked why the Pentagon was providing ammunition to the Israeli military despite inflicting too many civilian casualties and calling for a cease-fire. “This is part of our ongoing and our long-standing cooperative defense agreement with the Israelis. When they request to purchase ammunition or munitions, we sell it to them,” he said. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his part in ending South African apartheid. Last week Tutu said: The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s ultimately brought the apartheid state - bloodlessly - to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africa’s economy, they were contributing to the repression of black South Africans. So they cut off apartheid’s oxygen supply. Where the world’s political and diplomatic leaders had failed, civil society succeeded. The crisis we are witnessing in Gaza today is not a Jewish or a Muslim crisis. It is a human crisis. Those who continue to do business with Israel fund the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo. Those who withdraw their business are saying Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace. Gaza is going to test who believes in the worth of human beings. In 2005, Palestinian civil society called for BDS/boycott, sanction, divest from Israel UNTIL the Occupation of Palestine ends. Recently the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation divested from Security firm G4S and the US Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21m from HP, Motorola Solutions, and Caterpillar. The BDS campaign targets companies including Hewlett Packard, G4S, Caterpillar, ABP and Veolia, which are either directly or indirectly financing activities in the occupied state of Palestine that serve Israeli settlements which are illegal under international law. Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in the illegal Israeli settlements. According to international law, every settlement is illegal as is the Michshol Hafrada. APATHEID-Nelson Mandela “Michshol Hafrada” is Hebrew for “The Separation Wall” and that translates to Apartheid Wall in Afrikaner. In this 90 seconds excerpted from 30 MINUTES WITH VANUNU, Israel’s Nuclear Whistle Blower invites Hillary Clinton and “all the Christians to come and see the real wailing Wall: The Apartheid Wall” “Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007] Looking at a map of the so called Holy Land today it is clear to see that Palestine has been “pushed into the sea” by being chopped into enclaves; that were called Bantustans during South African Apartheid days. Disappearing Pal 1946-2013 Israel’s Wall and over 600 checkpoints in the West Bank trap control and deny the indigenous people access to their land, jobs, families and holy sites. Evictions and home demolitions have become the status quo in the so-called Holy Land and since 1967 with over 22,000 dwellings -averaging eleven people per unit- bulldozed by Israeli forces because they interfered with settlement expansion. Israel ‘justifies’ the demolitions in three distinct categories: 1. Collective Punishment-homes of suspected terrorists-in reality that is anyone who opposes the occupation- and the families of suicide/homicide bombers. These punitive actions amount to 15% of the over 18,000 homes destroyed since 1967. 2. Administrative demolitions for lack of building permits- which Israel refuses to issue-account for 25%. In occupied east Jerusalem one out of four Palestinian homes have a demolition order. 3. “Security” the blanket response to injustices and illegal actions taken by a Government and its employees. “An apartheid society is much more than just a ‘settler colony’. It involves specific forms of oppression that actively strip the original inhabitants of any rights at all, whereas civilian members of the invader caste are given all kinds of sumptuous privileges.” A Little History of Apartheid Israeli Style On July 5, 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return by which Jews anywhere in the world, have a “right” to immigrate to Israel on the grounds that they are returning to their own state, even if they have never been there before. On July 14, 1952: The enactment of the Citizenship/Jewish Nationality Law, results in Israel becoming the only state in the world to grant a particular national-religious group—the Jews—the right to settle in it and gain automatic citizenship. In 1953, South Africa’s Prime Minister Daniel Malan becomes the first foreign head of government to visit Israel and returns home with the message that Israel can be a source of inspiration for white South Africans. In 1962, South African Prime Minister Verwoerd declares that Jews “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” On August 1, 1967, Israel enacted the Agricultural Settlement Law, which bans Israeli citizens of non-Jewish nationality- Palestinian Arabs- from working on Jewish National Fund lands, well over 80% of the land in Israel. Knesset member Uri Avnery stated: “This law is going to expel Arab cultivators from the land that was formerly theirs and was handed over to the Jews.” On April 4, 1969, General Moshe Dayan is quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz telling students at Israel’s Technion Institute that “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don’t even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don’t blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either… There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” On April 28, 1971: C. L. Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times, quoted South African Prime Minister John Vorster as saying that Israel is faced with an apartheid problem, namely how to handle its Arab inhabitants. Sulzberger wrote: “Both South Africa and Israel are in a sense intruder states. They were built by pioneers originating abroad and settling in partially inhabited areas.” On September 13, 1978, in Washington, D.C. The Camp David Accords are signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter. The Accords reaffirm U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which prohibit acquisition of land by force, call for Israel’s withdrawal of military and civilian forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and prescribe “full autonomy” for the inhabitants of the territories. Begin orally promises Carter to freeze all settlement activity during the subsequent peace talks. Once back in Israel, however, the Israeli prime minister continues to confiscate, settle, and fortify the occupied territories On September 13, 1985, Rep. George Crockett (D-MI), after visiting the Israeli-occupied West Bank, compares the living conditions there with those of South African blacks and concludes that the West Bank is an instance of apartheid that no one in the U.S. is talking about. In July 2000, President Bill Clinton convenes the Camp David II Peace Summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Clinton—not Barak—offers Arafat the withdrawal of some 40,000 Jewish settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, all of which are interconnected by roads that cover approximately 10% of the occupied land. Effectively, this divides the West Bank into at least two non-contiguous areas and multiple fragments. Palestinians would have no control over the borders around them, the air space above them, or the water reserves under them. Barak calls it a generous offer. Arafat refuses to sign. August 31, 2001: Durban, South Africa. Up to 50,000 South Africans march in support of the Palestinian people. In their “Declaration by South Africans on Apartheid and the Struggle for Palestine” they proclaim: “We, South Africans who lived for decades under rulers with a colonial mentality, see Israeli occupation as a strange survival of colonialism in the 21st century. Only in Israel do we hear of ‘settlements’ and ‘settlers.’ Only in Israel do soldiers and armed civilian groups take over hilltops, demolish homes, uproot trees and destroy crops, shell schools, churches and mosques, plunder water reserves, and block access to an indigenous population’s freedom of movement and right to earn a living. These human rights violations were unacceptable in apartheid South Africa and are an affront to us in apartheid Israel.” October 23, 2001: Ronnie Kasrils, a Jew and a minister in the South African government, co-authors a petition “Not in My Name,” signed by some 200 members of South Africa’s Jewish community said: “It becomes difficult, from a South African perspective, not to draw parallels with the oppression expressed by Palestinians under the hand of Israel and the oppression experienced in South Africa under apartheid rule.” Three years later, Kasrils will go to the Occupied Territories and conclude: “This is much worse than apartheid. Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armored vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale.” April 29, 2002: Boston, MA. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu says he is “very deeply distressed” by what he observed in his recent visit to the Holy Land, adding, “It reminded me so much of what happened in South Africa.” The Nobel peace laureate saw “the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.” Referring to Americans, he added, “People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful. Well, so what? The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.” When Minister of Intelligence in South African Government, Ronnie Kasrils visited Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, he wrote how it was “like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency. It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints — more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers on the trigger…A journey from one West Bank town to another that could take 20 minutes by car now takes seven hours for Palestinians, with manifold indignities at the hands of teenage soldiers…The monstrous apartheid wall cuts off East Jerusalem…Bethlehem too is totally enclosed by the wall, with two gated entry points. The Israelis have added insult to injury by plastering the entrances with giant scenic posters welcoming tourists to Christ’s birthplace.” The Wall or as Israel prefers to spin it as a ‘security barrier’, is designed to crush the human spirit as much as to enclose the Palestinians in ghettos. Like a reptile, it transforms its shape and cuts across agricultural lands as a steel-and-wire barrier, with watchtowers, ditches, patrol roads and alarm systems. At 700km long and still growing with a height of 8m to 9m in places, it dwarfs the Berlin Wall. The purpose of the barrier becomes clearest in open country. Its route cuts huge swathes into the West Bank to incorporate into Israel the illegal Jewish settlements — some of which are huge towns — and annexes more and more Palestinian territory. If The Wall is truly to keep out terrorists, why was it not built on Israeli land? Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad explained: It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers.” The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine, has shrunk to perhaps 10% to 12% of living space for its inhabitants, and is split into several fragments, including the fertile Jordan Valley, which is a security preserve for Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defence Force. Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically sealed prison…roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in apartheid South Africa. On December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his relentless work confronting and challenging South Africa’s Apartheid regime spoke to The Guardian: “I’ve been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. I have seen the humiliation at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. “Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice…If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.” Jonathan Ben Artzi a nephew of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, refused to serve in the IDF and went to jail for 18 months pleaded with US: netanyahus nephew apartheid israel Sometimes it takes a good friend to tell you when enough is enough. As they did with South Africa two decades ago, concerned citizens across the US can make a difference by encouraging Washington to get the message to Israel that this cannot continue… If Americans truly are our friends, they should shake us up and take away the keys, because right now we are driving drunk, and without this wake-up call, we will soon find ourselves in the ditch of an undemocratic, doomed state. The Establishment of Israel’s very statehood was contingent upon upholding the UN UNIVERSAL DECLARATION of HUMAN RIGHTS and as a Member State, America is obligated to hold ALL other Member States to it. “On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.” – May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the establishment of Israel Israel will know Security when Justice is done to Palestine, which begins by Ending the Occupation. Justice requires equal human rights, liberty and self-determination for all people. Justice can be had through upholding International Law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. SOURCES: Mail & Guardian, Israel 2007: Worse than Apartheid, by Ronnie Kasrils Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77. The Link, “About That Word Apartheid”, April-May 2007, Published by Americans for Middle East Understanding thearabdailynews/2014/08/02/newcnnshows-case-emergency-apartheid-israeli-style/
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 00:43:59 +0000
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