Yesterday was the 25 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. History is never stagnant, it is a tapestry we all create together. And in our life time, history must be made again. The Israel Apartheid wall still stands, over twice as tall, and 4.7 times longer than the Berlin Wall. Israel is an apartheid state. Apartheid is not some undefined word, it has a very definite and legal definition. Article 2 of the United Nations General Assembly (1973) defines Apartheid as a system of control committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. Please note that race as defined above does not refer to simple skin colour or the like, but rather as any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life. This definition is in use by Israel as it is a signatory to the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Examples of Israels apartheid include: -Jewish-only settlements inside of Palestine as well as inside Israel through both formal/legalised discrimination and informal/societal discrimination. -The ID system which segregates people based on their ethnicity. Separate roads for Israeli and Palestinian citizens (similar to how South Africa had seperate buses and public utilities). -Military checkpoints. -Discriminatory marriage law. -The West Bank barrier wall, which is a physical manifestation of this segregation. -The use of Palestinians as cheap labour through exploitation by denying them equal workplace rights. -Inequities in infrastructure, legal rights, and access to land and resources between Palestinians and Israeli residents in the Israeli-occupied territories, similar to how blacks in South Africa were segregated to poor, underfunded ghettos. There is an established system of dominance maintained by the Israeli state, over the oppressed Palestinian people. This wall must fall.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 01:50:22 +0000