Apartheid Israel roundup

Last summer, I put up a couple posts on what I called "Jim Crow Israel."  But after reading more about apartheid, how it functions in Israel and the occupied territories, and about the experiences of those in the American south who labeled the situation there as apartheid, I've decided "Apartheid Israel" is a more fitting description for the events described below which provide a few examples (from just this week!) of the widespread and institutionalized racism that exists in that country.

First, a Palestinian-Israeli couple is filing suit after being denied residency in a predominantly Jewish town.  (Supposedly they failed a "suitability test.") 

An Israeli Arab [sic] couple petitioned the High Court of Justice this week, asking it to issue a temporary injunction that would allow them to live in the predominately Jewish town of Rakefet.

The couple, residents of Sakhnin, said they were denied residency in the town because they are Arab, but say that local authorities in Rakefet and officials at the Israel Lands Authority found an alternative way to keep them from moving into the town- by stating that according to a "suitability test," the couple are "not fit to live in the town."

On Tuesday, four Palestinian citizens of Israel were denied entry into a shopping mall because they were not Jewish.

Four law students at the Netanya College were refused entry at the city's Sharon Mall on Tuesday because the security guards identified them as being non-Jewish.

The students were asked to leave after one of them could not produce an identity card, even though his colleagues did present theirs. As they were ordered to leave, a guard sarcastically told them: "Now you have something to do your clerkship about."

Israeli airline El Al refused to fly the body of a Palestinian citizen of Israel back to Israel for burial.

Balad Chairman Azmi Bishara on Tuesday asked El AL General Manager Haim Romano to clarify why his company allegedly refused to fly the corpse of an Israeli Muslim woman on one of its flights.

The woman's family asked Bisahra to intervene after their request to transport her body from the U.S., where she died last weekend, was allegedly turned down by company representatives.

Adalah, a fantastic organization, filed a report with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which will meet next week to review Israel's compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.  It's pretty damning, if you've got the time to read it.

Finally, for your viewing (dis)pleasure, some Jewish colonists in action in the West Bank. (Note: Both contain graphic language.)

This video was released by B'Tselem and shows colonist Yifat Alkoby "assaulting and swearing at women and girls from the Abu-'Ayesha family, in Tel Rumeida, Hebron."  Note the Israeli occupation soldier standing by and doing nothing.

This one was filmed by a British film crew, also in Tel Rumeida, Hebron.

And yet it is the Palestinians - facing a racist regime inside Israel and a racist military occupation in the territories - that the West is boycotting and making demands of?

Comments

[Womble]

Hello there Scott. Still rejoicing in your favorite fallacies, I see.

1)Rakefet is a "members only" community (translation: a bunch of uppity snobs seeking a place away from the lowly plebs). They would turn anyone down, Jew or Arab alike, if he wasn't filthy rich and well-connected like they are.

2)The mall story... I am not sure. Generally, taking extra precautions in such a case is quite justified; the terrorists coming our way are, unfortunately, invariably Arab, and playing political correctness at the expense of human lives would be absurd. What bothers me is that back in my days as a mall guard we weren't allowed to check IDs in the first place, except when there was a "hot" warning about a terrorist heading our way. The right to demand IDs from people normally requires authorization by the Israeli police, and in our mall only the shift managers and the mall's security officer had that authorization, not the guards at the door. So I reckon you're right about it being an act of racism. I don't think you can draw such broad conclusions from it though.

3)El-Al refusing to transport a body seems to me like Bishara's usual attention seeking. He's been known to routinely make unfounded claims like that before, and the last paragraphs of the article only reinforce that impression. Love the "lack of irrespect" though, maybe that is exactly what has transpired?

4)The Hebron settlement is a Kach stronghold, they don't even represent the settlers as a whole, let alone the entire Israel. Yifat Alkobi was convicted today for that disgusting little act of hers and for smashing windows of a Palestinian house:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3376671,00.html

[scott]

Ah...Womble! It's been a while.

Sorry, but the racist, apartheid nature of the state of Israel and its occupation is not a fallacy. Nor is it something I rejoice in.

Obviously, you disagree that a state which explicitly and institutionally favors one ethno-religious group at the expense of all others, and works to keep the favored ethno-religious group separate from all others, at the expense of the others, is problematic.

And I have no response to such a stance other than to find it disturbing and anti-human. So where does that leave us?

[Womble]

On different planets, I suppose.

Because unlike you, I live here, and I don't see Israel favoring the Jews much more than Germany favors the Germans, or Greece favors the Greeks. Were you to dive out of your favorite attribution fallacy and realize that not everything in this world boils down to race issues, you would perhaps began to understand what is REALLY happening here.

It's a tough task, selling the "apartheid" nonsense to an Israeli Jew whose female relative is married to an Arab ;)

[scott]

I don't see Israel favoring the Jews much more than Germany favors the Germans, or Greece favors the Greeks.

You know Womble, if Israel's population was 100% Jewish and they were all treated equally (as is not the case now) and the state was not established via the expulsion of the Palestinian population, then we wouldn't be having this discussion and maybe your statement would make some sense (though I would still disagree with it). The problem is, Israel rules over millions of (indigenous) Palestinians as well, who are denied the same rights that Jews have - both in Israel and the occupied territories.

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Joseph Massad has a cogent article in Al-Ahram Weekly about this very issue:

Israel is willing to do anything to convince Palestinians and other Arabs of why it needs and deserves to have the right to be racist. Even at the level of theory, and before it began to realise itself on the ground, the Zionist colonial project sought different means by which it could convince the people whose lands it wanted to steal and against whom it wanted to discriminate to accept as understandable its need to be racist....Those among the Palestinians who regrettably continue to resist are being penalised for their intransigence by economic choking and starvation, supplemented by regular bombardment and raids, as well as international isolation. These persuasive methods, Israel hopes, will finally convince a recalcitrant population to recognise the dire need of Israel to be a racist state....After all, Israeli racism only manifests in its flag, its national anthem, and a bunch of laws that are necessary to safeguard Jewish privilege, including the Law of Return (1950), the Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of the State's Property (1951), the Law of Citizenship (1952), the Status Law (1952), the Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), the Construction and Building Law (1965), and the 2002 temporary law banning marriage between Israelis and Palestinians of the occupied territories.

Consider the case of whites in America in the early 1960s. Tim Wise writes,

[I]n 1963--at a time when in retrospect all would agree racism was rampant in the United States, and before the passage of modern civil rights legislation--nearly two-thirds of whites, when polled, said they believed blacks were treated the same as whites in their communities--almost the same number as say this now, some forty-plus years later[.] What does it suggest about the extent of white folks' disconnection from the real world, that in 1962, eighty-five percent of whites said black children had just as good a chance as white children to get a good education in their communities (12)? Or that in May, 1968, seventy percent of whites said that blacks were treated the same as whites in their communities, while only seventeen percent said blacks were treated "not very well" and only 3.5 percent said blacks were treated badly?

I'm sure similar polls of whites in South Africa read the same way. I'm sure similar polls of Jews in Israel read the same way. You can choose to ignore it or not see it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I don't argue that everything in this world boils down to race. But race is a factor.

[Womble]

"if Israel's population was 100% Jewish and they were all treated equally (as is not the case now) and the state was not established via the expulsion of the Palestinian population, then we wouldn't be having this discussion and maybe your statement would make some sense (though I would still disagree with it)."

In other words, if even by your standards everything was fine, you would still find a problem where there's none?

Figures.

Massad's article is ridiculous. Equivalents of the Israeli Law of Return exist in a good many European states (Ireland, Greece and Germany, for instance), and were never seen as racist, not by sane people anyway. The Law of Citizenship is actually more liberal than any comparable law in Europe, as it does not require a language test or income as a precondition. (Walt and Mearsheimer blundered on that one too, it appears that virtually none of the critics of Israel ever read the laws they are criticizing). The guy hasn't a clue what he is talking about. Then again, it's Joseph Massad you're quoting, the racist who denies Jewish nationhood.