Israeli Apartheid
Imagine, if you will, a modern apartheid state with first, second and eleventh class citizens, all required to carry identification specifying their ethnic origin. First class citizens are obliged to serve in the armed forces, kept on ready reserve status until in their forties, and accorded an impressive array of housing, medical, social security, educational and related benefits denied all others.
Second class citizens are exempted from military service and from a number of the benefits accorded citizens of the first class. They are issued identity documents and license plates that allow them to be profiled by police at a distance. Second class citizens may not own land in much of the country and marriages between them and first class citizens are not recognized by the state. Second class citizens are sometimes arrested without trial and police torture, while frowned upon and occasionally apologized for, commonly occurs.
Citizens of the eleventh class, really not citizens at all, have no rights citizens of the first class or their government are bound to respect. Their residence is forbidden in nearly nine-tenths of the country, all of which they used to own. The areas left to them are cut up into smaller and smaller portions weekly, by high walls, free fire zones and hundreds of checkpoints manned by the army of the first class citizens, so that none can travel a dozen miles in any direction to work, school, shopping, a job, a farm, a business or a hospital without several long waits, humiliating searches and often arbitrary denials of the right to pass or to return. Posh residential settlements for the first class citizens with protecting gun towers and military bases are built with government funds and foreign aid on what used to be the villages and farms and pastures of the eleventh class citizens. The settlers are allotted generous additional housing and other subsidies, allowed to carry weapons and use deadly force with impunity against the former inhabitants, and are connected with the rest of first class territory by a network of of first-class citizen only roads.
Citizens of the eleventh class are routinely arrested, tortured, and held indefinitely without trial. Political activism among them is equated to “terrorism†and the state discourages such activity by means including but not limited to the kidnapping of suspects and relatives of suspects, demolition of their family homes, and extralegal assassination, sometimes at the hands of a death squad, or at others times by lobbing missiles or five hundred pound bombs into sleeping apartment blocks or noonday traffic. Passports are not issued to these citizens, and those who take advantage of scarce opportunities to study or work abroad are denied re-entry.
The apartheid state in question is, of course, Israel. Its first class citizens are Israeli Jews, the majority of them of European or sometimes American origin. The second class citizens are Israeli Arabs, who enjoy significant but limited rights under the law including token representation in the Knesset. The eleventh class citizens are not citizens at all. They are Palestinians. One expects to be able to say that Palestinians live in Palestine and are governed by Palestinians, but the truth is something different. The areas in which Palestinians may inhabit have shrunk nearly every year since the Nakba, their name for the wave of mass deportations, murders, the dispossession, destruction and exile of whole Arab towns, cities and regions that attended the 1948 founding of the state of Israel. As the whole world, except for the US public knows, Palestinians have lived under military occupation, without land, without rights, without hope, for nearly sixty years now.
The difference between life inside and outside the US corporate media bubble is extraordinarily clear on this question. US authorities subsidize the state of Israel to the tune of at least six billion per year, and corporate media take great pains to protect US citizens from news of actual human and legal conditions their tax dollars … Read full article
neilcaff:
A good article, the 1st-11th class description really captures the flavour of Israeli society which is actually quite a divided society in alot of ways. One small quibble though.
28 July 2006, 4:52 am“First class citizens are obliged to serve in the armed forces, kept on ready reserve status until in their forties, and accorded an impressive array of housing, medical, social security, educational and related benefits denied all others.”
This idea of millitary service in exchange for social welfare is about 10 years out of date. The Israeli regime is one of the most viciously neo-liberal in the world. For example the firemen who have been quenching the fires in border towns have not been paid for two months! Municipal workers in abandoned northern towns under threat of rocket attack have been forced to clean empty streets for derisory pay or else face the sack. The class divisions in Israeli society are quite sharp.
Also the 1st class citizens themselves are divided along racial/ethnic lines with the Ashkenazi, the Euro Jews on top mixed in with Sephardic (Arab) jews, Russian emmigrants and the Ethiopian Jews whose existense apparently proves rasicm does not exist in Israel
neilcaff:
Should have said firefighters instead of firemen, since I’ve just been reliably informed a large portion of the Israeli fire service is female. Apologies.
28 July 2006, 9:12 amSo much for my pretensions to progessiveness!
Elki:
This sounds like the metaphor of white settlement in Australia; it is what happened to the indigenous people of their land. It’s no wonder the Aboriginal people of Australia are destitute, are being ‘bred out’, die young, have severe drug and alcohol emancipation, and are petrol sniffing themselves to death by the time they are 14 years old.
28 July 2006, 10:01 pmElki:
Thanks for posting this Stan; it really helps me understand what’s going on in the region.
28 July 2006, 10:10 pmangel:
thank you for this article it really helps to understand what is going on in this troubled land and the people. i pray for peace between these two nations.
28 July 2006, 10:14 pmangel
Boris Epstein:
Stan,
There are many inaccuracies here. For one thing, between 1948 and 1967 West Bank and Gaza were under Jordanian and Egyptian control, respectively. Thus they could not have been oppressed by Israeli Jews for 60 years, as you claim.
While inequality is very severe in the Israeli society (among Jews, too) your article is in many ways exaggeratory and thus, in my opinion, of little value. I dn’t abstain from criticizing Israel myself but I’ve got a fewe choice words for the Arab powers too. Speaking of Palestinians - both Jordan and Egypt did not treat them as equals while they were in their jurisdiction.
Boris.
29 July 2006, 4:52 pmStan:
Last I checked Deir Yassin is just outside Jerusalem.
And the Arab powers are not the ones making a graveyard of Southern Lebanon right now.
Do you deny that there is a system of racial Apartheid in Israel?
I live in the United States. The United States has not given almost $2 trillion in aid to the Arab states and supported their outlawry in the UN, as it has Israel.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html
29 July 2006, 5:38 pmEmmanuel Goldstein:
The Palestinians left Israel when it was declared a nation, and immediately and simultaneously attacked by its arab neighbors. They deserted the country they lived in, and don’t deserve to be citizens. The Arab nations they fled to made a wise, if self-interested decision not to let them in, because in a few generations, it would provide them with ammunition in their media war against Israel.
30 July 2006, 10:52 pmStan:
Mythified settler state drivel.
http://mondediplo.com/1997/12/palestine
30 July 2006, 11:12 pmhttp://www.robincmiller.com/pales2.htm
Charles Brown:
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2850/context/archive
August 4, 2006
International
Jewish and Arab Women Unite Against War
Run Date: 08/04/06
By Brenda Gazzar
WeNews correspondent
Members of a newly formed group in Israel, Women Against War, say they can’t
abide the violence taking place in Lebanon and Gaza. Despite animosity and
even death threats, they are protesting nearly every day in the northern
city of Haifa.
A woman chants slogans at July 29 protest.
HAIFA, Israel (WOMENSENEWS)–In recent weeks, Abir Kopty and Hannah Safran
have demonstrated nearly every day against Israel’s conflict in Lebanon and
Gaza.
Even as the dreaded sirens have sounded warning of Hezbollah rocket attacks,
Kopty, an Israeli Arab, and Safran, an Israeli Jew, remained on the streets
in this northern city not far from the Lebanese border to urge their
government to stop the war, enter into negotiations and exchange prisoners.
As founding members of Women Against War, formed a few days after Israel’s
current conflict with Hezbollah began, the two longtime peace activists are
among a small, but dedicated cadre of women trying to end the latest wave of
violence threatening to consume the entire region.
“It’s not about blame. It’s about stopping this war,” said Kopty, a
spokeswoman for an Israeli human rights organization that advocates for Arab
citizens in the country. “We don’t want to see any citizens on both sides
killed because of an avoidable war. There is no sense in that.”
Israel launched a limited but potent military operation in Lebanon after
Hezbollah fired rockets on northern Israeli towns on July 12, kidnapped two
Israeli soldiers and killed three others in a raid along the Lebanese
border. Hezbollah officials claimed they captured the soldiers in an effort
to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails from
previous conflicts.
Hezbollah, an Islamist Shia organization in Lebanon that has parliament
members and ministers in the government, is considered a terrorist group by
Israel and the United States but is lauded as a legitimate resistance
organization by many in the Arab world, who credit it with getting Israel to
withdraw from South Lebanon in 2000 after more than two decades of
occupation.
As of Thursday, the widening conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has
claimed as many as 900 Lebanese lives–mostly civilians–according to
Lebanese government officials, and more than 60 Israelis, including 28
civilians. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that roughly
one-third of those killed in Lebanon have been children.
On Wednesday, Israel sent 8,000 troops into southern Lebanon as part of a
massive new ground attack aimed at removing Hezbollah combatants from the
border as the radical Islamist group stepped up its rocket attacks on
northern Israeli cities.
Taking a Minority View
While the majority of Israeli citizens support the country’s military
operation against Hezbollah, Kopty and Safran say Israel’s activities in
Lebanon and Gaza and Hezbollah’s continuous shelling of northern Israeli
towns are too ruinous.
Safran says she has received death threats for expressing her views on the
current conflict.
She and Kopty helped organize a July 29 anti-war march in Tel Aviv sponsored
by women’s peace groups that organizers say attracted as many as 3,000
people. Protestors began marching at Rabin Square, holding up signs that
said “Stop Killing Citizens” and “Exchange Prisoners Now” while a few
Israeli supporters shouted “traitors” and clashed with participants.
In addition to the women holding near-daily protests in Haifa, numerous
other women’s groups have held peace vigils and demonstrations around the
country.
“Without this, I don’t have a life. I am scared. I am desperate,” said
Safran, 56, who was making anti-war signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English at a
women’s center in Haifa days before the July 29 protest. “This is what gives
me the ability to cope, the hope that we can change, that our life has
meaning.”
Women’s Commission Issues Appeal
Another group, the International Women’s Commission for a Just and
Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli Peace, issued an urgent appeal at its July
13 meeting in Athens to reject the use of force in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon.
The appeal called on the Middle East Quartet–the United States, Britain,
Russia and the United Nations, which are mediating the Israeli-Palestinian
peace process–to intervene immediately to stop the fighting and dispatch
special envoys, including women, to mediate a truce and prisoner exchange,
lead the parties back to political negotiations and address the root issues
of the conflict. Their statement warned that this was the last chance for a
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
“Civilians, mainly women and children, are paying the price for this vicious
cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation,” the appeal said. “This is a
time of great danger. . . If no action is taken today, tomorrow will be too
late.”
The International Women’s Commission, created under the auspices of the
United Nations Development Fund for Women, includes elected officials,
academics and those from civil society who plan to meet with heads of state
in the U.N. General Assembly in September. Members also plan to appear at
the United Nations Security Council in October when Security Council
Resolution 1325, which calls for the greater involvement of women in
conflict resolution and peace negotiations, is discussed.
“I would say we are really heavily involved in A, trying to end the fighting
and B, trying to redraw attention to the core issue of what is going on,
which we contend is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Naomi Chazan, an
Israeli commission member and former deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s
parliament.
Hezbollah Promoting Its Agenda
Hezbollah, she said, is using Israeli-Palestinian troubles to promote its
own agenda, which includes expanding radical Islam, destroying Israel and
weakening the United States. This distorts the Israeli-Palestinian issue,
Chazan said. While Hezbollah and its allies want to destroy Israel,
Palestinians and moderate Arab states want to find a way of achieving a
comprehensive settlement, she said.
Chazan’s Palestinian colleague in the commission, Lama Hourani, said life
has been especially difficult in the Gaza Strip since late June, when Israel
launched a military operation following the kidnapping of a soldier.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 180 people have
been killed in Gaza since the start of the operation, including 78 children.
Israeli officials say their operations there are aimed at hurting terror
organizations, led by Hamas, and rocket-launching cells.
Hourani, the Gaza coordinator of the Palestinian Working Women Society for
Development, is living with irregular electricity and air conditioning since
a major power station was hit several weeks ago by an Israeli strike. Since
Hamas was elected as the majority party in the Palestinian parliament in
March, she said, an international embargo has prevented Palestinian
Authority employees from getting paid for several months. In addition,
Hourani said she and other Gaza Strip residents are subjected to strict
closures, daily bombardment, shelling, raids and killing.
“It’s a terrible life,” she said. “I don’t wish anyone, even an enemy, to
live like this.”
Brenda Gazzar is a freelance journalist based in Jerusalem.
Women’s eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors at womensenews.org.
For more information:
Coalition of Women for Peace
http://coalitionofwomen.org/home
“Mideast News Vivifies Women’s ‘Worst Problem’”
http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2826/context/ourdailylives
“Palestinian, Israeli Women Push Bilateral Talks”
http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2753/context/archive
Note: Women’s eNews is not responsible for the content of external Internet
4 August 2006, 2:54 pmsites and the contents of site the link points to may change.
Charles Brown:
Stop U.S.-Israeli Terror and Aggression Against Palestine & Lebanon!
U.S./ISRAELI TROOPS OUT OF LEBANON, PALESTINE, IRAQ NOW!
STAND WITH THE
PALESTINIAN AND LEBANESE PEOPLE!
NO MORE FIGHTING AND DYING FOR OIL PROFITS!
MONEY FOR JOBS & HUMAN NEEDS, NOT WAR!
Demonstrate: Friday, August 4, 4:30 p.m.
Gather: Detroit/Windsor Tunnel Entrance, corner of Randolph and E.
Jefferson, downtown Detroit
Called by MECAWI
(Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice)
http://www.mecawi.org Call 313-680-5508 or 313-869-8383
4 August 2006, 2:55 pmfor information including parking & shuttle.
Charles Brown:
WOmen seize TV station in Mexico
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/08/02/international/i115940D96.DTL
Joanna
4 August 2006, 3:11 pmTimoth R. Anderson:
I think the ” Apartheid ” label fits. When’s the mainstream USA media gonna do a report on ” Post- ” Apartheid South Africa ? My guess is we’ll be waiting a loooooooong time to hear from the regular folks of South Africa. Speaking of, with all the hoooopla surrounding the upcoming 5 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 why is no one asking the a)
living victims what they think and b ) regular folks in Saudi Arabia if LIFE has improved AT ALL since that awful, awful day ….
Again, with feeeeling, WHY IS NO ONE ASKING
REGULAR FOLKS whAT thEY THINK ?
http://www.warisaracket.org — Timoth R. Anderson
4 August 2006, 7:38 pmCharles Brown:
You Cannot Promise Victory, Produce a Humiliating Defeat and Stay in Power”
Israel Must Win
By GILAD ATZMON
“The ceasefire in Lebanon was holding by a thread last night after Israel sanctioned a commando raid in the east of the country. Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, said Israel had violated the truce, and he was ‘deeply concerned’ about it.â€
The Guardian
For those familiar with Israeli aggression, the IDF violation was no surprise at all. For a week or so, every Israeli cabinet member and military official promised publicly that it is just a question of time before there is a ‘second round’. Indeed, they must come up with something. Since the end of the hostilities, all Israeli political analysts and polls suggest that Israel’s political and military leadership failed completely. If elections were to be held soon, both Labor and Kadima would simply disappear. It is no secret that with each passing day, Olmert’s and Peretz’s popularity continually slumps to new lows. Jerusalem Post.
One may wonder whether the Israelis are changing their spots, do they stop approving Olmert’s policies just because peace is what they really prefer? The influential political commentator Ari Shavit provided an answer two weeks ago. Mr Olmert, so he says, had ‘failed shamefully’ and should resign. Shavit continues, “You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power.” As I mentioned more than once before, the Israeli politician has to cope with a demanding, bloodthirsty crowd.
This realisation throws some light over the reasons behind the failed Israeli operation in Lebanon just three days ago. Israelis are simply desperate to win. But it may also explain why Israeli government decided to expand its military operation pretty much at the same time it accepted the UN ceasefire resolution. Olmert knew that he must serve his voters with what they interpret as a clear-cut victory. This would mean either some severe form of revenge with lots of Arab casualties or a significant land invasion. Olmert, his ‘national unity’ government and the army leadership have to do something that would cover up four weeks of disastrous military campaign that failed to serve the Israeli public with even a single second of glory.
Indeed, the IDF military offensive doctrine is grounded on one basic axiom that was defined by David Ben Gurion in the early fifties: whatever it takes, Israel must always win! This axiom is indeed very powerful, yet, in reality, the Israeli army can’t provide the goods anymore. In the last three decades the Israeli army is constantly being beaten time after time by enemies that are getting smaller and smaller.
Yet, one may mention that the IDF isn’t very original in being defeated. The IDF fails exactly where the American army has been failing since Vietnam. Shockingly, the IDF has managed to copy every possible American mistake. It religiously adopted the new American military philosophy of a ‘compact highly sophisticated fighting force’. Undeniably, this very doctrine is very effective in producing some gigantic collateral damage i.e., war crimes. Yet, in the long run, it fails miserably in wining wars. The new American military doctrine may win a battle or two but no more than that. In the most recent years it has been totally beaten in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and obviously in Lebanon.
Though the early stages of the Israeli campaign in Lebanon looked very much like the first few days of the second Gulf War (major air assault on civilian infrastructure and populated areas), there is at least one major noticeable difference. While America can stand and even ignore international criticism referring to its own war crimes, it isn’t willing to suffer much international criticism for Israeli atrocities. While in the early stages of the war America was rushing to provide Israel with air convoys loaded with its most lethal conventional arsenal, we have learned towards the last week of the war that the American administration changed its mind, it suddenly refused to provide the IDF with a shipment of cluster bombs because it “would endanger the civilian populationâ€. Seemingly, there is a limit to what the Americans are willing to do for their ‘closest friend’ in the Middle East.
This is exactly where the Israeli limbo is. In order to maintain its status as a winning regional super power, Israel needs the blind support of America (politically, financially and logistically). Yet American blind support can be grunted to Israel only if the Jewish State is indeed a regional super power to start with. Olmert and his government are fully aware of this very complexity. They know that without being a regional super power in the first place, they have nothing to offer their almighty American brothers. Israel is crucial for the strategy of the Americans as long as it can wipe out all its enemies in six days at the most. The way things appear now, the Israeli Army is basically defeated by the two smallest nations in the Arab world, the Palestinian and the Lebanese ones.
As much as it clear to the Israelis, it is clear to the Americans that unlike the bold Hezbollah, the IDF soldier has lost his will to fight. The IDF is a spoiled, confused and tired army that is specializing solely in terrorizing civilian populations while being engaged in constant tactical withdraw. This Israeli Army is not trained to win wars anymore. Instead, its tank battalions are mainly engaged in daily shelling of schools and hospitals. Its Air Force uses the best American fighter planes to flatten neighborhoods and shoot deadly rockets at cars in the streets of Gaza. Its command units are expert in abducting democratically elected middle-aged Palestinian politicians. The IDF is basically a heavy army specializing in merciless regional bullying. Yet, it cannot win a war, and as such it has nothing to offer the American empire.
But the Israeli military defeat has some further implications. Israel without a victorious army, has nothing to offer to world Jewry either. It can never present itself as the ultimate cosmic Judeo bunker. It is pretty shocking to prospect the relative silence of the infamous Zionist media shield. While just six weeks ago the loud supporters of Anglo-American interventionism were still pushing for democracy in the Arab world and beyond, they were enthusiastic about killing in the name of human rights and about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East. Somehow, since the war began, since Israel revealed once again its murderous tendencies and Hezbollah proved to be the new Robin Hood, these voices are caving in. Many among the global Zionists do already understand now that the Anglo-American assault on the Arab world just suffered a major blow. Some of them probably grasp that it is just a question of time before more and more Europeans and Americans join the sacred battle against the Americanized Global Zionism, i.e., neo-conservatism.
The recent victory of the Hezbollah therefore must be realized as a major event with some global implications. While the Hezbollah regards itself a paramilitary organization concerned mainly with some local issues having to do with Israeli expansionism, it has managed to cause a serious blow to neo-conservatism as a political praxis as well as a philosophy. It has beaten the Zionized Anglo-American worldview. Standing up to Zionism and Americanism, it is the Lebanese, the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the Afghanis and the Iranians who happen to be at the vanguard of the war for humanity and humanism. For those who are yet to be convinced that this indeed the case, I will mention that the fact that it is Iran who rushed to pay 3 billion dollars to rebuild Lebanon after the destruction made by ‘American interventionism’ leaves no room for interpretation. While America spreads destruction and death all over the world, it is Iran and the Hezbollah that offers a new beginning.
Olmert knows very well that if Israel doesn’t win this war, it is global Zionism that is defeated, he knows as well that without the backing of global Zionism, Israel is basically a dead entity. Olmert knows that without America, it won’t take long before Israel turns into an historic event. Israel will have to win its mighty regional power status whatever it takes. Israeli is indeed in the very eye of the neo-conservative storm. And the Hezbollah is threatening something far greater than just the Jewish State. As the Israelis keep telling us, the fight in Lebanon will resume soon and every European leader knows it.
Even now, they all know who is going to be the aggressor when violence spreads again in the region. They are all clever enough to hesitate about whether they want to send their soldiers to the region. They know that if Israel must win, it is better to stay out of its way.
Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His recent CD, Exile, was named the year’s best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives in London and can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk
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24 August 2006, 11:16 am