Apartheid in Israel – revisited

JVL Introduction

It is often argued that Israel can’t be an apartheid society because Palestinian Israelis have the vote.

And so they do. But that doesn’t make the other discriminations they face less oppressive and undermining of their capacity to organise effectively in Israeli society.

B’Tselem, Israel’s premier human-rights organisation got it bang to rights in its powerful 2021 publication A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.

There is no clear separation any longer between green-line Israel and the occupied territories (the Ministry of Education forbids schools from using maps showing it!)

But even within green-line Israel, discriminations against Palestinian citizens are widespread and institutionalised, most notably with regard to access to land, right of family reunion and massive discrimination in the allocation of resources.

The rampant racism against Palestinians from the mouths of senior politicians and relgious authorities, example of which are cited in the report below, generally goes unremarked. It is just accepted as part of the natural landscape.

This devastating report from the Institute for Middle East Understanding may be some years old but things have only deteriorated since then so we have no hesitation in reposting it today as a fair and accurate – if now understated – representation of an apartheid reality.

RK

This article was originally published by IMEU on Wed 17 Mar 2021. Read the original here.