The final nail in the coffin
JVL Introduction
B’Tselem finally took the plunge and called the state of Israel – not the territories under occupation, but Israel as a whole – an apartheid state.
Nathan Thrall, in a compelling article in the London Review of Books, takes the argument further.
He explains that “The premise that Israel is a democracy, maintained by Peace Now, Meretz, the editorial board of Haaretz and other critics of occupation, rests on the belief that one can separate the pre-1967 state from the rest of the territory under its control. A conceptual wall must be maintained between two regimes: (good) democratic Israel and its (bad) provisional occupation.”
But it simply isn’t true. He takes what he calls the “fiction of separate regimes” – clung to by liberal Zionists such as Meretz in Israel or J Street in the US and even organistaions like Yesh Din – and demolishes it.
The lived reality is that it is the entire territory that is under Israel’s control. Palestinians under Israel’s control have been deprived of civil rights and/or have lived under military rule for seven decades, the only exception being six months, in 1966-67.
Perhaps for those brief six months Israel was a “Jewish democratic state”…
This article was originally published by London Review of Books, Vol. 43 No. 2 on Thu 21 Jan 2021. Read the original here.
The Separate Regimes Delusion
Nathan Thrall on Israel’s apartheid
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Another great article JVL. The author is right to say that the idea of two regimes is a fiction. There is only one regime. That regime is the settler colonial state of Israel and the territories it controls. The different representatives
of the colonised Palestinians in the occupied territories and Israel have been rendered powerless by a system of apartheid. Palestinian justice will only be achieved when this apartheid system is dismantled.
MediaLens referred to the absence of coverage in general by the MSM in an excellent piece about the media posted today:
One of the most egregious recent omissions by BBC News was last week’s groundbreaking report by leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem naming Israel as ‘an apartheid state’ and ‘a regime of Jewish supremacy’
https://www.medialens.org/2021/a-ghastly-future-israeli-apartheid-biden-starmer-assange-and-mass-extinction/
Words and more words that in the end mean nothing changes
It’s a step in the right direction.
What an informative article. It is the best one at explaining the laws under which the Palestinians ,both in the Occupied Territories , Gaza and in Israel ,and the lsraelis in the Occupied Territories and Israel. Also the political horror that this gives rise to.
Again this aught to be in all MSM
This is so obviously apartied. I thought so on my first visit there in 1973. Thankyou.
Former South African Minister Ronnie Kasrils himself Jewish accused Israel of conducting a policy against the Palestinians that was “worse” than apartheid.
Speaking on the sidelines of a UN meeting on the situation in the Palestinian territories, Kasrils said South Africa’s townships had never been attacked by helicopter gunships and tanks, in contrast to the military means employed by Israel.
https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/israel-worse-than-apartheid-sa-kasrils-352481
During a speech at the Israeli Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he will retain all of the colonised land from Palestine.
This means that for the foreseeable future, Israel will retain full military control over all of the occupied territories, which dismisses the prospects of Palestinian statehood.
In a bizarre move, the Israeli leader also stared down the opposition and declared that Israel “will forever live by the sword”. https://akashictimes.co.uk/netanyahu-says-israel-will-live-by-the-sword/
When Professor N Finkelstein spoke in Dublin a couple of years ago he said this..”If you can’t get half a loaf, why not ask for the whole loaf, if it seems as if the two states is not within reach, well why not ask for one state? I can understand that reasoning , the logic of it, but you would have to convince me of two things, number one, that two states is not within reach, and you would have to convince me that one state is more within reach than two states. I think neither propositions is true, I think the second proposition is positively insane. If Israel will not abandon/give up the West Bank, if that’s true do you think it would be easier for Israel to give up a Jewish State? Does that make any sense? If two states is remote, one state is another time warp”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS4eBHz2wEU
Harry Law. Supporting the two state non solution is “insane”. Supporting an international campaign for a single state solution is the only way forward. The struggle of the Palestinians and their allies against apartheid should not be subordinated to the willingness of the oppressor state of Israel and its backers to relinquish power.