Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: apartheid

Showing posts with label apartheid. Show all posts

Friday, November 12, 2010

New Apartheid poster

Abbas wants a Judenrein Palestine

From the excellent Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, writing in YNet last week:

The Palestinians intend to demand the implementation of the UN resolution regarding refugees, from a Palestinian perspective, which gives the 5.5 million refugees and their descendants the right of return and to settle in the State of Israel. In his briefing to the Egyptian media, Abbas presented this strategy and denied the Jewish character of Israel. He maintains that Israel should, in fact, become a bi-national state, but on the other hand that Palestine must become a state “clean” of Jews.

The term “Israeli” used by Abbas means “Jew,” as the PA sees Israeli Arabs, Muslims and Christians alike as an integral part of the Palestinian people. The future State of Palestine, according Abbas, must resist any Jewish presence in its territory. In other words, the PA embraces a racist policy – Palestinian apartheid – directed at Jews, based on denial of Jewish history and the cultural and religious linkage of the Jewish people to the land.

The anti-Semitism embodied in Abbas’ words refers also to his position towards the NATO observers’ force that may be deployed in the West Bank to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement with Israel. He is opposed to Jews being included in this force; meaning, he will ask Germany and all other partner countries in NATO to use their own forces in the West Bank, in an effort to the exclude any Jewish soldiers.

He didn’t explain how these countries would determine who is a Jew, whether according to orthodox Jewish laws or just if one of the parents or grandparents was a Jew. But even Saudi Arabia didn’t dare oppose the deployment of American Jewish soldiers on its land during operation Desert Storm (1990-1), and no one in Israel ever demanded to disqualify Muslim soldiers from serving in the international observers’ forces in Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Sinai.

The racist language used by Abbas is particularly despicable as it doubts the loyalty of the Jews to their country. It is for this reason that his comments call for a firm Israeli and European response.

Note: Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency published on July 28 its version of Abbas’ briefing to the Egyptian media, quoting him as saying: “I'm willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as NATO forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the NATO forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land”. This version was reprinted by Palestinian newspapers al-Quds and al-Hayat al-Jadida on July 30 and by other Arab newspapers.

A few days later Wafa published a new version of Abbas’ interview to the Egyptian media, where he was quoted as saying: “We have no objection to the presence of a third party after the (Palestinian) state is established, and we don’t oppose that the third party will be NATO or any other force. However, I will not agree that an Israeli, even if he is a Muslim, will be present on my land, but I’ll agree only (to the presence) of a third party. The reason for that is stemmed in the fact that the Israeli is the heir of the occupation, while the presence of the third party is temporary as are the Multinational Forces in your country (Egypt) and UNIFIL in Lebanon.”

I could not find the original WAFA piece - neither their archive nor their search functions work.

The earliest place I could find the earlier, racist quote was July 29's Palestinian Media Center, quoting WAFA. My interpretation of the autotranslation is:

I am willing to accept the existence of a third party after the solution, such as forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and will not accept that Jews be a part of NATO troops, and I will not accept one Israeli to live among us in the Palestinian territory.

Egypt's Al Ahram had identical wording on July 30th, although it is not clear if they were at the briefing of Egyptian journalists or not.

UPDATE: Abbas, not surprisingly, denies these reports through a spokesman who says that it was only the American media that reported his anti-semitic diatribe. Well, as I have shown, it was reported widely in the Arabic media, and no one seemed to be too upset about it. (h/t Suzanne)

Why the silence over Arab persecution of PalArabs?

Khaled Abu Toameh touches on one of the major themes of this blog:

When was the last time the United Nations Security Council met to condemn an Arab government for its mistreatment of Palestinians?

How come groups and individuals on university campuses in the US and Canada that call themselves "pro-Palestinian" remain silent when Jordan revokes the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians?

The plight of Palestinians living in Arab countries in general, and Lebanon in particular, is one that is often ignored by the mainstream media in West.

How come they turn a blind eye to the fact that Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and many more Arab countries continue to impose severe travel restrictions on Palestinians?

And where do these groups and individuals stand regarding the current debate in Lebanon about whether to grant Palestinians long-denied basic rights, including employment, social security and medical care?

Or have they not heard about this debate at all? Probably not, since the case has failed to draw the attention of most Middle East correspondents and commentators.

A news story on the Palestinians that does not include an anti-Israel angle rarely makes it to the front pages of Western newspapers.

The demolition of an Arab-owned illegal building in Jerusalem is, for most of these correspondents, much more important than the fact that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon continue to suffer from a series of humiliating restrictions.

Not only are Palestinians living in Lebanon denied the right to own property, but they also do not qualify for health care, and are banned by law from working in a large number of jobs.

Can someone imagine what would be the reaction in the international community if Israel tomorrow passed a law that prohibits its Arab citizens from working as taxi drivers, journalists, physicians, cooks, waiters, engineers and lawyers? Or if the Israeli Ministry of Education issued a directive prohibiting Arab children from enrolling in universities and schools?

Ironically, it is much easier for a Palestinian to acquire American and Canadian citizenship than a passport of an Arab country. In the past, Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were even entitled to Israeli citizenship if they married an Israeli citizen, or were reunited with their families inside the country.

Lebanese politicians are now debating new legislation that would grant "civil rights" to Palestinians for the first time in 62 years. The new bill includes the right to own property, social security payments and medical care.

Many Lebanese are said to be opposed to the legislation out of fear that it would pave the way for the integration of Palestinians into their society and would constitute a burden to the economy.

I would add that there a a couple of other major reasons why the Lebanese are almost all against granting Palestinian Arabs equal rights.

One is that there is still a legally mandated balance between Shiites, Sunnis and Christians in Lebanon. A new influx of hundreds of thousands of mostly Sunni Palestinians would upset the demographics, and Lebanon is very sensitive to demographics. In fact, Lebanon has avoided doing a census for that very reason - the fear that it will be discovered that the number of Christians has been shrinking and that Sunnis and Shiites have been growing.

The other reason is that there is still a lot of resentment over the PLO's role in the civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 1970s and 1980s. For all the pro-Palestinian Arab rhetoric that Lebanon spews, in the end they really don't love their Palestinians at all - quite the opposite.

The Arab supposed support for their Palestinian brethren is pretty much limited to only how they can be used as pawns to hurt Israel. When it comes to concrete actions that would actually help the Palestinian Arab economy, or their quality of life, Arab nations are far less forthcoming.

And this answers Toameh's question of why Arab mistreatment of their Palestinians is muted - because it does not have anything to do with Israel, and that is the entire reason that the Palestinian Arabs exist as a people today. Practically their entire quasi-nationhood is a fiction that was foisted upon them by decades of abuse by their Arab neighbors, and if they would have been integrated into Arab societies the way that a similar number of Jews from Arab countries were integrated into Israel, there would be very few people identifying as "Palestinian" today - and the major weapon that the Arabs have against Israel would disappear.

Modern Palestinian Arab nationalism began as a purely anti-Israel movement (Fatah and the PLO were founded in the early 1960s, before any "occupation.") It is not an expression of hundreds of years of any sort of cohesive unity - there never was any, and there still isn't. Their peoplehood is from 62 years of being treated like garbage mostly by their Arab brothers, and those are the people who should take their fair share of the responsibility to eliminate the scourge of millions of fake "refugees" that they have hosted and persecuted for six decades.

Pictures of the "apartheid wall"

Here are some pictures of that awful "apartheid wall" separating Arab families from each other and causing big problems among Palestinian Arabs.

Hold on...whose flag is that on the last picture?

Oh, my mistake. These are pictures of the apartheid wall between Gaza and Egypt, built by the horrible Egyptians to imprison and starve their brethren in Gaza.

Never mind!

Abbas to Lebanese PalArabs: "Screw you"

From Ma'an:

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will not be offered Lebanese passports, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday following his meeting with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman at the Republican Palace. Abbas’ remark quashed recent rumors concerning the issuing of Lebanese passports to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, adding that the refugees’ presence in the country is temporary, particularly as Lebanon’s membership in the UN Security Council next year will help the Palestinian cause.

Generations have grown up in Lebanon, raised families, and died, but their supposed "leader" is more interested in them keeping their stateless status rather than giving them the simple choice of allowing them to be more integrated into the land of their birth. Mahmoud Abbas, that supposedly moderate leader of the PA, the PLO and Fatah, who claims to represent millions of people of Palestinian Arab descent, has once again told his people to go screw themselves rather than give them the option of happiness as full citizens of other Arab lands. He arrogantly claims to know what is best for his people, and is dead-set against giving them the option of making their own decisions. Because he knows that the majority them would not choose to put their families through the hell that they have gone through thanks to the decisions of Arab leaders over the past six decades. Palestinian Arabs who choose to become citizens of Arab countries will, by and large, never choose to move to an eventual "Palestine." They will identify only peripherally as "Palestinian." They will lose their value as pawns to corrupt, arrogant "leaders" who pretend to know what is best for them, and whose power derives from their very misery. Moreover, if Arab countries would give PalArabs full citizenship, a significant number of Palestinian Arabs in the territories - hundreds of thousands, if not over a million - would happily move to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Dubai. (Ironically, they would also have a positive influence on most of their host Arab countries, as they tend to be better educated and harder working, and Gulf countries import many workers from Indonesia and Africa, causing many problems that could be avoided if Palestinian Arab workers replaced them.) The operative word here is "choice." Palestinian Arabs are not given the power to choose where to live, and Arab nations specifically deny them the ability to become citizens that they give all other Arabs. Yet there are no "pro-Palestinian" organizations tha lobby on behalf of real Palestinian Arabs. They all repeat the lie that they can best help them by fighting Israel, militarily or politically. It is a myth, and one that is easily disproven - it has not helped them one bit in 61 years. "Human rights" organizations may mention some of these problems in isolation but they do not push for the simplest, fairest and cheapest solution to the problem of millions of stateless people. Abbas, the one person who pretends to represent his people the best, tells his suffering would-be constituents that their six-decade old problem is "temporary." This is a travesty of human rights. The way to tell if someone is truly pro-Palestinian Arab or is simply using the Palestinian Arabs as pawns to help destroy Israel is to ask him one simple question: Do you support giving all Palestinian Arabs the choice to become full citizens of any Arab country that they desire, according to the existing naturalization rules that they have for other Arabs? This is the question that needs to be asked of every Arab leader, every Palestinian Arab leader, every NGO, every human rights organization. It should be hammered in during every interview. They must be forced to answer the question clearly and forcefully. Unless they can answer that question in the affirmative, the inescapable conclusion is that most people who pretend to be "pro-Palestinian" are nothing more than liars and hypocrites who support discrimination against the very people they claim they want to help.

UNIFIL to build apartheid fence against expansionist Zionist cows

This story's got it all: a fence, a border, water, an impotent UN, and, of course, Zionist cows:

United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is in the process of erecting a fence in the southern Kfar Shuba area with the aim of preventing cows from Israeli flocks crossing the Blue Line and using Lebanese water supplies, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday.

The fence, which will be erected by the Spanish contingent of the UN peacekeeping force, will be two meters high and surround the Baathaiil Lake once finished in the next ten days.

A UNIFIL spokesperson told The Daily Star that they are assisting the Lebanese authorities by creating the fence “in order to prevent cattle crossing around the Kfar Shuba region.”

Media reports on Monday suggested that the fence, once erected, will allow Lebanese shepherds to pass over to the opposite side of the lake.

This comes a month after a UNIFIL meeting, in which municipality members urged peacekeepers to keep Israeli cows out of Lebanon by any means necessary.

The Lebanese claimed last month that the thirsty Zionist cows are being protected by Merkava tanks.

UPDATE: According to the LA Times Babylon and Beyond blog, the Blue Line extends through the "lake" (really a pond.) So if UNIFIL places the fence south of the pond it is actually depriving the Zionist cows of their rightful water! (h/t Global Freezing)

Jewish students assaulted in U. Toronto "Apartheid Week"

From Then There Was Light, quoting an eyewitness:

Tonight at the U of T [Israeli Apartheid Week] event, two Jewish students were assaulted by the Palestinian “Security” team for being “disruptive” (asking a legitimate question “does Israel have a right to exist”) The Palestinian “security” smacked a student in the head and grabbed him by his neck, while another “security” officer told a second Jewish student to “Shut the F**ck up or he’ll saw his head off”…All of this was done in a crowded lecture room with over 100 witnesses!!

I was there, there are no pictures, filming and taking pictures was prohibited (they seem to have a problem with the general public hearing what they say) it was reported to the police who chose (as usual) to do NOTHING…

And here is what the student who was assaulted wrote:

I attended the Israel Apartheid Week event with a few friends and was prepared to ask a couple questions. The girl sitting next to me asked a question to one of the speakers about the problems with Hamas’s Charter. The speaker answered the question by discussing occupation and Israel’s “racist” policies, etc, instead of actually addressing the issue of Hamas’s Charter and denial of Israel’s right to exist. A couple people in the crowd, including myself, shouted out to the speaker “answer the question!” (It is generally fair game at these events where there are more activists present than observers to request that the speaker focus on the question asked). At this point, one of the (probably unlicensed) private security guards hired by SAIA approached me from behind. When I turned around in my seat to look at him, he grabbed and squeezed the back of my neck and growled at me from about 10 inches in front of my face “you shut the fuck up! shut the fuck up!” At this point I kept my cool moved back and I was like “get away from me bro, don’t touch me!” One of the event organizers called for someone to ask the police standing outside in the hallway to come in to remove me for “causing a disruption” at which point I encouraged the police to come in to record the name and identity of the individual who assaulted me. I left the room promptly and reported the incident to the police. I will be filing a formal report later today with Metro Police.

I personally believe in freedom of speech and that students should be allowed to book lecture halls to present speakers who express radical, even extreme views. The presence, however, of (probably) unlicensed, private security gaurds wearing bullet proof vests and leather jackets who physicaly assault people who speak up against those radical, extreme views, must be confronted. SAIA must not be allowed to bring hired goons onto campus to intimidate people who oppose their views. I feel ashamed as a UofT alumnus.

Freedom of speech!
(h/t Israellycool)

Irshad Manji on Israel and apartheid (The Australian)

Irshad Manji: Modern Israel is a far cry from old South Africa It's absurd to apply the term apartheid to one of the most progressive states in the world, maintains Irshad Manji

IN the past year, a stream of thinkers across the West - from Australian writer Antony Loewenstein to US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt - has punctured the usual parameters of debate about Israel. I, for one, welcome any effort to prevent ideas from calcifying into ideologies. As a Muslim refusenik, that's what I do by defying the conventional prejudices of my fellow Muslims. Why would I resent refuseniks of a different kind? It's precisely because I embrace intellectual pluralism that I respectfully challenge Jimmy Carter's recent critique of Israel as an apartheid state. To be sure, I've long admired the former US president. In my book The Trouble with Islam Today I cite him as an example of how religion can be invoked to tap the best of humanity. In no small measure, it was Carter's appreciation of spiritual values that brought together Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, compelling these former foes to clasp hands over a peace deal. Which is why Carter's new book disappoints so many of us who champion co-existence. Entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the book argues that Israel's conduct towards Palestinians mimics South Africa's long-time demonisation of blacks. Of course, certain Israeli politicians have spewed venom at Palestinians, as have some Arab leaders towards Jews, but Israel is far more complex - and diverse - than slogans about the occupation would suggest. In a state practising apartheid, would Arab Muslim legislators wield veto power over anything? At only 20per cent of the population, would Arabs even be eligible for election if they squirmed under the thumb of apartheid? Would an apartheid state extend voting rights to women and thepoor in local elections, which Israel didfor the first time in the history of Palestinian Arabs? Would the vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens turn out to vote in national elections, as they've usually done? Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? In recent Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. However, Israel's Supreme Court, exercising its independence, overturned both disqualifications. Under any system of apartheid, would the judiciary be free of political interference? Would an apartheid state award its top literary prize to an Arab? Israel honoured Emile Habibi in 1986, before the intifada might have made such a choice politically shrewd. Would an apartheid state encourage Hebrew-speaking schoolchildren to learn Arabic? Would road signs throughout the land appear in both languages? Even my country, the proudly bilingual Canada, doesn't meet that standard. Would an apartheid state be home to universities where Arabs and Jews mingle at will, or apartment blocks where they live side by side? Would an apartheid state bestow benefits and legal protections on Palestinians who live outside of Israel but work inside its borders? Would human rights organisations operate openly in an apartheid state? They do in Israel. For that matter, military officials go public with their criticisms of government policies. In October 2003, the Israel Defence Forces' chief of staff told the press that road closures in the West Bank and Gaza were feeding Palestinian anger. Two weeks later, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service blasted the occupation and called on Ariel Sharon to withdraw troops unilaterally, which later happened in Gaza. Would an apartheid state stomach so much dissent from those mandated to protect the state? Above all, would media debate the most basic building blocks of the nation? Would a Hebrew newspaper in an apartheid state run an article by an Arab Israeli about why the Zionist adventure has been a total failure? Would it run that article on Israel's independence day? Would an apartheid state ensure conditions for the freest Arabic press in the Middle East, a press so free that it can demonstrably abuse its liberties and keep on rolling? To this day, the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds hasn't retracted an anti-Israel letter supposedly penned by Nelson Mandela but proven to have been written by an Arab living in The Netherlands. Even the eminence grise of Palestinian nationalism, the late Edward Said, stated flat out that "Israel is not South Africa". How could it be when an Israeli publisher translated Said's seminal work, Orientalism, into Hebrew? I'll cap this point with a question that Said himself asked of Arabs: "Why don't we fight harder for freedom of opinions in our own societies, a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely exists?" I disagree: some people still need to be told that Arab "freedoms" don't compare to those of Israel. The people who need reminding are those who now push the South Africa analogy a step further by equating Israel with Nazi Germany. To them, Zionists are committing hate crimes under the totalitarian nightmare that they dub "Zio-Nazism" (like neo-Nazism). When it comes to granting citizenship, Israel discriminates in the same way as an affirmative action policy, giving the edge to a specific minority that has faced genocidal injustice. Does this amount to Nazism? Spare me. As a Muslim, I could become a citizen of Israel without having to convert. After all, Israel was one of the few countries anywhere to grant shelter, then citizenship, to the Vietnamese boatpeople who sought political asylum in the late 1970s. I don't have to wonder how Syria compares on that score. Now for the ultimate proof of Israel's flimsy credentials as a bunker of Hitlerian hate: It's the only country in the Middle East to which Arab Christians are voluntarily migrating. And they are also thriving there, notching much higher university attendance rates than the Arab Muslim citizens of Israel, and enjoying better overall health than Jews. The Holy Land is gut-wrenching and complicated. As much as I applaud Israel's efforts to foster pluralism, I condemn its illegal Jewish settlements and less visible crimes such as the diversion of water away from Palestinian towns. These contradictions of the Israeli state should be exposed, discussed, even pilloried. And they are: openly as well as often. So there's little point in deciding whose camp is the paragon of vice or virtue. The better question might be: who's willing to hear what they don't want to hear? That's the test of whether a country is more than black or white.