there's no apartheid here

[littlebuddy]

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Anti-Israel groups and individuals in about 14 countries are currently caught up in what they crossly call “Israel Apartheid Week.”
According to these outraged organizers, their purpose is “to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system.”
They hope to increase sanctions and boycotts against Israel; to economically and politically force the Jewish state to convert to a one-man-one-vote democracy.
Like “they” did with South Africa.
Luminaries who promote the idea that Israel perpetrates the same sins South Africa once did are former US President Jimmy Carter and Liberation Theology “Christian” Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Together with United Nations investigators and human rights groups, they have all rallied around this “sexy” lie: Israel is an apartheid state.
Is there any justification for this? Any at all?
What was apartheid?
In 1948, the year Israel declared independence, South Africa’s white government began enacting laws to enforce the segregation of different races.
Known as the “Apartheid Laws,” they would apply to people who, until that time, had all been South African citizens; they would solidify the power and dominance of the whites.
Like carefully placed bricks in a wall, the legislation established an enduring edifice of institutionalized racial discrimination. It would persist for 46 years and wreck tens of millions of lives with massive injustice and suffering. The minority whites, for our part, directly benefitted from the system, enjoying one of the highest standards of living in the world.
Dismantled in the early 1990s – largely due to intensified international pressure – its painful legacy wracks that nation until today – a woe for which there is no anticipated cure.
I am a South African who was born into, and lived through nearly half of, the apartheid era. During my childhood and teenage years my family relocated repeatedly, living in every corner of that country. I changed schools 13 times, and in three years as a member of the South African Defense Forces I was stationed in five different military bases across the land. I know South Africa well. I know apartheid well. I know Israel well.
And believe me, no factual or accurate comparisons can be drawn between that South Africa and this Israel.
None whatsoever.
Let me tell you what Israel would have to do to qualify as an apartheid state. But first, a couple of clarifications:
The charge is that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian Arabs is similar to White South Africa’s treatment of South African black citizens [[which included full-blood “Africans,” mixed-race “coloreds” and the descendants of immigrant Asian laborers).
The whole argument collapses right there, because the Palestinian Arabs have never been Israeli citizens. Nor did/do they have any national history as “Palestinians” – neither in Israel nor anywhere else. They are Arabs – their country of origin is Arabia.
For starters, then, it is fallacious to compare Israel’s relationship with the Palestinian Arabs in any area to the apartheid governments’ relationships with their black South African citizens.
Let us then turn to the Israel’s Arab citizens. Most are also Palestinian Arabs, but unlike the majority of their people – who remain stateless – they were willing to take citizenship and be integrated into the country of Israel.
Israeli Arabs comprise a little over 1.5 million of Israel’s 7.7 million citizens – approximately 20 percent of the population. They are, therefore, a minority.
They live in 15 towns and cities, mostly in and around the Galilee. They have full voting rights. Five Arab political parties are represented in the Knesset; there are 14 Arab members of Knesset, one has attained to a ministerial portfolio, one is a former and another is a current deputy Knesset Speaker.
Israeli Arabs enjoy complete freedom in their country. They can live, study, work and travel where they please. They have national health coverage and enjoy the same benefits as their fellow, Jewish, citizens.
What they do not have to do, is serve in the IDF [[although some Druze and some Bedouin choose to do so and have served with distinction; even laying down their lives.)
The majority of Israel’s Arabs identify their nationality as “Palestinian.” Many, including some of the parliamentarians, openly support the PLO goal to destroy Jewish Israel and replace it with a Muslim Palestine.
Looking through a list of the above-mentioned “Apartheid Laws,” we see how it could be for Israel’s Arabs were the Jewish state an apartheid state:
- Arabs would be required to be classified and registered in accordance with a racial classification [[Population Registration Act).
- Arabs would be forced by law to live in Arabs-only residential areas and work in Arabs-only business areas [[Group Areas Act).
- Arabs would have their names systematically removed from the voters’ roll until they were all deprived of their voting rights [[Separate Representation of Voters Act).
- By law, Arabs would be deported from wherever they lived in Israel and forcefully settled in designated Arab-only areas [[Bantu Authorities Act).
- Arabs would be evicted and have their homes destroyed if they tried to remain in “Jews-only” areas [[Prevention of Illegal Squatters Act).
- Arabs-only areas would be transformed into fully-fledged independent Arab homelands [[Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act).
- A denaturalization law would change the status of the inhabitants of the Arabstans [[Arab homelands) stripping them of their Israeli citizenship and all its privileges and benefits [[Black Homeland Citizenship Act).
- Most developed urban areas in Israel [[all the established and economically-thriving cities and towns) would be deemed “Jewish,” and Arabs wanting to be in those areas would have to live in “compounds” and carry permits called “passes” on them at all times [[Native Laws Amendment Act).
- The Arab population would be required to carry these pass books with them whenever outside their compounds or designated areas. Any Jew, even a child, could ask an Arab to produce his or her pass. Failure to produce a pass would result in the person being arrested [[Pass Laws).
- Once Arabs-only areas are modernized and developed, Arabs would be moved out and the area declared a Jews-only area [[Group Areas Development Act).
- Arabs would be deprived of the right to appeal to courts of law by means of an interdict or any legal process [[Natives [[Prohibition of Interdicts) Act).
- Arabs would be restricted to studying in Arab-only institutions. None of Israel’s schools or universities would be allowed to enroll Arab students [[Bantu Education Act). The ruling political party in Israel would declare, that it viewed education as a key element in its plan to create a completely segregated society. Emulating the words of South Africa’s “father of apartheid Hendrik Verwoerd, an Israeli prime minister would declare: “There is no place for the Arab in the Israeli community above the level of certain forms of labor … What is the use of teaching the Arab child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.”
- Arabs would be allowed training in skilled labor, but would be restricted as to where they were allowed to work [[Bantu Building Workers Act).
- Public places and services like beaches, playing parks, national parks, buses and trains, restaurants and hotels, theaters and cinemas etc would be segregated, with Jews getting the best and most well-equipped places and Arabs banned from entering or using those facilities. [[Reservation of Separate Amenities Act).
- Arabs could be labeled “communists” – a criminal offense – for doing anything that promoted disorder and disturbances or encouraged feelings of hostility between Arabs and Jews [[Suppression of Communism Act).
- Any Arab suspected of involvement in terrorism—broadly defined as anything that might “endanger the maintenance of law and order”—could be detained for a 60-day period [[which could be renewed) without trial and on the authority of a senior Jewish police officer. There would be no requirement to release information on who was being held, making it possible for people so detained to simply “disappear.” [[Terrorism Act)
- Jews and Arabs would be prohibited by law from intermarriage. – [[Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act).
- It would be illegal for an Arab man to even show romantic interest in a Jewish woman; or for a Jewish boy to indicate an interest in an Arab girl [[Immorality Amendment Act).
- Also, to qualify as citizens of a state like the South African apartheid state, Israel’s Arabs would have to comprise the vast majority of the population, and would be kept under the cruel and exploitative thumb of a minority Jewish population.
South Africa’s blacks were mostly Christian and animist. Very, very few were Muslim. Except for a radical fringe group, they never called for the Whites to be driven into the sea. Israel’s Arabs are 99 percent Muslim, and their avowed goal is to turn Israel into an Islamic country called Palestine.
They won’t succeed, thank the Lord, but if they did, we can be sure there would be no “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” here; just Shari’a show trials and public executions.
I could go on and on about just how miserable daily life would be for Arabs if Israel was run by an apartheid regime. The truth is that these Arabs enjoy an incalculably higher standard of living than any of their fellow Arabs in the states around Israel.
To suggest that Arabs in Israel live lives in any way comparable to the miserable existence endured by black South Africans is to do a terrible injustice both to Israel and to apartheid’s victims.
Apartheid week: a fiction enthusiastically embraced by those ignorant of history, and died-in-the-wool Hebraphobes.
They do not merit attention, just scorn and perhaps pity.
Perhaps.

[littlebuddy]

Saw this in the Jerusalem Watchman and thought it was an interesting article. I am sure some will disagree and blame the Jews and Israel for everything evil, even Arab evil, as though they would be pure if not for Israel's oppression.

[Ray1936]

Yawn. I think if humanity were wiped out overnight except for two people, they'd soon be fighting each other.

Mankind will never learn.

[[Yeah, if one of the two left was me, having my luck the other would be Hitler. So there.)

[littlebuddy]

Why won't they learn and why learn, survival of the fittest is the "law" of the jungle.

[maxx]

There are few jungles left and the jungles had more than just lions and elephants. History teaches that often the most ruthless are victorious.

http://usj.sagepub.com/content/35/4/729.abstract

Partisan Israeli planners utilise territorial policies that penetrate and diminish Palestinian land control.

[Detroitnerd]

What an awful time to be a supporter of Israel, on the wrong side of history.

Ya gotta feel like a Christian Scientist with an attack of appendicitis ...

[maxx]

Christian science, now there's an oxymoron.

[Papasito]

There are much bigger problems in the world than this little Israel "problem".
Middle Eastern countries should be more interested in pursuing positive change for thier own countries rather than trying to run or destroy someone else's.

[maxx]

Nation's don't always do what you think they should. Leaders are often more interested in enlarging their own power rather than improving the lot of their people. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

[Detroitnerd]

There are much bigger problems in the world than this little Israel "problem".
Middle Eastern countries should be more interested in pursuing positive change for thier own countries rather than trying to run or destroy someone else's.

Wha? ahahaha... BWAHAHAHAHAHA

[gibran]

little buddy you continue to demonize the Palestines with racist justicfication..when in fact it is your type of defense of the indefensible taht puts Israel in danger. get a grip man ...


I beleive those who defend Israel Blindly ultimately lead it into danger .. morally and in reality. I believe that Israel's right to exist is tied to the realities of the right to exist for the indigenous population of Arabs Christians and Jews.. Israel can not continue to support the systematic denial of the rights of the minorities that were a majority at one time in their country.. they can not continue to blame soley the Palestinians for the lack of peace when we know historically that this not correct. Both sides have blood on their hands...but onside does a good job of covering it;s tracks and the other does a poor job of creating a public imagine that centers on the truth of what is going on on the ground and the antecedants.. But the nonviolent struggle continues with Israelis and Palestinians side by side working together... that is something Littlebuddy most likely fears more than the terrorists- and he is not alone becuase the Likud fears it also.. APAIC fears jstreet... because moderates are more scary to the hardliners than the terrorists they use to to their bidding... lots of money in conflicts..good for arms sales and testing out the new weapons.. Peace is achievable but littlebuddy and his like really must not want it bad enough to stop posting myths and revisionist propaganda.,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-r..._b_833379.html

here is a snap shot:

Israel became a preponderantly Jewish state, thereby gaining this veneer of democracy, only by ethnically cleansing indigenous Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and preventing to this day these refugees and their descendants from exercising their right of return to their homes as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Palestinians who remained on their land and became citizens of Israel lived under martial law until 1966 and did not achieve even nominal equal rights until then. While enjoying the right to vote and run for office, Palestinian citizens of Israel--who comprise about 20 percent of the population--continue to face a bevy of official discriminatory laws and widespread societal racism that makes them second-class citizens analogous to African Americans in the Jim Crow South.
Since 1967, Israel has militarily occupied the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, placing four million Palestinians under harsh rule, suppressing their right to self-determination and foreclosing on their ability to live under their own free and democratic governance.
Today, even the limited rights afforded by Israel's "ethnocracy" are under threat. Its Jewish and Palestinian citizens find their rights circumscribed by proposed loyalty oaths, parliamentary investigations of nongovernmental organizations critical of the governmental line, and imprisonment of activists standing in solidarity with nonviolent Palestinian protestors in the occupied West Bank.
Israel's apartheid policies toward Palestinians hardly qualify it as a democracy, much less the only one in the Middle East. Since the Taif Agreement effectively ended Lebanon's civil war in 1989, the fragile country has had a functioning, although uniquely sectarian, parliamentary democracy. The withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in 2005, whose presence Israel's supporters used to discredit the independence of Lebanon's democratic system, made it difficult, if not impossible, to argue that Lebanon is not a democracy.

[gibran]

hasbra propaganda at best Little BUddy

[Steve]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...041263,00.html

[gibran]

ynet news is the news max of Israel... why should anyone be surprised... the right in Isreael will continue to place it in a constant state of war..BIBI is perfectly happy with the status qou... and our blind support..but the moderates [[left) see a better future for this conflict..


wse all know the threats and understand that they must be met..but you would have less threats with peace... and that comes without oppression... stop the oppression and you will see that the people with the most to loss will reel in the haters..

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition...eturn-1.318527

[Relayer76]

There are much bigger problems in the world than this little Israel "problem".
Middle Eastern countries should be more interested in pursuing positive change for thier own countries rather than trying to run or destroy someone else's.

The Israel Palestine problem is not a M-E problem. It is very much an American [[and Canadian) problem. No one can get elected in the U.S. or Canada anymore without pledging to defend and support Israel at all cost. Our politicians should be working for us, not a foreign country. Anyone who even tries to put some balance into the discussion by suggesting something really basic like Israel should end its occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza gets clobbered by AIPAC, loses their job, their seat in the House, etc. Right to free speech - not when it comes to Israeli interests. Whether one gives a hoot about justice for Palestinians or not, people should be concerned when a foreign country has our politicians by the balls.

[Steve]

It's true. AIPAC made the people vote for Obama when who they really wanted was Nader.

[littlebuddy]

Good Idea to not blockade Gaza, at least for the Palestinians

Israel seizes arms smuggling ship bound for Gaza

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 | Ryan Jones





Israel seizes arms smuggling ship bound for Gaza
During the predawn hours Tuesday morning, Israeli commandoes boarded and seized control of a ship sailing in international waters with a cargo of advanced weapons bound for the Gaza Strip.
The Victoria was flying a Liberian flag at the time, but is German-owned and French-operated. Israel had been monitoring the ship for the past week. When it departed from Latakia, Syria on Monday, Israeli intelligence accurately assessed that it was carrying a cargo of illicit arms.
The ship docked in Turkey later on Monday, presumably to deflect attention, before sailing south toward Egypt.
The Israeli navy intercepted the ship as it passed some 200 miles off Israel’s Mediterranean coast. Navy commanders were able to contact the captain of the Victoria, who granted permission for Israeli troops to board his ship. The Israelis met no resistance, and were quickly provided all documentation regarding the ship’s cargo.
Of course, that documentation was falsified. According to the ship’s manifest, it was carrying cotton and lentils. But inside the crates, the Israelis found the following:

• 230 120-mm mortar shells
• 2,270 60-mm mortar shells
• 6 C-704 anti-ship missiles with a range of 20 miles
• 2 UK-made radar systems for use with the missiles
• 2 advanced launchers for use with the missiles
• 66,960 Kalashnikov bullets

And to top it all off, the instruction manuals included with the missiles were written in Farsi, providing strong evidence that Iran was trying to further arm Gaza-based terrorist organizations.
Two weeks ago, two Iranian navy vessels passed through the Suez Canal and docked in Latakia, before heading back to the Persian Gulf. Israel does not know for sure, but the likelihood is high that those ships were delivering the very arms cache Israel intercepted on Tuesday.
The Victoria was docked in the Israeli port of Ashdod on Wednesday, and the Israeli army will be publicly displaying the weapons found onboard.
Israel notified France and Germany of the operation, due to the ownership of the ship and the nationality of the crew. Israel does not believe that Turkey or Egypt had any knowledge of or role in the smuggling attempt.
The incident further justifies Israel’s maritime embargo against the Gaza Strip, and its interception of cargo and other large ships trying to reach the Hamas-ruled territory.

[gibran]

guess that means they can continue to justify starviing the population now.. this makes little sense on both parts..but I really wonder how could you send a shp into waters that has a blockaide?

Guess maybe the Mossad? False flag or just stupidity on the partof Hamas... of course All the apologists are out for both sides ..but LB you have 80% of the children living in poverty in Gaza.. they cant get enough cement to rebuild the schools and hospital.. or their sweage or water treatment plant.. really good... read the Gooldstone report and get back to me.. I just picked it up.. and will get back to you... LB I would love you to look into the eyes of the oppressed and tell me is it worth it... I dare you to look into the eyes of an Israeli family that lost a child to this hate and tell me is this worth it.. I dare you to come up with a real plan to solve this conflict and work for fair and just approach.. you [[like most evangelicals hate Muslims and Palestinian Christians) and really put your country [[Israel) in harms way by not giving peace a chance..but we know how you feel about Jews to begin with..waiting to convert them arent you? How respectful is that..

[Danny]

There is apartied in U.S. We called it SEGREGATION! Even through its no longer a law of the land, individual American People can make it legal in the homes, businesses, families etc...

[Relayer76]

Good Idea to not blockade Gaza, at least for the Palestinians

Israel seizes arms smuggling ship bound for Gaza

Excellent, now lets stop providing Israel with American weapons to kill Palestinians. What's good for the goose is good for the gander?