Discussion for article #236584
Congratulations to Prime Minister Benjamin “Jim Crow” Netanyahu.
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just what israel needs: no-go areas for palestinians. wake up israel! this guy is a schmuck. peace will never happen with this guy at the helm. there are loads of decent, intelligent people in israel. elect one of them!
When Israel has killed innocent Palestinians, they have always hid behind the rationale that it was the Palestinians own fault for electing Hamas.
Well, Israeli citizens, if we hold you to a similar standard, you are pieces of shit because you elected this piece of shit government that’s pushing apartheid. You are responsible for this. And the world community needs to hold you Israelis accountable.
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Having fun, Bibi?
It may be time to ramp up disinvestment from Israel. They are little better than South Africa.
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Israel is worse than South Africa under apartheid. It is more violent and repressive, and it has gone on far longer.
Israel presents an odd split personality. A Palestinian born in Israel proper has the same rights as everyone else in Israel regardless of his religious practices or heritage. While a Palestinian of any faith, born a kilometer away in de facto Israel (the West Bank), will all be treated as less than Israelis, even less than Israelis living in other countries who have not yet stepped foot in Israel.
Fifty Years Of Occupation
These Palestinians in de facto Israel - and fifty years of Israeli occupation warrants that title-, live their days with few if any real rights: the courts rarely rule in their favor, the police ignore attacks upon them, torture and imprisonment without charges are common . It matters not be they Muslim, Christian, Bedouin.
The same can be said of the economic plight of Palestinians born in Israel proper. They can own a home, they can drive to work, they can attend school and share the dreams of their fellow countrymen. While again, those Palestinians born in de facto Israel struggle circuitous entanglements, waiting hours and even days for checkpoints to open for them. Worse yet, they have no real property rights, as the property beneath their feet, handed down from their fathers, is taken from them in the most capricious fashion without recourse.
Palestinians living in Israel proper are, I am told and believe, satisfied with their lives and proud of their citizenship. Palestinians in de facto Israel are a miserable lot, angry, weak and frustrated. There is no inherent difference between the Palestinian in Israel proper and those in Israeli occupied territories.
The situation is very much like the North South divide of antebellum America
Don’t believe me? To understand the analogy between Israel and the USA circa 1850 we need also to look at the Israeli citizens who live in Israel proper and those living in de facto Israel: both have the same exact privileges, the same colored license plates, the same expectations of justice in the same courts and the same privilege to seek economic gain.
This was the same in the USA. Full American citizens, living in either free or slave states, had every expectation of being treated equally under the laws of the land and enjoyed every right and protection regardless of which state they lived in.
But Black Americans found themselves differentiated by a line not unlike that between Israel and the occupied territories. On this side they were free, on that side they could be owned by other men.
The antebellum conflict became a moral one, why could men have no rights on this side of a line and citizenship on the other? The issue was more than simply color -based. Free southern blacks owned slaves and some of these black slaveowners likely owned slaves lighter than themselves under slavery’s bizarre rules designating that quadroons (one black grandparent) and octoroons (one black great grandparent) could still be owned as slaves.
Lets move back to the present where Palestinians in the O.T would likely thrive equally as Palestinians born in Israel were it not for those simple lines , lines for which the same government holds control on both sides.
The issue is again a moral one, on this side a Palestinian is an Israeli citizen, on that side he is required to be less of a man because of demographics. Were he to be treated as every other Palestinian born in Israel proper he would disrupt the demographics which demand that Jews outnumber all others. This would then force Israel to either change the basic laws - where all men are to be considered equal under the basic laws or admit that equality is a charade in Israel that is practical only to the extent that a favored class maintains majority status.
In a nutshell, Israel today finds itself facing many of the same questions as antebellum America raised.
It was said that blacks were not capable of caring for themselves and did better under a masters care. This same arguement is quite familiar to those of us who have debated the Palestinian issue, where many Israelis supporting the status quo argue that Palestinians under Israeli occupation are better off than Palestinians would be if left on their own or if they were living in Jordan, Syria, or elsewhere. Some such supporters even utilizing statistics from the CIA World Factbook.
Other status quo supporters I routinely engage will tell me that these Palestinians in de facto Israel need to be kept under control using nearly the same terms used in Texas’ Declaration of Secesssion: that only under domination “could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
What is slavery?
As defined by Kevin Bales, one of the leading anti-slavery advocates,
Slaves have been universally denied the rights of citizenship enjoyed by their free neighbors and experience the loss of free will, with violence being used to maintain control over the slave.
Slaves don’t have the luxury of the courts, and face a separate justice system wherein their master is also their judge. In this same way Palestinians in the occupied territories find themselves pulled into military courts while Israeli citizens in the occupied territories face Israeli courts. So, in both the antebellum South and in Greater Israel we have the “social death” that sociologist Orlando Patterson speaks of in describing slavery:
It is, first, a form of personal domination. One individual is under the direct power of another or his agent. In practice, this usually entails the power of life and death over the slave. Second, the slave is always an excommunicated person. He, more often she, does not belong to the legitimate social or moral community; he has no independent social existence; he exists only through, and for, the master.
What rights do these Palestinians have?
Bear in mind that until recently, Israelis dictated what spices could be placed upon Palestinians food, just as these same Israelis determined which foods are acceptable and allowed in (gaza here). Today Israel dictates how much water Palestinians can receive, if they can harvest their olive trees, how long the lights and gas are on, how far -and it changes daily- their fishing boats can go to set nets. Palestinian lives are lived subject to the whims of Israelis. Palestinians are not freemen.
They can leave if they can find a rarely open exit, obtain a visa and can find enough cash to pay Israel’s fees. They can, in other words, purchase their freedom just as antebellum blacks could and often purchased their freedom.
But most find themselves trapped in the land of their birth by circumstance, by familiy ties, by lack of resources and hopelessness. Here again the question is the same, why should men - in the land of their birth - be denied the basic rights of freemen?
The Agony Of Reality
While the examination may provoke a painful personal dilemma, it is by no means hyperbole to compare the antebellum South with the Palestinian’s situation in Israel.
Is it identical to the situation in the South? Of course not. Few things are exactly the same. Buts it is a fair analogy in as much as a horse and donkey are both members of the genus equus: the treatment and lives of Palestinians and antebellum black slaves is recognizable as belonging to the same kind.
Bibi is running this show right out of the Third Reich playbook. The only difference is which side is wearing the Star! When will the rest of the world understand that Israel is the cause of the problem and force them to allow the Palestinians to become human beings again?
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