Share this fundraiser with friends online using ChipIn!

Support Anarchist Bloggers!

Anarchoblogs depends on contributions from readers like you to stay running. We're doing a fundraising drive for the months of July and August.

Donations provide for the costs of running anarchoblogs.org and provide direct financial support to active Anarchoblogs contributors. See the donation page for more details.


Posts tagged apartheid

Evening Briefing—6th July 2010 4:01 pm / 06 July 2010 by Editors, at Little Alex in Wonderland

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:


Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: Abkhazia, Adri Nieuwhof, Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, Ahmad Walid Fazly, Ahmedis, airstrikes, anarchism, Anna Morgenstern, apartheid, Avigdor Lieberman, Azerbaijan, bailouts, banking, Big Brother, Bill Keller, BP, Bradley Manning, China, CIA, Collateral Murder, David Cronin, David Petraeus, Dian Chu, domestic surveillance, drones, eminent domain, Eric Holder, EU, Fareed Zakaria, Federal Reserve, Five-Day War, Ford, Gareth Porter, Gaza, Gaza blockade, Gaza Massacre, Georgia, Glenn Greenwald, Gulf oil spill, habeas corpus, Helmand Province, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Mann Leverett, IKEA, India, international law, Iraq, Iraq War, Iraqi Kurdistan, ISI, Israel, Jesse Walker, Kevin Carson, Lawrence Wilkerson, libertarian, military industrial complex, Mitt Romney, national debt, Nigeria, night raids, NWFP, Operation Cast lead, Pakistan, Palestine-Israel, Pentagon, Ray Odierno, revolution, Russia, Scott Horton, settlements, SOF, South Korea, South Ossetia, Sri Lanka, Stanley McChrystal, START, Stephan Salisbury, Stephen Walt, Sudan, Taliban, Tony Hayward, torture, UAW, Uighurs, UK, UN, Venezuela, Wall Street Journal, war crimes, War on Terror, West Bank, Wikileaks, Will Grigg, women's rights, Xue Feng
Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Daily Briefing—24th-25th May 2010 3:01 pm / 25 May 2010 by Editors, at Little Alex in Wonderland

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:


Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, apartheid, Chicago Police, CIA, Colombia, covert operations, Cuba, David Petraeus, diplomacy, DPRK, Freedom Flotilla, Gareth Porter, Gaza blockade, Honduras, Hugo Chavez, Iran, Iraq War, ISI, Israel, Jon Burge, Jonathan Turley, journalism, Kevin Carson, Latin America, media, Michael Corcoran, Middle East, military industrial complex, NHS, night raids, North Korea, OAS, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Pentagon, police brutality, politics, propaganda, Robert Fisk, Ron Paul, Saddam Hussein, settlements, South Korea, Stanley McChrystal, torture, USAID, Venezuela, West Bank
Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Two-State Illusion: NATO’ization of Palestine 7:45 am / 22 May 2010 by Editors, at Little Alex in Wonderland

The proposed end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank is a NATO occupation of 40,000 troops.

A large portion of the ridiculous proposal put forth as the “two-state solution” in the Middle East is the condition that the Palestinian nation-state be a demilitarized one, sectioned off by weaving Israeli settlements and infrastructure on land stolen from Palestinians.

A nation-state being defined by its monopoly of force transforms this illusion into little more than a self-detonating concept. In practice, media outlets are reporting, that this entails a NATO occupation of the West Bank.

“One of the reports suggested that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had proposed the idea, and that it included 40,000 NATO troops for the West Bank,” Jason Ditz writes at AntiWar News.

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai approved 1,600 new settlement units in March—during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden—for Israelis to further occupy the West Bank. He recently stated, “There is not and never has been a freeze on construction in Jerusalem, nor will there ever be,” Ha’aretz reported.

No matter when individuals in the legislative and executive branches of Washington express in public, the truth is that this isn’t rogue Israeli policy. Washington refuses to set conditions on the $3bn of military welfare it continues to annually ship to Israel and the House of Representatives recently approved a bill, 410-4, to send an additional $205m as a supplemental.

The immunity consistently granted to Israel’s blanket violations of international humanitarian law and U.N. resolutions to this dispute, dating back over four decades is directly hypothetical for sanctions pressed on other nation-states—notably Iran and Iraq—over this same time span. The actions of the U.S. government in the international community toward other criminal nation-states define the U.S. government’s enabling actions as criminal, unacceptable and rogue.

Palestinian diplomats are publicly refuting reports of a NATO occupation as some sort of compromise, but—whether the reports are true or not—such a proposal would just never fly. The Arab League and the Palestinian people would never hand over the political capital. The extent to which the Palestinian Authority would collaborate to such an existential alternative will decide its viability.

University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer recently spoke at an event coordinated by The Palestine Center. The Realpolitik co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy accurately noted:

Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans—to include many American Jews—Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank.  Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy.  Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a “Greater Israel,” which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.  Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term.  In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens.  In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream….

There are three possible alternatives to a two-state solution, all of which involve creating a Greater Israel—an Israel that effectively controls the West Bank and Gaza.

In the first scenario, Greater Israel would become a democratic bi-national state in which Palestinians and Jews enjoy equal political rights. This solution has been suggested by a handful of Jews and a growing number of Palestinians.  However, it would mean abandoning the original Zionist vision of a Jewish state, since the Palestinians would eventually outnumber the Jews in Greater Israel.

Second, Israel could expel most of the Palestinians from Greater Israel, thereby preserving its Jewish character through an overt act of ethnic cleansing.  This is what happened in 1948 when the Zionists drove roughly 700,000 Palestinians out of the territory that became the new state of Israel, and then prevented them from returning to their homes.  Following the Six Day War in 1967, Israel expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.  The scale of the expulsion, however, would have to be even greater this time, because there are about 5.5 million Palestinians living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

The final alternative to a two-state solution is some form of apartheid, whereby Israel increases its control over the Occupied Territories, but allows the Palestinians to exercise limited autonomy in a set of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves.

These are the only possibilities for the foreseeable future. And though we disagree with Prof. Mearsheimer that the “final alternative” is the “best of these alternative futures”, we agree it is “no longer a serious option”, as he continued:

The main reason that a two-state solution is no longer a serious option is that most Israelis are opposed to making the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state, and there is little reason to expect them to have an epiphany on this issue.  For starters, there are now about 480,000 settlers in the Occupied Territories and a huge infrastructure of connector and bypass roads, not to mention settlements.  Much of that infrastructure and large numbers of those settlers would have to be removed to create a Palestinian state.  Many of those settlers however, would fiercely resist any attempt to rollback the settlement enterprise.  Earlier this month, Ha’aretz reported that a Hebrew University poll found that 21 percent of the settlers believe that “all means must be employed to resist the evacuation of most West Bank settlements, including the use of arms.” In addition, the study found that 54 percent of those 480,000 settlers “do not recognize the government’s authority to evacuate settlements”; and even if there was a referendum sanctioning a withdrawal, 36 percent of the settlers said they would not accept it….

In addition to these practical political obstacles to creating a Palestinian state, there is an important ideological barrier.  From the start, Zionism envisioned an Israeli state that controlled all of Mandatory Palestine.  There was no place for a Palestinian state in the original Zionist vision of Israel.  Even Yitzhak Rabin, who was determined to make the Oslo peace process work, never spoke about creating a Palestinian state.  He was merely interested in granting the Palestinians some form of limited autonomy, what he called “an entity which is less than a state.”  Plus, he insisted that Israel should maintain control over the Jordan River Valley and that a united Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel.  Also remember that in the spring of 1998 when Hillary Clinton was First Lady, she was sharply criticized for saying that “it would be in the long-term interests of peace in the Middle East for there to be a state of Palestine, a functioning modern state on the same footing as other states.”…

In short, it is difficult to imagine any Israeli government having the political will, much less the ability, to dismantle a substantial portion of its vast settlement enterprise and create a Palestinian state in virtually all of the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem.

Prof. Mearsheimer goes on to say that this “final alternative”:

is not going to happen, because no American president can put meaningful pressure on Israel to force it to change its policies toward the Palestinians.  The main reason is the Israel lobby, a remarkably powerful interest group that has a profound influence on U.S. Middle East policy.  Alan Dershowitz was spot on when he said, “My generation of Jews … became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy.”  That lobby, of course, makes it impossible for any president to play hardball with Israel, especially on the issue of settlements.

This is true, but somewhat narrow. The “two-state solution” is dependent on a mutual agreement between the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority, but also the Arab League, the United States and the European Union. Israel continues to break international law, the entire international community responds with denouncement, but the latter two external parties continue to provide to means for which the Israeli government—without pretense—continues its brutal occupation.

The proposals brought to the table by the Israeli government, the U.S. and the European Union are purposely always devoid of the recognition of Palestinians’ right to self-determination, right of return to or adequate compensation for stolen land and the strategic placement of Jewish settlements in the West Bank to monpolize the natural resources under the authority of the Israeli government.

The perpetuity of rejectionism riddles the practice of the so-called ‘peace process’. The latest proposal to transfer occupation of the West Bank to NATO is the latest example. In the meantime, the occupation expands and the human rights of Palestinians are marginalized by the dominant narrative of exerted powers of establishment.


Filed under: Palestine-Israel, Political Science Tagged: Alan Dershowitz, apartheid, Arab League, European Union, fascism, France, Israel, Israel lobby, John Mearsheimer, Middle East, Middle East peace process, NATO, Newspeak, Nicolas Sarkozy, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Palestine, Palestine-Israel, Saeb Erekat, settlements, two-state solution, US, West Bank, Zionism
Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Israel and Apartheid (part 2) 8:41 pm / 15 March 2010 by Don Emmerich, Jr., at Don Emmerich's Peace Blog

Israel Builds Security Wall Around Jerusalem

After making the case that apartheid does not exist in Israel proper, Alan Dershowitz writes:

What is true of Israel proper, including Israeli Arab areas, is not true of the occupied territories. Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza several years ago, only to be attacked by Hamas rockets. Israel maintains its occupation of the West Bank only because the Palestinians walked away from a generous offer of statehood on 97% of the West Bank, with its capital in Jerusalem and with a $35 billion compensation package for refugees. Had it accepted that offer by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak, there would be a Palestinian state in the West Bank. There would be no separation barrier. There would be no roads restricted to Israeli citizens (Jews, Arabs and Christians.) And there would be no civilian settlements. I have long opposed civilian settlements in the West Bank, as many, perhaps most Israelis, do. But to call an occupation, which continues because of the refusal of the Palestinians to accept the two-state solution, “Apartheid” is to misuse that word. As those of us who fought in the actual struggle of apartheid well understand, there is no comparison between what happened in South Africa and what is now taking place on the West Bank.


Nowhere in his article does Dershowitz attempt to show that “there is no comparison between what happened in South Africa and what is now taking place on the West Bank.” I imagine he realizes that he can’t prove this. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, it’s pretty clear that there are many striking similarities between apartheid South Africa and the modern West Bank and that, like the South African National Party, the State of Israel has imposed what can only be described as an apartheid system.

As evidence that Israel doesn’t practice apartheid, Dershowitz simply claims that Ehud Barak once gave Yasser Arafat a “generous offer of statehood.” Needless to say, this is a helluva non-sequitur, even for someone like Alan Dershowitz. The fact that Israel once offered to return 97% of the West Bank proves that it doesn’t currently practice apartheid? Huh?

Even if Israel once offered to return 100% of the West Bank, even if it agreed to let all of the 1948 refugees return, this wouldn’t change the fact that it is currently depriving Palestinians living in the West Bank of some of their most basic human rights. For instance, Israel prevents [.pdf] Palestinians from accessing the Jordan River and allows them to use just 20% of the Mountain Aquifer, the area’s other main water source; it excludes the Palestinians from more than 60% of the land in the West Bank and, through a network of walls, checkpoints, and roads, has splintered the remaining Palestinian land into an archipelago of sixty-four enclaves; it frequently restricts Palestinian movement between these different enclaves, sometimes shutting down roads for several days at a time. I could go on and on.

So, even if it’s the case that Yasser Arafat should have accepted Ehud Barak’s “generous offer of peace,” the fact remains that Israel is an apartheid state. (And by the way, Barak’s offer, though certainly the most generous one an Israeli prime minister has ever made to the Palestinians, still failed to comply with international law.)

But Dershowitz simply refuses to acknowledge this point and instead spends the majority of his article lambasting the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gaza Strip. These governments, he writes, are true perpetrators of apartheid, and therefore we ought to spend our energy criticizing them. Instead of Israeli Apartheid Week, he writes:

I support a “Middle East Apartheid Education Week” to be held at universities throughout the world. It would be based on the universally accepted human rights principle of “the worst first.” In other words, the worst forms of apartheid being practiced by Middle East nations and entities would be studied and exposed first. Then the apartheid practices of other countries would be studied in order of their seriousness and impact on vulnerable minorities.


He goes on to claim that Israeli Apartheid Week is “carefully designed to cover up far more serious problems of real apartheid in Arab and Muslim nations.”

Of course, the fact that many Muslim nations commit apartheid doesn’t change the fact that Israel does, too. And even if we accept Dershowitz’s claim that these Muslim nations are greater perpetrators of apartheid, it still doesn’t absolve Israel from its sins in the West Bank.

So why then all the focus on Israel? Do pro-Palestinian activists really intend to cover up the evils of the Saudi, Jordanian, and Pakistani governments? That’s certainly not my intention, and I’ve never met another pro-Palestinian activist who had anything but contempt for these regimes.

Personally speaking, I take such a strong interest in the suffering of the Palestinians because, as an American, I feel somewhat responsible. Every year, the money I pay in taxes helps subsidize the Israeli government and all its evil practices. Since I feel that refusing to pay taxes would be completely counterproductive, I try to help in other ways. I give what I can to pro-Palestinian charities, and I frequently blog about these issues, trying my best to expose the sophistries of people like Alan Dershowitz.

Tagged with: , ,

Israel and Apartheid 8:26 pm / 04 March 2010 by Don Emmerich, Jr., at Don Emmerich's Peace Blog

Palestinian Workers Complain Of Abuse At Israeli Crossings

As you’ve probably heard, a number of pro-Palestinian groups have dubbed the first week of March Israeli Apartheid Week. By holding numerous events, mostly on college campuses, these groups hope “to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.”

Predictably, these events have elicited an angry response from many neoconservatives, who have vehemently argued that Israel is not an apartheid state. Most notably, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen has written:

“The Israel of today and the South Africa of yesterday have almost nothing in common. In South Africa, the minority white population harshly ruled the majority black population. Nonwhites were denied civil rights, and in 1958, they were even deprived of citizenship. In contrast, Israeli Arabs, about one-fifth of the country, have the same civil and political rights as do Israeli Jews. Arabs sit in the Knesset and serve in the military, although most are exempt from the draft. Whatever this is—and it looks suspiciously like a liberal democracy—it cannot be apartheid.

“The West Bank, more or less under Israeli military rule, is a different matter. But it is not part of Israel proper, and under every conceivable peace plan—including those proposed by Israeli governments—almost all of it will revert to the Palestinian Authority and become the heartland of a Palestinian state.”

Cohen’s first point—that Israeli Arabs are not subject to apartheid—is undoubtedly correct. Although Israeli Arabs face extraordinary discrimination, discrimination that is tantamount to that faced by African-Americans in the Jim Crow South, I wouldn’t say that they are victims of apartheid.

My problem with Cohen’s article lies in his second point. Ever the Israel-defender, he doesn’t say a word about the situation faced by Arabs in the West Bank but simply asserts that most of the West Bank will eventually become part of a Palestinian state and then goes on to accuse Israel’s critics of being racist and dishonest. Needless to say, claiming that the West Bank will eventually become part of a Palestinian state does not prove Cohen’s main point, which is that “[t]he Israel of today and the South Africa of yesterday have almost nothing in common.” Even if we grant that Palestinians will eventually control most of the West Bank (and I honestly don’t see how this is possible), this doesn’t change the fact that Israel has been occupying the West Bank for forty-three years now and that its current treatment of Palestinians there undoubtedly resembles South Africa’s former treatment of its black citizens.

First of all, Israel accords Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the West Bank different legal rights. Only Jewish settlers can vote. Moreover, while Jewish settlers are subject to the Israeli legal system, Palestinians live under military rule. Consequently, “settlers enjoy liberties and legal guarantees that are denied Palestinian defendants…charged with a similar offense. The authority to arrest an individual, the maximum detention before being brought before a judge, the right to meet with an attorney, the protections available to defendants at the trial, the maximum punishment allowed by law, and the release of prisoners before completion of sentence— all of these differ greatly in the two systems of law, with the Israeli system providing the suspect and defendant with more protections.”

Palestinians face discrimination in numerous other ways. For instance, although Palestinians make up 83% of the West Bank’s population, Israel prevents [.pdf] them from accessing the Jordan River and allows them to use just 20% of the Mountain Aquifer, the area’s other main water source. Additionally, Israel excludes the Palestinians from more than 60% of the land in the West Bank. Through a network of walls, checkpoints, and roads, it has splintered the remaining Palestinian land into an archipelago of sixty-four enclaves. While Israel allows its own citizens to travel between Jewish settlements and Israel proper, it often restricts Palestinian movement between these different enclaves, sometimes shutting down roads for several days at a time. It seems clear that Israel often imposes these travel restrictions as collective punishment, something it never does to its own citizens. Other forms of collective punishment Israel has employed include imposing curfews in Palestinian areas and even demolishing Palestinian homes.

And the discrimination does not end there. Israel is far more likely to approve construction permits for Jews than Palestinians. According to the Israeli government’s own numbers, from 2000 to 2007 the government approved just 91 of 1,624 Palestinian building permit requests. During the same time, Jewish settlers built 18,472 homes and apartments. This inequality has forced many Palestinians to build homes without permits. From 2000 to 2007, Israel issued demolition orders against 4,993 Palestinian homes, eventually demolishing 33% of these homes. During the same period, it issued demolition orders against 2,900 settler homes built without permits but only ended up demolishing 7% of them.

One of the ugliest examples of Jewish-Palestinian disparity can be found in the West Bank city of Hebron. As B’Tselem noted [.pdf] in its 2008 Annual Report, “In 2008, Israel continued to carry out its ‘separation policy’ in the center of Hebron. As part of this policy, Israel imposes a long list of prohibitions and restrictions on Palestinian movement on major thoroughfares, along which settlers are allowed to move freely. Israeli security forces routinely delay Palestinian passersby for repeated checks, in which they harass and humiliate them. Palestinian residents of the city center are also exposed to extensive violence by Israeli settlers, much greater than elsewhere in the West Bank. Therefore, the restraint shown by the authorities on enforcing the law against settlers in this city is especially blatant.”

There are certainly differences between the modern West Bank and South Africa from 1948 to 1994, but, as I’ve briefly described, there are also many similarities, and these similarities are striking. Like the South African National Party, the State of Israel has imposed what can only be described as an apartheid system. Given that the American government, and thus our tax dollars, make this system possible, I think it follows that each of us has an obligation to feel outraged by this injustice and to do our part to bring it to an end.


Related Posts:
● A Introduction to Israel’s Blockade of Gaza
● A Tale of Two Regimes: Political Repression in Iran and Israel
● The Jerusalem Post Slams Amnesty International - Again
Tagged with: ,

Monday Lazy Linking 3:00 pm / 18 January 2010 by Rad Geek, at Rad Geek's Lazy Linking

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Boycott Israeli Apartheid poster on Just Seeds 3:10 pm / 09 April 2008 by Rob Maguire

A while back I worked with Tadamon, a Montreal-based collective working to build solidarity between activists in Montreal and Beirut, to develop a poster for their campaign to boycott the Israeli apartheid of Palestine. Having spent six weeks in the West Bank a few years ago, and having seen the economic and humanitarian impact of this apartheid first hand, helping them out with this was a no-brainer.

In designing the poster we tried to strike a balance between the amount of information presented and aesthetic appeal. Personally I would’ve cut down on the copy even more than we did, but we did condense the info considerably, and kept clutter under control. We ended up with a poster that got the point of Tadamon’s campaign across quickly, while including more nuanced details for anyone who decided to stick around and read it.

The finished design was silk-screened and hung around Montreal, and is now available for sale at Just Seeds, a “visual resistance artists’ cooperative’, with the proceeds going to Tadamon.

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,