Israel - Apartheid State

Goober

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Israel - Apartheid State - Nope

As per normal the Usual Suspects would never post any news that is a polar opposite of their so called beliefs and so called facts of life. People with an sense can tell the difference.

Don't call it apartheid

Richard J. Goldstone, National Post · Nov. 2, 2011

The Palestinian Authority's request for full United Nations membership has put hope for any two-state solution under increasing pressure. The need for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians has never been greater. So it is important to separate legitimate criticism of Israel from assaults that aim to isolate, demonize and delegitimize it.

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues "apartheid" policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a "hearing" on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a "tribunal." The "evidence" is going to be onesided and the members of the "jury" are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.

While "apartheid" can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.

I know all too well the cruelty of South Africa's abhorrent apartheid system, under which human beings characterized as black had no rights to vote, hold political office, use "white" toilets or beaches, marry whites, live in whites-only areas or even be there without a "pass." Blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death if there was no "black" ambulance to rush them to a "black" hospital. "White" hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives.

In assessing the accusation that Israel pursues apartheid policies, which are by definition primarily about race or ethnicity, it is important first to distinguish between the situations in Israel, where Arabs are citizens, and in West Bank areas that remain under Israeli control in the absence of a peace agreement.

In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: "Inhumane acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." Israeli Arabs - 20% of Israel's population - vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.

To be sure, there is more de facto separation between Jewish and Arab populations than Israelis should accept. Much of it is chosen by the communities themselves. Some results from discrimination. But it is not apartheid, which consciously enshrines separation as an ideal. In Israel, equal rights are the law, the aspiration and the ideal; inequities are often successfully challenged in court.

The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here, too, there is no intent to maintain "an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group." This is a critical distinction, even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there. South Africa's enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority, to the detriment of other races. By contrast, Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.

But until there is a twostate peace, or at least as long as Israel's citizens remain under threat of attacks from the West Bank and Gaza, Israel will see roadblocks and similar measures as necessary for self-defence, even as Palestinians feel oppressed. As things stand, attacks from one side are met by counterattacks from the other. And the deep disputes, claims and counterclaims are only hardened when the offensive analogy of "apartheid" is invoked.

Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an "apartheid wall" and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While such images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it is disingenuous to use them to distort the reality: The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks.

Of course, the Palestinian people have national aspirations and human rights that all must respect. But those who conflate the situations in Israel and the West Bank and liken both to the old South Africa do a disservice to all who hope for justice and peace.

Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and the West Bank cannot be simplified to a narrative of Jewish discrimination. There is hostility and suspicion on both sides. Israel, unique among democracies, has been in a state of war with many of its neighbours who refuse to accept its existence. Even some Israeli Arabs, because they are citizens of Israel, have at times come under suspicion from other Arabs as a result of that longstanding enmity.

The mutual recognition and protection of the human dignity of all people is indispensable to bringing an end to hatred and anger. The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony.

The New York Times ? Richard J. Goldstone, a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court, led the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2008-09
 

CDNBear

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The usual suspects that once lauded this man like the proverbial Saviour, will now (Not that they haven't already started) turn on him like a pack of rabid wolves.
 

Goober

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The usual suspects that once lauded this man like the proverbial Saviour, will now (Not that they haven't already started) turn on him like a pack of rabid wolves.

Oh they will. For them he was Moses, preaching from the Temple on the Mount. The word - The guilty - Guess he will be lambasted by the utternut left wingers in many columns. So far left they led the lemmings off the cliff.
 

gore0bsessed

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In 2001, Human Rights Watch described government-run Arab schools as "a world apart from government-run Jewish schools." [218] The report found striking differences in virtually every aspect of the education system.[219][220]
In 2005, the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education said that the Israeli government spent an average of $192 a year on Arab students compared to $1,100 for Jewish students. The drop-out rate for Arabs was twice as high as for Jews (12 percent versus 6 percent). There was a 5,000-classroom shortage in the Arab sector.[221]


According to the Central Bank of Israel statistics for 2003, salary averages for Arab workers are 29% lower than for Jewish workers.[70]


Inequality in the allocation of public funding for Jewish and Arab needs, and widespread employment discrimination, present significant economic hurdles for Arab citizens of Israel.[203

A survey by Prof. Sami Smooha of the University of Haifa of Israeli looking at relations and coexistence between Jews and Arabs was published by Ha'aretz newspaper in May 2010 and presented to the Knesset within the context of the deterioration of such relations over the past decade. The poll revealed that 48% of Israel's Arab citizens are dissatisfied with their lives in the Jewish state, compared to 35% in 2003; the number of Arabs who are not willing to befriend Jews has doubled and, perhaps most seriously, 62% of Israeli Arabs fear "transfer" (forced migration or, as it has been called, "ethnic cleansing"), compared to just 6% who expressed that fear in 2003. It is also noted that 40% of the respondents expressed their distrust of Israel's judiciary system while almost 41% supported an Arab boycott of Knesset elections.
Israel's discrimination against its Arab citizens



Israeli courts must end anti-Arab discrimination

Israeli courts discriminate against Israeli Arabs, there is no doubt about it.
Israeli courts must end anti-Arab discrimination - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
Israeli courts discriminate against Israeli Arabs. If there had been any doubt left about this, a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind study commissioned by Israel's Courts Administration and the Israel Bar Association just determined it decisively.
According to the study, whose main findings were reported by Tomer Zarchin in yesterday's Haaretz, Arabs are given jail sentences more often than Jews convicted of the same offenses, and Arabs receive longer sentences than Jews who are jailed. The study's authors conclude that their most conspicuous finding is the tendency of Israeli courts to treat Arab defendants more harshly: When Arabs wind up in court, they are more likely to be convicted; when convicted, they are likely to receive a stiffer sentence than a Jew normally would. It's hard to imagine a more disturbing fact.
 

Colpy

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In 2001, Human Rights Watch described government-run Arab schools as "a world apart from government-run Jewish schools." [218] The report found striking differences in virtually every aspect of the education system.[219][220]
In 2005, the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education said that the Israeli government spent an average of $192 a year on Arab students compared to $1,100 for Jewish students. The drop-out rate for Arabs was twice as high as for Jews (12 percent versus 6 percent). There was a 5,000-classroom shortage in the Arab sector.[221]


According to the Central Bank of Israel statistics for 2003, salary averages for Arab workers are 29% lower than for Jewish workers.[70]


Inequality in the allocation of public funding for Jewish and Arab needs, and widespread employment discrimination, present significant economic hurdles for Arab citizens of Israel.[203

A survey by Prof. Sami Smooha of the University of Haifa of Israeli looking at relations and coexistence between Jews and Arabs was published by Ha'aretz newspaper in May 2010 and presented to the Knesset within the context of the deterioration of such relations over the past decade. The poll revealed that 48% of Israel's Arab citizens are dissatisfied with their lives in the Jewish state, compared to 35% in 2003; the number of Arabs who are not willing to befriend Jews has doubled and, perhaps most seriously, 62% of Israeli Arabs fear "transfer" (forced migration or, as it has been called, "ethnic cleansing"), compared to just 6% who expressed that fear in 2003. It is also noted that 40% of the respondents expressed their distrust of Israel's judiciary system while almost 41% supported an Arab boycott of Knesset elections.
Israel's discrimination against its Arab citizens



Israeli courts must end anti-Arab discrimination
Israeli courts discriminate against Israeli Arabs, there is no doubt about it.
Israeli courts must end anti-Arab discrimination - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

I have no doubt that this is all true.

It is unfortunate, but weighed against all the facts of the debate, two things are VERY clear:

Israel is not, and never has been, an "apartheid" state.

Those that accuse Israel of being an apartheid state are either deluded, or liars.
 

MHz

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Israel - Apartheid State - Nope

As per normal the Usual Suspects would never post any news that is a polar opposite of their so called beliefs and so called facts of life. People with an sense can tell the difference.
So now I'm guilty of 'with-holding relevant information'? I didn't even realize he was allowed to tour Gaza and the West Bank to come out with an 'updated' report. The UN funded report was was about war crimes rather than it being a determination of Israel fitting the definition of 'apartheid'. This would seem to be a piece that would fit the 'opinion' definition.

Now to the guts of the article.

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues "apartheid" policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a "hearing" on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.
How many residents of Gaza and the West Bank are invited to give testimony, I would think the widows or widowers or parents who have experienced children being killed would have the greatest input that would be available. Certainly they may not be a greater number than what South Africa could produce but then even one or two would be enough to determine the aspect of whether or not they act in the same fashion.

Why not hold it in Gaza, the place where the crime is supposed to be committed? Travel permits would be issued for that would they not?
The people and location makes as much sense as voting on Israel being given to the Jews by a bunch of people in upstate NY, oh wait, that is exactly where it took place, how many people from Gaza and the West Bank and (the soon to be) Israel were invited to that little get together?

It is not a "tribunal." The "evidence" is going to be onesided and the members of the "jury" are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.
Such as?

While "apartheid" can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.

...hold political office, use "white" toilets or beaches, marry whites, live in whites-only areas or even be there without a "pass." Blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death if there was no "black" ambulance to rush them to a "black" hospital. "White" hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives.
Hamas, the last elected government is regularily target for death by the Israeli Government, even while outside of Gaza. Gaza cannot even use it's own beaches without risking attack by Israel and there are numerous instance3s where people have been denied access to advanced medical care, even pregnant women being held at border crossings so they do not get the aid they need. Certainly medical equipment is not allowed into Gaza and very often medical centers arte targeted by the Military, such as in Operation Cast Lead.

In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: "Inhumane acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." Israeli Arabs - 20% of Israel's population - vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.
Can they lose their citizenship for any reason? I seem to recall that deportation was some form of punishment that did not cover Jews in the same light.
To be sure, there is more de facto separation between Jewish and Arab populations than Israelis should accept. Much of it is chosen by the communities themselves. Some results from discrimination. But it is not apartheid, which consciously enshrines separation as an ideal. In Israel, equal rights are the law, the aspiration and the ideal; inequities are often successfully challenged in court.
I seem to recall at least one well supported politician saying something that 'a Jewish only state' would be ideal. Did he get fired, no he was more than likely voted back in with an even higher percentage of the 'Jewish vote.

The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here, too, there is no intent to maintain "an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group." This is a critical distinction, even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there. South Africa's enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority, to the detriment of other races. By contrast, Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.
In this case a picture is worth 1,000 words. the link is to an even greater detailed map.

http://www.wprmbritain.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Jewish-Settlements-in-West-Bank-Map_large.jpg



But until there is a twostate peace, or at least as long as Israel's citizens remain under threat of attacks from the West Bank and Gaza, Israel will see roadblocks and similar measures as necessary for self-defence, even as Palestinians feel oppressed. As things stand, attacks from one side are met by counterattacks from the other. And the deep disputes, claims and counterclaims are only hardened when the offensive analogy of "apartheid" is invoked.
Occupation and commercial use of those 'security zones' is an act that is a war crime, same thing applies to the Golan Heights, Israel is doing agricultural business in what it call a security zone. Clearly illegal but they don't care because nobody is enforcing the transgression.

No need to even finish the whole article. What term defines acts like the ones below?
http://gazatvnews.com/2011/05/israel-withholds-palestinian-cash-transfer/
Israel will hold up an $89 million cash transfer to the Palestinian Authority [PA] planned for this week because of a new unity deal between rival Palestinian factions.
“Israel wants assurances that any money transferred to the Palestinians will not reach the militant Hamas organisation, which is set to become part of the Palestinian government,” Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli finance minister, said on Sunday.
“I think the burden of proof is on the Palestinians, to make it certain, to give us guarantees that money delivered by Israel is not going to the Hamas, is not going to a terrorist organisation, is not going to finance terror operations against Israeli citizens,” he said.
Israel had threatened sanctions last week in response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s surprise announcement of a unity deal with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and is shunned by the West for its hostility towards the Jewish state.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/israel-stops-money-for-gazas-disabled
NAZARETH // Yunis al Masri was luckier than his two brothers in Gaza. Although the truck that ploughed into their car as they travelled to work in Israel 24 years ago killed Jaber and Kamal instantly, Mr al Masri survived with shattered bones, internal bleeding and brain damage. Today, aged 49 and after many operations, he has difficulty walking and problems remembering to do things. Any hope of working again was crushed in 1985 amid the car wreckage. Like tens of thousands of other Palestinian manual labourers who worked inside Israel before Gaza was progressively sealed off to the outside world from the early 1990s, Mr Al Masri had paid regularly into Israel's social security fund from his salary. Certified as disabled by an Israeli medical committee, he is entitled to a monthly allowance of US$800 (Dh2,900) from Israel's National Insurance Institute, out of which he has supported his wife and 10 children in their home in Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza.
In early January, however, the transfers of disability benefits stopped arriving in his bank account in Gaza. About 700 other injured workers are in the same situation. The reason, they have learnt, is that while the Israeli army was rampaging through the Gaza Strip during its winter assault, the Bank of Israel severed ties with Gaza's banks. The ending of financial relations between Israel and Gaza, in a deepening of the three-year blockade of the Hamas-ruled enclave, means Mr al Masri and other disabled workers have been without a source of income for the past nine months.
 
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gore0bsessed

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Good comprehensive post MHZ.
This was a fail thread designed to somehow disprove Israel as an apartheid state and failed miserably.
 

Goober

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Good comprehensive post MHZ.
This was a fail thread designed to somehow disprove Israel as an apartheid state and failed miserably.

The only thing failing is your ability to think, I dare not use comprehend - to many letters for you -

First the Judge was your friend because of his report - Now he is the enemy - Go figure.
 

Liberalman

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The only thing failing is your ability to think, I dare not use comprehend - to many letters for you -

First the Judge was your friend because of his report - Now he is the enemy - Go figure.

When the Palistinians stop firing rockets into Israel then there will be peace and a homeland
 

MHz

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The only thing failing is your ability to think, I dare not use comprehend - to many letters for you -

First the Judge was your friend because of his report - Now he is the enemy - Go figure.
How long after his initial report did you and many other fellow Jews treat him like the enemy? All the way to interfering with him attending the event listed below. Now that he has twice recanted his original findings he is the nest best thing to sliced bread. If anything it shows he was a poor choice to do the fact finding mission in the first place. No other member of any similar mission has recanted their conclusions, guess they just must be Jew-haters eh?
Judge Goldstone barred from grandson’s bar mitzvah

by Philip Weiss on April 15, 2010
 

Goober

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How long after his initial report did you and many other fellow Jews treat him like the enemy? All the way to interfering with him attending the event listed below. Now that he has twice recanted his original findings he is the nest best thing to sliced bread. If anything it shows he was a poor choice to do the fact finding mission in the first place. No other member of any similar mission has recanted their conclusions, guess they just must be Jew-haters eh?
Judge Goldstone barred from grandson’s bar mitzvah

by Philip Weiss on April 15, 2010[/QUOTE

And why is that - Because he had access to more information. You along with many praised him as an irrefutable and objective source with his findings. Why 2 reasons - A judge and he was Jewish - you all got so excited that it was a Jew that published this mass of errors - Now it has changed.
Those that challenged his report were by many hung high as apologists for Israel - After you had this the UN Sanctioned report. Sanctioned by the UN by a UN Committee. And accepted by the world and those that were searching for hate.

So now he suddenly becomes the enemy. Why is that. Pure fuking prejudice,|prejudice for truth, because it it Israel and Jews , no more no less than a so called turncoat, a traitor who has now refuted your views.

So much for truth, as it has died at your hands because of your prejudiced mindset.
 

MHz

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His findings were a list of things that needed to be investigated further, Those further investigations came in other reports that are available at the UN. One such item covered in those documents covered the destruction of a flour-mill. Destroyed as it coould have been used as 'high ground'. Unlikely being as the area was covered by Israeli choppers, that would be the high ground and at the time it was destroyed by tank fire there were no Israeli troops in the area. Once they did come they had control of the burned out mill and it was on their word alone that shell casings were found on the roof. The UN Committee accepted that explanation without question, If anyone sold out to Israel it was that same committee.
I would have been quite happy to see the investigation go the same route the STL took. An affair that blamed an innocent party that was shown some 4 ot 5 years after the first accusations. That Israel's drone was hacked and the vid showing a play-by-play of the assassination in question was what, just a fluke encounter? Get real.
Back to the flour mill, surely there must have been some vid footage of the sniper on the top of the flour-mill prior to the order of the tank to open fire, or was it targeted long before Cast Lead even commenced?
Don't get me confused with EAO as far as support for Goldstone, mine went as far as respecting him as an authority via being a Judge but I was really hoping for the ICC to do the actual full investigation of the details in the report. As it was Israel supplied the UN with some form of explanation and all further inquiry was abandoned. Same with the flotilla, the illegal part was diverting the ship from it's original course and unloading it and it's passengers. Even then they and the cargo should have been reloaded on the same ship and it allowed to continue onto it's original destination. Clearly the only part of the guidelines that were examined werte the ones that allowed a boarding to take place at all. What fan of Israel has ever admitted to those errors, not one and no others errors will ever be admitted to either so your hands aren't as lily white as you claim they are.
The best way for Palestine to get the ICC to look at the various events that will continue to take place is for the UN to recognize her as a Nation. Best of luck to her in getting that passed and then lets see Israel act within all the guideline international law takes. When do the rulers of Bahrain get invaded for their crimes against their own citizens, answer never because the US is the maser of that land. As a true hypocrite you can probably justify their treatment, just like you can justify Israel killing demonstrators while they were still on Syria's side of the contested area, one that Israel makes a profit on, a war crime but who cares really, certainly not you or your usual comrades. Spare me your (false) righteous indignation as it just makes your two faces even more blatant.

Minister of Health Dr. Wael al-Halqi told SANA 23 were killed and more than 600 injured from bullets and tear gas fired by Israeli forces near Quneitra and Madjal Shams in the occupied Golan on the 44th anniversary of Naksa (setback), when Israel occupied the Syrian Golan, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Three weeks ago Israeli soldiers shot dead 13 Palestinian protesters who tried to breach Israel’s frontier with Lebanon and Syria during protests marking what Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe) of Israel’s founding in 1948.
According to SANA, the protesters were targeted by snipers and “phosphorus bombs”.
http://www.voltairenet.org/Israel-shoots-protesters-at-Syria
 
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gore0bsessed

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If Israel is has moved 500,000 of its citizens to settlements in the West Bank and is maintaining it in a regime that has different systems for both classes of residents — settlers and locals: transport, education, legal, judiciary, public services, human rights, civil rights, police, taxation, social security etc. — please detail how that is not apartheid?
It sure as hell looks like apartheid. You would need a microscope to tell them apart.