Yes, There Is Apartheid In Israel

By Shulamit Aloni

02 February, 2007
Munaeem.org

Jewish self-righteousness is taken for granted among ourselves to such 
an extent that we fail to see what's right in front of our eyes. It's 
simply inconceivable that the ultimate victims, the Jews, can carry out 
evil deeds. Nevertheless, the state of Israel practises its own, quite 
violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population.

The US Jewish Establishment's onslaught on former President Jimmy 
Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: 
through its army, the government of Israel practises a brutal form of 
Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every 
Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention 
camp. All this is done in order to keep an eye on the population's 
movements and to make its life difficult. Israel even imposes a total 
curfew whenever the settlers, who have illegally usurped the 
Palestinians' land, celebrate their holidays or conduct their parades.

If that were not enough, the generals commanding the region frequently 
issue further orders, regulations, instructions and rules (let us not 
forget: they are the lords of the land). By now they have requisitioned 
further lands for the purpose of constructing "Jewish only" roads. 
Wonderful roads, wide roads, well-paved roads, brightly lit at night--
all that on stolen land. When a Palestinian drives on such a road, his 
vehicle is confiscated and he is sent on his way.

On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a 
soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle 
and sending its owner away. "Why?" I asked the soldier. "It's an order--
this is a Jews-only road", he replied. I inquired as to where was the 
sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use 
it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. "It is his responsibility 
to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here 
and let some antisemitic reporter or journalist take a photo so he can 
show the world that Apartheid exists here?"

Indeed Apartheid does exist here. And our army is not "the most moral 
army in the world" as we are told by its commanders. Sufficient to 
mention that every town and every village was turned into a detention 
centre and that every entry and every exit has been closed, cutting it 
off from arterial traffic. If it were not enough that Palestinians are 
not allowed to travel on the roads paved 'for Jews only', on their 
land, the current GOC found it necessary to land an additional blow on 
the natives in their own land with an "ingenious proposal".

Humanitarian activists cannot transport Palestinians either.

Major-General Naveh, renowned for his superior patriotism, has issued 
a new order. Coming into affect on 19 January, it prohibits the 
conveyance of Palestinians without a permit. The order determines that 
Israelis are not allowed to transport Palestinians in an Israeli 
vehicle (one registered in Israel regardless of what kind of 
numberplate it carries) unless they have received explicit permission 
to do so. The permit relates to both the driver and the Palestinian 
passenger. Of course none of this applies to those whose labour serves 
the settlers. They and their employers will naturally receive the 
required permits so they can continue to serve the lords of the land, 
the settlers.

Did man of peace President Carter truly err in concluding that Israel 
is creating Apartheid? Did he exaggerate? Don't the US Jewish community 
leaders recognise the International Convention on the Elimination of 
all Forms of Racial Discrimination of 7 March 1966, to which Israel is 
a signatory? Are the US Jews who launched the loud and abusive campaign 
against Carter for supposedly maligning Israel's character and its 
democratic and humanist nature unfamiliar with the International 
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid 
of 30 November 1973? Apartheid is defined therein as an international 
crime that among other things includes using different legal 
instruments to rule over different racial groups, thus depriving people 
of their human rights. Isn't freedom of travel one of these rights?

In the past, the US Jewish community leaders were quite familiar with 
the meaning of those conventions. For some reason, however, they are 
convinced that Israel is allowed to contravene them. It's OK to kill 
civilians, women and children, old people and parents with their 
children, deliberately or otherwise without accepting any 
responsibility. It's permissible to rob people of their lands, destroy 
their crops, and cage them up like animals in the zoo. From now on, 
Israelis and International humanitarian organisations' volunteers are 
prohibited from assisting a woman in labour by taking her to the 
hospital. [Israeli human rights group] Yesh Din volunteers cannot take 
a robbed and beaten-up Palestinian to the police station to lodge a 
complaint. (Police stations are located at the heart of the 
settlements.) Is there anyone who believes that this is not Apartheid?

Jimmy Carter does not need me to defend his reputation that has been 
sullied by Israelophile community officials. The trouble is that their 
love of Israel distorts their judgment and blinds them from seeing 
what's in front of them. Israel is an occupying power that for 40 years 
has been oppressing an indigenous people, which is entitled to a 
sovereign and independent existence while living in peace with us. We 
should remember that we too used very violent terror against foreign 
rule because we wanted our own state. And the list of victims of terror 
is quite long and extensive.

We do limit ourselves to denying the [Palestinian] people human 
rights. We not only rob of them of their freedom, land and water. We 
apply collective punishment to millions of people and even, in revenge-
driven frenzy, destroy the electricity supply for one and half million 
civilians. Let them "sit in the darkness" and "starve".

Employees cannot be paid their wages because Israel is holding 500 
million shekels that belong to the Palestinians. And after all that we 
remain "pure as the driven snow". There are no moral blemishes on our 
actions. There is no racial separation. There is no Apartheid. It's an 
invention of the enemies of Israel. Hooray for our brothers and sisters 
in the US! Your devotion is very much appreciated. You have truly 
removed a nasty stain from us. Now there can be an extra spring in our 
step as we confidently abuse the Palestinian population, using the 
"most moral army in the world".

[Translated from Hebrew by Sol Salbe]

Shulamit Aloni is the former Education Minister of Israel. She has 
been awarded both the Israel Prize and the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights 
Award by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

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Leaked Israeli Document Gives Frightening Glimpse Of Apartheid

By Ali Abunimah

27 January, 2007
The Electronic Intifada

President Jimmy Carter angered Israel and its friends by describing 
"the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian 
territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict 
segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the 
West Bank."

Now, The Electronic Intifada has obtained an Israeli Ministry of 
Defense Powerpoint presentation which provides a frightening glimpse 
into the mindset of the bureaucracy of apartheid.

The first page of the document bears the name "Coordination of 
Government Activities in the Territories" as well as the acronym 
"COGAT" at the bottom of each page. These appear to refer to the unit 
of the Israeli army that enforces the occupation against the 
Palestinian civilian population.

The top of the first slide also bears the names and insignia of the 
"State of Israel" and the "Ministry of Defense." Dated January 12, the 
presentation is titled "Key Measures for easing the daily lives of the 
Palestinian Population."

Far from that, the document provides detail of the regime of severe 
movement restrictions, bureaucratic ethnic cleansing and political 
manipulation and fostering of collaborators that Israel operates in the 
the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The document, in English, appears to be genuine. While its exact 
purpose or audience is not known, it may have been designed to impress 
foreign diplomats with Israel's generosity to the Palestinians.

Among the policies the document outlines are:

Efforts to "empower Abu-Mazen" (Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud 
Abbas) by facilitating entry of "security equipment for the 
Presidential Guard" donated by foreign countries. (The United States 
recently announced that it would provide millions of dollars of weapons 
and equipment to this unit which serves as a personal militia for Abbas 
and his Fatah faction who seek to overthrow the democratically-elected 
Hamas government).


Providing special privileges for "the movement of VIPs and senior 
Palestinians" and others allies of Abbas, including "facilitating 
movement without security checks." These special privileges, not 
available to millions of Palestinians are intended for "Strengthening 
Abu-Mazen," presumably at the expense of the democratically-elected 
Hamas-led cabinet and legislative council dozens of whose members, far 
from enjoying VIP treatment, have been kidnapped and are being held 
without charge or trial by Israeli occupation forces.


Special permits for 505 Palestinian "businessmen," allowing them to be 
exempt from the pass laws that forbid overnight stays by Palestinians 
in Israel. They will also be subject to fewer security checks. This 
privileged class may also benefit from the "Possible return of $60 
Million from the frozen tax money to the private sector, subject to 
identification of the businessman, and the formation of a working 
mechanism." This could possibly indicate that Israel, in collusion with 
Abbas, seeks to misappropriate Palestinian public assets it has 
illegally seized, bypassing the Palestinian Authority Finance Ministry 
and redistributing them to Abbas cronies.


With frightening precision, allowing "42,899" Palestinian laborers to 
work "in Israel and the settlements" and exempting 2,000 Palestinian 
agricultural laborers from the pass laws so that "overnight stay in 
Israel" is "permitted." Of these workers, a mere 1,600 would be 
permitted to enter occupied East Jerusalem, the largest Palestinian 
city in the West Bank.


Millions of Palestinians around the world are forbidden from visiting 
or living in their country due to Israeli restrictions and laws that 
discriminate against non-Jews. A privileged few Palestinians have been 
able to do so, however, by virtue of their citizenship in the United 
States or European countries, whose citizens are generally allowed to 
enter Israel without visas as tourists. Even this precarious existence 
has recently been threatened by the new Israeli practice of denying 
them re-entry if they leave the country for any reason. While the 
document claims these restrictions will be eased, it also confirms the 
policy of prohibiting ordinary family life for Palestinians. 
Palestinians (always referred to as "foreign nationals") with foreign 
passports, even those with spouses and families Israel does recognize 
as residents, will be limited to a total cumulative stay not exceeding 
27 months in their country. No other country calling itself a democracy 
systematically treats indigenous people as foreigners and deports them 
in this manner breaking apart families in the process.

Finally, the document lists a number of catergories of "humanitarian" 
workers who will be given some leeway from the strict pass laws. These 
include 1,450 religious personnel, 1,300 hospital employees, 300 hotel 
workers, and lawyers, teachers and residents of an enclave in occupied 
East Jerusalem that has been besieged by settlers and the apartheid 
wall.

Amidst a system of ruthless and obsessive control such as the one 
Israel operates against Palestinians, not even this token 'easing' 
designed purely for public relations can be taken for granted; Israel 
routinely lies about what it does. For example, during a summit meeting 
with Mahmoud Abbas in December, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert 
promised to remove dozens of checkpoints and obstacles impeding the 
movement of Palestinians inside the occupied West Bank. The Israeli 
occupation forces later claimed to have removed 44 of the hundreds of 
obstacles in fulfillment of Olmert's pledge. In fact, the Israeli 
newspaper Ha'aretz reported on January 22, the Israeli army "admitted 
on Sunday that the 44 dirt obstacles it said had been removed from 
around West Bank villages did not actually exist."

What does exist, and is plain for all the world to see, is a 
horrifying regime of totalitarian control of millions of Palestinians 
who remain prisoners of Israel's racist system and the army and settler 
militias that enforce it.


DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION HERE: http://electronicintifada.
net/download/documents/key-measures-israel.pdf

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Apartheid In The Holy Land

By Desmond Tutu

24 December, 2006
The Guardian

In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish 
people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the 
disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression 
and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron 
of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to 
secure borders. 

What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to 
another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply 
distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what 
happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the 
humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, 
suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from 
moving about. 

On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the 
Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he 
pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for 
security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and 
homes? 

I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now 
occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the 
head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and 
said: "Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is 
now occupied by Israeli Jews." 

My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish 
sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten 
the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history 
so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble 
religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about 
the downtrodden? 

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing 
another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. 
We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the 
corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the 
violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the 
inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured. 

The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty, will not 
provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only intensify 
the hatred. 

Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; 
exterminate all Palestinians; or - I hope - to strive for peace based 
on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and 
the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories 
side by side with Israel, both with secure borders. 

We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our 
madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same 
everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, 
surely it can come to the Holy Land? 

My brother Naim Ateek has said what we used to say: "I am not pro- 
this people or that. I am pro-justice, pro-freedom. I am anti- 
injustice, anti-oppression." 

But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is 
placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be 
immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not 
semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. 
And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the 
apartheid government on security measures? 

People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong 
because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? 
For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. 
The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer 
exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin 
were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust. 

Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful 
have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what 
is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the 
basis of that, God passes judgment. 

We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of 
Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace 
based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to 
achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to 
live amicably together as sisters and brothers. 

Desmond Tutu is the former Archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of 
South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission. This address was 
given at a conference on Ending the Occupation held in Boston, 
Massachusetts, earlier this month. A longer version appears in the 
current edition of Church Times. 


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

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