CHAPTER 8 - APARTHEID

“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose

on them a wretched life of hunger and deprivation is to dehumanize them.”

     -- Nelson Mandela, to a Joint Session of Congress, June 26, 1990 

Mandela was referring to the people of South Africa. “But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the systems of apartheid,” he said.

Apartheid essentially means “separate and unequal,” as defined on the Encyclopedia Britannica website. To summarize, formal apartheid laws passed in South Africa around 1950 as voted by the White government (Whites made up 10 percent of the population), led to the control over and discrimination against the majority of the population, who were Black or of mixed race. Similar to the “Jim Crow” laws in the American south that developed after the abolition of slavery and continued well into the civil rights era of the 1960s, apartheid was institutionalized racism. 

Everything from train stations to beaches to entire living areas were segregated, and contact between the race groups was forbidden. Rich and entitled Whites ran the government, businesses and society, while poor slums-ridden Blacks had no status and no say at all. Criticism of this system was forbidden and censured by government-run media. Eventually the Blacks, at times with help from conscientious Whites, began protesting and rioting. Social unrest grew. Violence ensued, international outrage and pressure to end the system grew, and eventually in the early-1990s the apartheid fabric began to fall apart. Inclusive national elections were held in 1994 and a black majority government led by Mandela took control.

Then President of the United States Bill Clinton later said, “If you understand the devastation that apartheid caused, it’s completely unrealistic to believe that that legacy can be wiped out in five, ten, or even fifteen or twenty years.” But the process was underway.

The powers that be in Israel dismiss any notion that apartheid is a word that could be applied to the conditions suffered by Palestinians in Israel proper and in the occupied West Bank. But only because it means bad public relations. Israel has no problem whatsoever actually implementing the tactics of apartheid policies.  

In the summer of 2018, the Knesset (the Israeli legislature) passed the Nation State Law, which formalized permanent characteristics of an apartheid state. Three keys features are that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”; “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”; and “the state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”

Arabs make up approximately one-fifth of Israel’s population.

Months later, in early 2019, the country’s Supreme Court convened to discuss the constitutionality of the act. At the same time, Prime Minister Netanyahu was campaigning for an upcoming national election. 

In the Times of Israel on March 11, 2019, Raoul Wootliff’s article “Defending Nation-State Law, PM Says Israeli Arabs Have [an Affiliation with] 22 Other Countries” referenced critical comments made “over the weekend” by popular TV host and model Rotem Sela, who blasted the country’s culture minister “for claiming that Benny Gantz (Netanyahu’s election opponent) and Yair Lapid’s Blue and White party wanted to establish a government with the help of Arab parties: 

“What is the problem with the Arabs??? Sela wrote on her Instagram account. “Dear God, there are also Arab citizens in this country. When the hell will someone in this government convey to the public that Israel is a state of all its citizens and that all people were created equal, and that even the Arabs and the Druze [minority Islamic sect] and the LGBT’s and—shock—the leftists are human.” 

Netanyahu characteristically responded to her post with “an important correction,” saying that Israel “is not a state of all its citizens,” but the nation-state of the Jewish people only.

The door for apartheid policies within Israel’s boundaries and continued harassment and terrorism against Palestinians in the occupied territories was kicked wide open.

In November 2019, Israel’s Supreme Court pushed hearings and analysis of the law back to the summer of 2020. Not un-coincidentally, on November 7 the Middle East Monitor reported “A UN Body Has Announced that Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law Contravenes International Human Rights Laws Ratified and Adopted by Israel”:

… the UN body called on Israel to respond to its concerns regarding aggravation of already-existing ethnic segregation and increasing budgetary discrimination in other concluding observations.

Naturally, Israel’s leaders responded the way they always do—go ahead and prove it, and no one here or in the United States of Israel cares one iota when you prove it.

Very few in the US of I mainstream would have read them, but the reasons why the Palestinians and peace negotiators were always against the recognition of the Jewish state and the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem have often been repeated.

One example arises in the Washington Post article from June 14, 2009, “Netanyahu’s Speech to Inject Zionist Perspective,” written by Howard Schneider:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said he will not agree to restart peace negotiations unless Israel agrees to a settlement freeze. Palestinian officials say that recognizing Israel as a Jewish state would undermine the status of Israel’s Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of the population, and also would prejudge the fate of Palestinian refugees living in other Arab countries. Any resolution of the “right of return” for those refugees, Palestinians say, should be part of final negotiations. 

As for the US embassy move, Alexia Underwood, in her article on the Vox website, “The Controversial US Jerusalem Embassy Opening, Explained” from May 16, 2018 wrote:

President Donald Trump announced his decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem back in December, calling it “a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement.”

Which is, of course, the exact opposite of its effect. From the same article:

But none of the previous presidents followed through, one reason being that the move would appear to put the US squarely on the side of Israel.

Yes, a tragically comical statement considering the US is no longer even remotely hiding the fact that it is squarely on the side of Israel. Underwood continued:

Ilan Goldenberg, a Middle East expert with the Center for New American Security, told me that Trump’s decision significantly undercuts the US’s credibility as a neutral party in the conflict.

Conflict? On the day of the ceremony celebrating the US embassy move to Jerusalem, thousands of Palestinians protested on the other side of the barrier to Gaza. In the New York Times article “Jerusalem Embassy Is a Victory for Trump, and a Complication for Middle East Peace” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis on May 14, 2019, she wrote:

But barely 40 miles from the festivities in Jerusalem, mass protests that erupted six weeks ago raged anew, smoke rising into the air as more than 2,000 people were injured and the death toll climbed beyond 50. 

All dead and injured were Palestinian. 

The violence drew international rebukes. Turkey pulled its ambassadors from Israel and Washington, and South Africa withdrew its envoys from Israel. France called on Israel to exercise restraint. 

The opening of the piece was the most painful.

WASHINGTON – President Trump and senior members of his administration exalted on Monday over the opening of the United States’ new embassy in Jerusalem, dismissing the violence raging along the border with Gaza as the ceremony unfolded as “unfortunate propaganda.”

Thousands of unarmed protestors living in what amounts to an open-air prison getting shot are equated to “unfortunate propaganda.”

Ultimately, establishing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital appeased Trump’s greatest benefactor (campaign donator) Sheldon Adelson. Money talks.

***

On November 24, 2019, Hagar Shezaf reported in Haaretz under the headline “Israel Limits West Bank Farmers’ Access to Lands Near Green Line” that Israel’s civil administration in the West Bank was imposing new limits on Palestinians’ ability to access and harvest their lands cut off by Israel’s security wall. Shezaf wrote:

The new purpose is defined as “enabling agricultural land to be worked based on agricultural needs derived from the size of the plot and the type of produce, while maintaining the connection to these lands. … With the size of the plot and the type of produce in mind, the maximum number of entries is 40 times a year for olives and onions, 50 times for figs and 220 for tomatoes or strawberries. If a farmer has exhausted his entry quota, he must apply for a new permit … 

One farmer responded:

Let them confiscate the land and be done with it. I’m not willing to accept this.” The story points out that the fence has 84 gates but only nine are open daily and the rejection rate for agricultural permits jumped to 72-percent in 2018, up from 24-percent in 2014.

Bottom line, “This creates a new bureaucratic hurdle for Palestinian farmers.”

Two other headlines on the Americans for Peace Now daily newsletter that same day were notable: 

Five Palestinians Wounded after Israel Settlers Attack in Hebron, Red Crescent [Red Cross] Reports – Clashes Saturday are a continuation of Friday night’s events in Hebron where according to local reports, 12 wounded were evacuated to hospitals as a result of settler aggression. Among the injured was an 18-month-old baby hit in the head by a rock. 

Cars Set Ablaze, Graffiti Scrawled in Suspected West Bank Hate Crime – Vandals targeted four different Palestinian villages Friday night, by setting afire cars and olive trees, and leaving on the walls of more than 20 homes graffiti slogans linking incident to the illegal outpost of Kumi Ori near the settlement of Yitzhar. 

You will never ever see these stories, daily stories of Jewish terror, in the US media, but if one Palestinian were to retaliate and get caught with violence, there’s a good chance Fox News would show it. Those who determine what you see would make sure of it. 

Welcome to apartheid, a system established long ago.

In a Haaretz.com excerpt displayed on the website of Jews For Justice for Palestinians on March 5, 2012, translator/writer Sol Salbe describes an opinion piece written on the front page of Haaretz “last Friday” that “wasn’t just an ordinary opinion piece—it was written by one of the country’s foremost novelists, David Grossman” in Hebrew.

Grossman wrote it on February 12, and it described an incident in 2008 involving Omar Abu Jariban, a resident of the Gaza Strip. Jariban had stolen a car in Israel and was injured in a crash. Grossman raises a number of hypothetical scenarios, viewpoints, and conversations as he tells the story of how three Israeli police officers took him from a medical center in Israel where he was still in serious condition, put him in a van, took him across a border checkpoint and dumped him by the side of the road. Two days later his dead body was found. At the culmination of his story, Grossman wrote: 

I know that they do not represent the police. Nor do they represent our society or the state. It’s only a handful of bad apples or unwelcome weeds. But then I think about a people which has dumped a whole other nation on the side of the road and has backed the process to the hilt over 45 years, all the while having not a bad life at all, thank you. I think about a people which has been engaging in a brilliant genius-like denial of its own responsibility for the situation. I think of a people which has managed to ignore the warping and distorting of its own society and the madness that the process has had on its own national values. Why should such people get all excited over a single such Omar?

Folks were reminded of this story with a similar occurrence during the start of the Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic. Americans for Peace Now included it in their news clips on Wednesday March 25, 2020:

“Without coordinating his arrival with the Palestinian Authority, Israeli Police dumped a very sick Palestinian laborer, who was working illegally in Israel, at a West Bank checkpoint.

There was a video published of the man lying by the side of the road. 

Earlier in the month, Haaretz published the story “Israel Approves Plans for ‘Separate Road for Palestinians’ to Enable Settlement Construction” by Hagar Shezaf on March 9. The subtext read, “Following the revival of the controversial E-1 plan, which would cut parts of the northern West Bank off from the south, Defense Minister Bennett hails ‘sovereignty road’ construction”:

Bennett: “The construction of the road is meant to serve as a solution to a controversial settlement plan, known as E-1 that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revived two weeks ago. The plan to construct 3,500 homes, has been put on hold for years largely due to international criticism as the homes would cut off the northern part of the West Bank from the southern part, making it more difficult to create a viable Palestinian state.

The new road will not pass through any Jewish settlements in the West Bank.”

Mr. Bennett never concerns himself with the need to mince words. 

“The project will improve the quality of life of the [Jewish] residents of the area, prevent unnecessary friction with the Palestinian population and, most importantly, enable the continuation of building in the settlements. Imposing sovereignty in deeds, not in words. We will continue that way.” 

Placing the superiority of one race over another; the textbook definition of discrimination.

In January 2019, Route 4370, which separates Israeli and Palestinian drivers, was opened northeast of Jerusalem. The road connects the Geva Binyamin region and Route 1, as well as the French Hill intersection and the Naomi Shemer Tunnel that leads to Mount Scopus. The road has been referred to as the “apartheid road” due to the fact that it is divided down the center by an eight-meter-high wall.

The issue of Israel building separate and unequal roads on Palestinian land dates back to the 1980s.

On the same day for the same paper, Ori Nir wrote a startling opinion piece called “The Dangerous Irony of Letting David Friedman Carve Up the West Bank.”

David Friedman? Political henchman for Netanyahu? Religious zealot, extreme Zionist? Works for the Israeli government? Well, yes, he does. 

He was the US ambassador to Israel and might as well be on Israel’s payroll, because that’s who he works for, first and foremost. His main interest was to gobble up as much land as he could for Israel before Trump left office. Nir wrote:

Let it sink in: After decades of efforts by Republican and Democratic US administrations to reign in Israeli governments’ West Bank settlement practices, the Trump administration is now leading the effort to determine the contours of the settlements, recognizing them as part of sovereign Israel. And who is the US government representative leading this process? Who is the head of the committee? It is the person who in the past three years has been the chief architect of the Trump administration’s policy on Israel. It is President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, an ultra-nationalist settlement-supporter, a religious zealot [fanatic], who called President Barack Obama an anti-Semite, referred to pro-peace American Jews as “worse than kapos” (Jews who worked with or for the Nazis in concentration camps), and utterly dismissed the two-state solution. Now he’s deciding where the future border will be between Greater Israel and the remaining Swiss-cheesed portions of the West Bank, over which the US will allow the Palestinians to negotiate a future limited autonomy [self-rule]—if that.

A quick recap:

Friedman works for the United States of Israel.

His country’s policies represent support for Israel’s occupation and oppression of five decades.

The Arab world, and much of Western civilization for that matter, hates the US of I’s foreign policy. Only those living in the US of I are unaware of it.

American troops, and at times civilians, are therefore put in harm’s way. 

Meanwhile, on a mostly daily basis, one of those pro-peace groups, Americans for Peace Now, publishes an e-mail newsletter. Under their brief “You Must Be Kidding” notes on February 27, 2020, they wrote:

Israel halted the removal of an illegal West Bank settlement at the request of a settler, but did remove a Palestinian protest tent in the area, based on the same regulations by which it originally planned to remove the outpost.

This is standard operating procedure in the Occupied Territories. What was more startling was the “Quote of the day” above it, from writer B. Michael, referring to Israel and its Prime Minister Netanyahu. It came from an opinion piece in Haaretz:

Every occupying state has gone down this path—a coarsening of the soul, a loss of good character, burgeoning violence and oppression, an addiction to authority, hatred, evil and lucre [dirty money]. And then, riding on all this, a contemptible [despicable] man always attains power, a corrupt man devoid of restraint who gathers evil men in his own image around him—people who market hatred and wickedness, who dance on the blood of others, holy priests with the greatness of God in their mouths and bribes in their pockets. And the masses are always drawn to their charm, because hatred is always stronger than enlightenment.

***

The APN daily newsletter includes headlines and stories from four to six different Israeli newspapers, from left to far right.

On February 22, 2020, Gideon Levy and Alex Levac wrote a story in Haaretz headlined “Israeli Soldier Kills Palestinian Cop at His Own Station. No Explanation Is Offered.”

Based on security camera footage, Tarek Badwan, a police sergeant, was murdered by an Israeli sniper, while on break, chatting with two of his cohorts:

The Palestinian police are perhaps the most submissive and collaborationist organization confronting Israel’s security forces. Every time the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] invades a Palestinian city in Area A—which is supposed to be under the full control of the Palestinian Authority—thereby crudely violating the terms of the Oslo Accords [agreements signed by the Israelis and Palestinians in 1993 and 1995], the Palestinian forces beat a retreat into their stations and stay there, not so much as sticking their noses out into the street, until things blow over and the invader leaves. That way the police don’t interfere with the army troops who perpetuate the occupation with their patrols, searches, arrests, displays of force and demolitions of homes. Meanwhile, Palestinians residing in urban areas in the West Bank are for the most part left unprotected by their own security forces which, in a different, saner reality would safeguard them and their property. Instead, they are left utterly defenseless, with no one to look after their interests. That’s the vaunted “security coordination”: It’s intended to protect one side and only one.

This month, Israel “rewarded” the obedient Palestinian police by killing one of them, inside his station, where he had retreated during his night shift with other officers, following an IDF incursion.

In the January 8, 2009 New York Times in the op-ed section, Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University in New York, wrote a guest piece entitled “What You Don’t Know About Gaza.” In it, he included the following:

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. 

Khalidi goes on to describe elements of Israel’s blockade that became more stringent after Hamas won Palestinian Legislative Council elections in early 2006. Israel routinely chokes off the Strip from the movement of people or goods, particularly when its “prisoners” act up or protest. The IDF will run planned raids to spark a violent reaction, thus opening the door for Netanyahu to present the “terrorist” label, and for a retaliatory “self-defense” slaughter.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury [extreme poverty] and malnutrition. This amounts to collective punishment—with the tacit [silent, understood] support of the United States—of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

“Pro-democracy” Israel did what it could to derail that democratic process. Weeks before the January, 2006 election, Greg Myre and Dina Kraft reported in the New York Times under “Israel Threatens to Hinder Palestinian Vote” on December 22, 2005:

Israel said Wednesday that if the militant faction Hamas took part in next month’s elections for the Palestinian parliament, Palestinians would not be allowed to cast ballots in East Jerusalem. The Palestinian leadership responded by saying that it might postpone the voting, which is scheduled for Jan. 25.

The US of I didn’t get the results it wanted. Hamas, as noted, a group Israel had created earlier for disruptive tactical purposes, ruled the day. Similarly, fourteen years later, the American Trump regime that shared Israeli political consultants, was doing its best to limit minority voting in the United States by whatever means necessary.

Also fourteen years later, for practical purposes, little has changed for the 1.5-million people living in the 140-square-mile area. In a tweet on August 23, 2020 by Gisha, a Israeli charity focused on protecting Palestinian freedom-of-movement, expressed the following:

Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza in past 2 weeks:

8.11 ban on entry of construction materials

8.12 fishing zone reduced

8.13 ban on entry of fuel

8.16 ban on access to the sea

8.18 power plant shuts down for lack of fuel

Today: (8.23) Israel limits entry of goods to medicine & food

The Israeli regime and its supporters will claim these acts are necessary to control terrorism in a Palestinian area, stating apartheid in Israel-proper doesn’t exist and is an insult. 

Examples prove this assertion laughable. Discrimination and apartheid run rampant, ideologically and institutionally. It’s the word “apartheid” Israel doesn’t like, simply because it’s bad public relations. Period.

Scott Wilson wrote in the Washington Post on December 7, 2007, under “For Israel’s Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion”:

Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel, met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other modern grace notes. But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet, a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the town’s admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of “social incompatibility.”

The Zubeidats speak both Arabic and Hebrew fluently. Officials weren’t impressed; they were more concerned with upholding segregation. 

The massive irony of all this is that Semites, ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, is a group that includes Arabs and Jews alike. The term anti-Semitic was hijacked and could technically mean “anti-Arab.” The historical Semitic classification takes in a large area of what is now the Middle East and includes most, if not all, “non-Caucasians.” The Jewish and Arab origins, Christian, Muslim or otherwise, are intertwined. 

Most, if not all of the fanaticism on both sides, is religion based. 

On May 7, 2008, the story by Ethan Bronner in the New York Times was called “After 60 Years, Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders”:

As Israel toasts its 60th anniversary in the coming weeks, rejoicing in Jewish national rebirth and democratic values, the Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be celebrating. Better off and better integrated than ever in their history, freer than a vast majority of other Arabs, Israel’s 1.2 million Arab citizens are still far less well off than Israeli Jews and feel increasingly unwanted.

A portion of that writing sample seems to promote some level of optimism, and alludes to some type of effective integration (see chapter 14: Peace). The optimism might have arisen from the fact that at the time of the article, peace talks and the “two-state solution” language were still lingering in the picture.

A decade later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has burned that imagery. The militaristic and fanatical approach from him and his supporters undercuts any and all optimism. Despite being a renowned liar and public relations clinician, it definitely didn’t begin with “Bibi.” The hardline approach was well established when he took office for his second tenure as prime minister in late March of 2009.

“Israeli Soldier Says Military Rabbis Framed Gaza Mission as Religious” was the headline for a story Howard Schneider in the Washington Post on March 21 of that year:

A soldier involved in Israel’s recent military offensive in the Gaza Strip said in published reports Friday that the military’s rabbinical staff distributed material characterizing the operation as a religious mission to “get rid of the gentiles [non-Jews, usually Christians] who disturb us from conquering the holy land.”

More frightening racism in the New York Times article about a soccer game by Jodi Rudoren on January 31, 2013. The match featured a team from an Arab-Israeli town against one of Israel’s premier league team’s Beitar Jersusalem. The fans from the two sides chanted threats and insults at one another, the Jewish fans taking much more of an extreme approach. The article was called “Some Fear a Soccer Team’s Racist Fans Hold a Mirror Up to Israel”:

The angry, defiant exchanges that punctuated Tuesday night’s unusually tense game here came amid intense protests by Beitar Jerusalem supporters over the team owner’s plans to recruit two Muslim players from Chechnya. Some young men had unfurled a banner at the previous game declaring “Beitar pure forever,” which reminded many here of Nazi Germany’s purging of Jews from athletics in 1933 and prompted statewide discussion about racism on and off the field.

Rudoren points out that Beitar is the only one of Israel’s thirty professional soccer teams never to have had an Arab player and its fans are legendarily ugly.

But such conflagrations [an uprising like a fire] are not limited to soccer. Last summer, a mob of Jewish teenagers pummeled a Palestinian youth nearly to death in what was widely condemned as an attempted lynching. 

That sounds like something one would have heard about in the southern U.S. in the 20th century in its treatment of Blacks. It also sounds like something else: entrenched apartheid.

Last spring, Israeli lawmakers used racial slurs during protests against the influx of migrant workers from Africa, with one eventually apologizing for calling them “a cancer in our body.”

Among many other things, racism in the United States and Israel is in lockstep, and in the recent US election we saw a president and certain US states trying to find ways to discourage minority voting by whatever means necessary. It seems the apartheid concept is percolating in the US. It’s a matter of routine in Israel.

There is no shortage of Israeli Jews and Zionists who will willingly point to the facts. In Haaretz on August 23, 2009, one could see the headline “Education Minister Slams Israeli Lecturer’s Apartheid” over Barak Ravid’s story. Israeli professor Dr. Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University wrote the following in an editorial for the Los Angeles Times in which he calls for a boycott of Israel:

3.5 million Palestinians and almost half million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews—whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel—are citizens of the state of Israel.

Other academics from the university were critical of Gordon, and although presumed educated, they responded in one of the most uneducated manners imaginable, the way a “redneck” in America might respond to a fellow citizen criticizing the US. Professor Rivka Carmi’s comments were representative of the outrage:

The vile and audacious criticism of the state of Israel damages the excellent academic work being done in Israel and its universities. … Academics with such feelings about their country are welcome to look for another home, whether personal or professional. If you don’t like it, leave. 

It’s a common simplistic refrain in response to someone actually looking to improve a society, seeking reform for a nation they likely love as much as or more so than anyone else. Why would one leave what one is trying to fix?

Three months earlier, a very common headline appeared in the Washington Post on May 2, 2009 for a story by Howard Schneider: “UN Finds 60,000 Palestinians Risk Eviction in East Jerusalem”:

Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem find themselves confronting a serious housing shortage caused by Israel’s failure to provide Palestinian neighborhoods with adequate planning,” the OCHA [UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] report says. “Because of the difficulties in trying to obtain building permits from Israeli authorities, and due to the lack of feasible alternatives, many Palestinians risk building on their land without a permit.”

No permit means the home eventually gets bulldozed.

The variety and scope of harassment under apartheid is remarkable. On February 2, 2007, the Associated Press reported “Report: Israel Navy Harassing and Humiliating Palestinian Fishermen”:

The fishermen said they were forced to undress, leaving only their underwear, and made to swim to the Israeli ships, and then they were taken to the nearby port of Ashdod for questioning. Some said Israeli forces fired at them. 

Naturally a claim was presented, that these measures were carried out for security purposes, that the fishermen were suspected of smuggling weapons. The IDF says it provided the men food and medical treatment. The AP report continued:

Israel has tightened restrictions on fishing off the Gaza coast, during the past six years of Palestinian-Israeli violence. The limits have driven many of the territory’s 3,000 fishermen into poverty.

On May 30, 2008, the New York Times published “US Withdraws Fulbright Grants to Gaza” by Ethan Bronner:

The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.

This could be interpreted as collective punishment, because that’s exactly what it was. There was no legitimate justification to deny the seven students furthering their education, nor was one given. 

Americans are completely unaware of the full range of raids, terror, and harassment inflicted upon the Palestinian population on a routine basis. If they were aware, they might understand justification for this repressed people’s frustration and need to sometimes respond violently. Again, Europeans and the Israelis themselves are fully aware of the situation. Israel would rather keep their greatest benefactor, the US taxpayers, in the dark. 

It’s apartheid and it has been for a very long time. 

So why not throw in a little blackmail?

On August 5, 2008, Linda Gradstein wrote in the Washington Post “Gazans’ Access to Care Faulted”:

Israel’s domestic security service requires Gazans who wish to enter Israel for medical treatment to submit to detailed interviews about their knowledge of political and militant groups, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, a nonprofit group based in Tel-Aviv. The Israeli security service “uses the weakness, the helplessness of the Palestinian patients in Gaza in trying to pressure them to be collaborators,” said Ruchama Marton, the group’s founder. In a report released Monday, the group documents 32 cases of Palestinians who said they were told that a permit to enter Israel for medical care was conditional on being willing to deliver information.

It all adds up.

One more example of separate and unequal comes from the New York Times on August 3, 2009. “Israel Evicts Palestinians from Homes,” written by Isabel Kershner is a corruption combo-platter:

Israeli security forces evicted two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem early Sunday after the families lost a long legal battle to remain in the contested properties, furthering a plan for Jewish settlement in the predominantly Arab area. The move, days after senior American officials visited Jerusalem to press for a settlement freeze, prompted sharp international criticism. Later Sunday, the Israeli police said they had evidence to support indicting Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman on charges including taking bribes, laundering money, and committing fraud.

In 2013 Lieberman was cleared of two charges and another was dropped:

In a visit in March, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned against threatened evictions and demolitions in East Jerusalem.

 A warning that didn’t exactly have the rulers of the US of I shaking in its boots:

Countering criticism of another Jewish building project planned for Sheikh Jarrah, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said recently that Jerusalem residents had the right to live anywhere in the city. Israel’s sovereignty over the city “cannot be challenged.”

“King Bibi,” as Netanyahu is often called by critics in Israel, served as prime minister from June of 1996 to July of 1999 and then took over again just eight months before this news story was written. He’s been in power since.

Bibi is the leader of an apartheid state, one that’s grown more domineering and stringent under his watch. While the term Apartheid is synonymous with South Africa, it shouldn’t be. That apartheid ended three decades ago. Israel’s is flourishing. 

The ties between Israel and the South African apartheid state are not only symbolic or coincidental. It should seem impossible but it’s true, as documented in these pages, Israel was the last nation to reluctantly stop selling arms to South Africa’s apartheid masters. (See chapter 13.)

And despite the obvious and appalling irony, Israel’s support of minority deprivation in its most extreme forms, summons comparisons to the German Nazi state it abhorred.