Israeli Apartheid

A couple of years ago I expressed on Omninerd my view that there would never be peace in the Middle East until the Israelis began to give the Palestinians a fair deal.

I was immediately subjected to attack from all directions, some of which I believe was orchestrated by professional pro Israel lobbyists who patrol the Internet shoring up American support for Israel. I now think that one of these was an an active and respected nerd at that time (but no longer). I learned a good deal in the discussion that followed, or at least I thought I had at the time. Then the Palestinians elected Hamas, and I lost all sympathy for them.

Since then I have maintained an interest and I have discovered that some of the things I thought I had learned (such as that Palestinians are treated better in Israel than in any other country in the Middle East) were just not true, although I found that that one is a effective tactic used frequently to put down protesters in the blogosphere.

Today I came across :this old article which at first I thought was from a Palestinian propaganda site but looking closer I found that it claims to be from an organization made up of former US Foreign Service officers with experience in the Middle East. However, you can claim anything on a web site, and so who knows if that is true. Looking at other material on the web site I am inclined to regard it as at least fairly representing one side of the divide, and having considerable insight into US foreign policy.

What truly amazes me about this revelation of Israeli law is here we have the most persecuted and discriminated people in history, finally getting a country of their own, and setting out systematically to discriminate in a profound way in favour of their own religion and against all others.

Of course South Africa proved that you can’t do that in the modern world and still expect to be treated as a friend by civilized nations, so considerable subterfuge was necessary in the construction of the legal framework to hide the reality.
" For example, in all Israeli laws except one, the Law of Return, the word “Jew” does not appear. The term employed when the law gives discriminatory privileges to Jews is that those privileges are granted to “persons who would have benefited from the Law of Return had they been outside the borders of Israel.” The Law of Return specifies that its benefits can be given only to Jews."
I can easily sympathize with the view that, having been chased around the world for centuries and treated without mercy, the Israelis had a just motivation to say that they would take in any Jewish person from anywhere, and also allow them to bring their relatives with them. Of course, this policy would be impossible to maintain in a non religious discriminatory fashion in a small resource poor country like Israel. Having gone down that forgiveable human path, they then apparently found that many other discriminatory laws were necessary to sustain it in the new state of Israel – particularly in the area of land ownership.

It is supposed that landed property, whether urban or agricultural, in the Land of Israel (whatever its borders are) which does not belong to Jews, privately or collectively, is “unredeemed.” When the ownership changes and it becomes owned by Jews, either privately or collectively, the land undergoes magical transformation and becomes “redeemed.” (Let me add that these two terms have been taken from the Jewish religious law.)

According to Zionism the most important Jew ish duty is to accomplish this magical change. Even some Zionists have recognized that this duty, as often happens with quasi-religious concepts, is unlimited in every respect.

Now, while I sympathize with how they came to be in this position, I think we Americans must still abhor the outcome. It is simply not sustainable in the modern world, and every means for redressing the injustices suffered by the Palestinians will be set back by these laws. In fact, the entire economy will suffer through the distortion of the markets and the insidious effects of social injustice on a large portion of the population.
Most importantly, the rest of the world will not continue to wear it for much longer. South Africa became an international Pariah because of the way it treated black people. Other countries stopped trading with it and playing sport with it until the government collapsed under the pressure: economic and moral. I suggest that it is only the bad odour in which the Arab world is saturated in the American nose that has allowed that cry for justice to go unheeded for so long.
Israel is our friend, but we are not treating it as we would a true friend if we continue to stand by doing nothing while it makes such a massive mistake. What is needed now from the USA is some good old tough love. We need to join in the condemnation and show Israel that it urgently needs to reform its discriminatory laws before they lead to the complete downfall of the nation.
In doing this we must not join with Israel’s enemies whose motivation in supporting Palestinians is far from being pure or noble. Rather, I think we should stand strong on the firm ground of human rights and enlightened law. We have been bankrolling Israel’s defense for a long time now and they owe it to us to take this message very seriously. If they refuse then we must close the door until they come to their senses.

I await with interest a reaction which will demonstrate whether the Pro Israel lobby in the blogosphere is as active now as it was two years ago.