Palestine & Apartheid

Whenever the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is raised much is made of what is called "Israel's right to exist" and the justification for its actions in light of this right. But much less is made of either the Palestinian right to exist or the fact that Israel is largest military power in the "middle-east" region today while Palestine has no military to think of. With that in mind, a brief glance at the map of Israeli settlements into Palestinian territory since 1967, pictured here, gives a clear picture of exactly whose existence is truly imperiled.

After studying this map closely imagine if someone decided to build a system of long continuous walls for the purpose of cutting off the most valuable of these areas represented by the red dots from the rest of the country, like so (the brown part goes to Israeli settlers in this scenario):



What kind of viable, livable, autonomous and sovereign country would be left for Palestinians? Who really faces an immediate existential threat?

Via The Black Commentator comes this relevant follow up to the previous posts on Palestine and Apartheid...

At a 1 December 2006 Palestine Center briefing, William Fletcher discussed the similarities and differences between Israeli-occupied Palestine and apartheid-era South Africa focusing on the logic, objectives and strategy of settler states. He also addressed the opposition to Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, and urged a continued mobilization around the issue of Palestine.

“Two Walled Cities: Jerusalem and Johannesburg, Apartheid and Palestine”
Transcript of Remarks by William Fletcher
“For the Record” No. 269 (19 December 2006)

Thank you and it’s an honor and a pleasure to be here.

When I was invited, I was asked to speak in terms of what was called “Two Walled Cities: Jerusalem and Johannesburg.” I thought that was a very good metaphor to look at the issue of apartheid and the occupation. But before but I get into that, I want to preface it by actually speaking about some differences between Israeli-occupied Palestine and apartheid-era South Africa, in fact, a very dramatic difference.

Within a few months of my taking over as President of TransAfrica Forum in January 2002, I received a call from none other than the Israeli Embassy congratulating me on the appointment. This came as an incredible shock. I said to myself, do they know who I am? They then went on to propose a meeting with me to discuss a cultural program that the Israeli Embassy wished to jointly sponsor with TransAfrica Forum that focused on Ethiopian Jews. The meeting never happened. They called me and claimed that someone on their staff had gotten sick. I guess they’re still sick because the meeting was never rearranged. But in any case, I concluded that they probably did a little investigation and just said that there wouldn’t be much of a point to having the meeting.

I raise this for two reasons. One is that I never received a congratulatory call from an Arab Embassy. And this is not an attack on Arabs, but it is something I’ve noticed in terms of the unwillingness or inability to carry out outreach in the USA in order to promote an Arab viewpoint. The Israelis, on the other hand, are phenomenal in terms of outreach. The South Africans during the apartheid era were not. I’ll get into that in a second, and it’s a very, very big difference in the approaches of the two countries. So the approach of the Israelis really does contrast remarkably with the approach that the South African apartheid regime took towards the whole notion of developing allies and constituencies externally. The Israelis have always had an active outreach program, and while they have consistently portrayed themselves to be victims, they have done so in a way that constantly seeks international support. Interestingly, other settler states like South Africa and Australia took a very, very different view when it came to this matter and did not, by and large, seek non-governmental constituencies, even though both of these other settler states, in their own ways, portrayed themselves as victims. The South African apartheid regime obviously had a close alliance with the United States but did not spend a lot of time trying to cultivate a relationship in the United States. The slight exception to this was the effort, backed by the Reagan administration, to promote the South African-aligned Angolan movement of Jonas Savimbi (called the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola [UNITA]) in the USA in connection with certain right-wing African American churches. Even here, however, while UNITA was aligned with South Africa, it was not the South Africans who were trying to develop a constituency in the USA.

The logic of both Israel and apartheid-era South Africa can be found in their common origins as settler states. In both cases, the settlers created myths, semi-religious or explicitly religious, including that God had provided the land for them and that the land was unoccupied upon arrival, a very, very common theme in every settler state, whether it’s the United States, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc. In both cases, the settlers portrayed themselves to be victims against natives who were described as semi-barbaric and/or intolerant. Given the permanent state of siege, every settler state aggression came to be described as a defensive act, an approach also common with the United States. By way of example, for South Africa, incursions into Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe or anywhere else always against alleged terrorists were justified as alleged defensive actions.

For the settler state, there is a zero sum calculation when it comes to the natives. This does not necessarily mean that the natives must be annihilated, but it does mean that the natives can never be allowed to prevail. In this context, one can look at Jerusalem and apartheid-era Johannesburg as emblematic of settler strategy and the settler state as a whole. Though there are significant differences between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, for example, the religious significance of Jerusalem, the settler approach in both cases with these cities shared much in common. In the case of Jerusalem, the entire city has been seized by the settlers who have no intention of sharing it with the Palestinians. The settler plan is one of driving out the Palestinians through a combination of intimidation and inconvenience, otherwise known as psychological warfare. By inconvenience I mean the painful difficulties encountered by Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem.

Johannesburg, however, was constructed to be for whites only. Blacks could enter the city during the days to work but had to clear out at nightfall unless they had explicit permission to stay. Blacks lived in what can only loosely be described as suburbs or townships, the most well known being Soweto, which is an acronym for South-West Township. It’s not a name in and of itself. Security, as in occupied Palestine, was ever present in Johannesburg and Soweto. Blacks carried passes and travel was always limited. Johannesburg stood as a top of the line First World city while townships like Soweto were Third World and often-quite marginal.

The walls in the case of Johannesburg were actually around Soweto and other townships as opposed to being around Johannesburg itself. In fact, one of the remarkable things in going to Soweto is that there is only one road and gate in and out. As apartheid crumbled, so too did much of Johannesburg. Whites left the city in mass and they abandoned their often-luxurious high rises to squatters or general squalor. They retreated to their nearly always heavily militarily guarded and gated communities. And there was a remarkable reversal that unfolded. Whites would be in the city by days, and then they would be in their communities at nights. But they would not stay in Johannesburg during the evening.

The apartheid plan was for the removal of blacks from the best of land. In this case, it followed the model that was established by the British in Ireland in the 1500s when they drove the Irish out of the best lands in the north and forced them south and settled the north with Welsh, Scots and some poor English. It also follows what we see in other settler states, such including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and obviously Israel.

Yet each settler state has handled its indigenous population somewhat differently. In Australia, New Zealand and the United States, there was an overt effort at extermination. Case in point, there are no Tasmanians left on this planet. Not only were the indigenous removed from the land, they were removed from the living. In Ireland, South Africa and to some extent Canada, the premium was placed on the removal of the natives from the land and their socio-political marginalization. In the case of Palestine, I’d argue, a bit of both seems to be underway, though the emphasis seems to be on the removal from land.

In both the Occupied [Palestinian] Territories and apartheid-era South Africa, the settler state wishes (or in the case of South Africa, wished) to make the situation so inhospitable that the indigenous people leave on their own. It combines violent coercion with what can be described as hassling, or what I said earlier, psychological warfare. In the case of South Africa, the apartheid regime created those fictitious homelands like the Transkei and Ciskei. These were actual large territories with limited resources and limited anything with the exception of sources of entertainment such as Sun City. The key land always remained in the hands of the whites. The Occupied [Palestinian] Territories are replicating this pattern. And just as the apartheid regime presented itself to the world as visionary by allegedly “liberating” the homelands, so too do the Israelis in their vision of a Palestinian state or statelet. The situation raises some uncomfortable strategic questions. For the black South Africans, the struggle was not one to build legitimate and self-sustaining homelands. The objective was not to take over the Transkei and Ciskei and make those viable states. It was instead to destroy apartheid and create a democratic South Africa. In that sense, it’s interesting to see discussions under way in the Palestinian movement regarding the viability of the two-state solution in light of what Israeli practice has been.

Finally, the Holocaust separates Israel from apartheid-era South Africa largely in terms of the perspective of the rest of the world. The treatment received by the Boers (what are now known as Afrikaaners), in the original British concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer war, may have helped to shape Afrikaaner consciousness, but it had little impact on the way that the rest of the world viewed the Boers as a people or their efforts to eventually justify the apartheid state. The Holocaust, however, shuts down much discussion. This is not helped by comments such as the contradictory and rhetorically provocative, if not stupid, statements by the Iranian President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad questioning the reality of the Holocaust. Yet the Holocaust, a horrific act committed by one group of Europeans against another, is presented in a white supremacist framework in order to trump any and all discussions regarding Palestinian sovereignty and the legitimacy of any settler state.

The struggle against apartheid carried with it many valuable lessons for the Palestinian movement. Yet I would suggest that the struggle of the First Nations, or the Native Americans (here in the USA), also carries invaluable lessons. The First Nations in the United States and Canada were demonized, dehumanized and, ironically, romanticized by the settler state. The settler myth was used to justify continuous expansion, the breaking of treaties, murder and land removal—actually the removal of the people from their land. The settler state justified its atrocities by reference to what eventually came to be known as the “facts on the ground.” In other words, from the standpoint of the settler, it does not ultimately matter whether ‘we’, that is the settler, robbed ‘you’ of your land and dignity. ‘We,’ meaning the settler, possess all the cards. That is, the settler possesses all or most of the weapons and, therefore, from the standpoint of the settler, the game is over and, as the bumper sticker says, “Things just happen.”

Thank you...

William Fletcher is Belle Zeller Visiting Professor at Brooklyn College-City University of New York and former President and Chief Executive Officer of TransAfrica Forum, a national non-profit organization organizing, educating and advocating for policies in favor of the peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

This “For the Record” transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker's views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.

To read the question and answer session that followed Mr. Fletcher's speech, click here.

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Carter Defends "Peace, Not Apartheid"

I'm a little late posting this one but it's worth a look anyway. Former President Jimmy Carter appeared on NPR recently to defend his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Carter has predictably come under attack from supporters of Israel's government and its policies over his use of the term "Apartheid". Carter defends himself well against these attacks and certainly doesn't seem to need my help. But, as you listen to the interview in its entirety (I highly recommend that you do) consider how instructive this whole episode is on the nature of the Israel/Palestinian debate in America.

Carter presents a valid and important argument that for years has been considered fairly obvious outside of the United States. In fact, as has been noted elsewhere, he may not have gone far enough, censoring himself as a preemptive measure against these kinds of attacks. For instance, Carter insists in the NPR interview that nothing in his book suggests that Apartheid is practiced inside of Israel but that it is very much the case in the Palestinian territories Israel occupies. He bends over backwards (too far, in my opinion) to portray the domestic policies of Israel as democratic and fair, limiting his critique to it's behavior in Gaza and the West Bank.

Nevertheless, inside the US he is being vilified as, of all things, an anti-Semite, consistent with the well-worn construct that any criticism of Israel's government, regardless of its accuracy, is tantamount to launching a second Holocaust. In the firestorm that has erupted Carter's main point -- that peace is impossible if the legitimate, long-standing grievances of the Palestinian people continue to be ignored and literally paved over -- is completely obscured by all the hand-wringing over the use of the word "Apartheid".

In observing any debate, even if one is not up-to-speed on the issue at hand, there are things one can look for in order to ascertain which side is being, shall we say, less-than-candid and which isn't. And the Lord said "Ye shall know them by their fruits".

The fruits in this case are the methods used by Carter's critics to carry their side of argument, the vast array of intentional fallacies designed to obscure the weakness of their position. Using these techniques they have managed to remove the merits of his arguments from the discussion completely. From their perspective there is a good reason for this. Carter's arguments are unassailable. So, instead they've chosen obfuscation and fallacy as their primary weapon, focusing on a single word as a springboard for ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments.

With these tools they've managed to create a media environment in which all the focus is on whether Israel is exactly like South Africa, or whether Carter is anti-Semitic. These are, of course, wholly irrelevant but they serve the purpose of diverting attention away from facts that, again, are already considered well-established in the rest of the world but don't serve the interest of continuing the status quo.

These cynics are aided in no small part by the US media's long-standing embargo against any suggestion that Palestinians are rational human beings who are actually suffering unjustly under a 40-year Israeli occupation that denies them the basic human rights and dignity we ourselves insist upon. Only in such a media environment, built on a foundation of fallacy, can a situation in which the land is being literally pulled out from under the Palestinians' feet, where Palestinians are literally being walled off from their own homes, workplaces, families and assets be described as a threat to Israel's existence and not that of the Palestinians.

I have long argued privately that the use of such tactics represents an tacit admission by the user not only that their argument is weak on merit but that they know it and don't care. They don't want peace. They want Apartheid and they'll say anything to keep it. They'd just prefer you call it something else.

See also:

Carter Wins Applause at Brandeis

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Carter: Peace, Not Apartheid for Palestine

NOTE: I really am composing my follow-up to the Dixie topic, believe me. I just suffer a bit from blogger ADD and all this interesting stuff keeps coming up, like this one.

Former President Jimmy Carter has penned a new book critical of Israel and US policy in Palestine entitled, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid" . With regard to that title I humbly give reference to an earlier post from these very pages on the subject. This is a book I definitely plan to pick up.

Democracy Now! has a post up about the minor controversy surrounding this book. The entry is notable not only for Mr. Carter's viewpoint -- one that is rarely if ever heard in our ostensibly free press -- but also for it's citation of the sharp criticism of those views coming not only from the political right and the usual assortment of Israelophiles collectively known as the "Pro-Israel lobby" but also from the supposed political left in the form of such persons as incoming House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the incoming Judiciary Chairman John Conyers. Check this out...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is accusing Israel of creating an apartheid system in the West Bank and Gaza. The charge comes in his new book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been deeply involved in Middle East policies for the past three decades. As president he negotiated the Camp David Accords - which secured a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt.

In his new book, Jimmy Carter writes, "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land."

Carter criticizes Israel for building what he describes as an imprisonment wall through the West Bank. He accuses Israel of strangling the residents of Gaza where the poverty rate has reached 70 percent and where the malnutrition rate mirrors countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. And Carter is critical of Washington's role. He writes, "The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories."

OK, so you get the gist. Mr. Carter dares to call Israel's policies towards Palestinians and the US government's complicity therein what they really are -- apartheid policies. Per my previous post referenced in the link above, consider the peculiarities of this supposed "lone middle-east democracy". I now repost my citation of Bruce Dixon's "Israeli Apartheid" from The Black Commentator:

Imagine, if you will, a modern apartheid state with first, second and eleventh class citizens, all required to carry identification specifying their ethnic origin. First class citizens are obliged to serve in the armed forces, kept on ready reserve status until in their forties, and accorded an impressive array of housing, medical, social security, educational and related benefits denied all others.

Second class citizens are exempted from military service and from a number of the benefits accorded citizens of the first class. They are issued identity documents and license plates that allow them to be profiled by police at a distance. Second class citizens may not own land in much of the country and marriages between them and first class citizens are not recognized by the state. Second class citizens are sometimes arrested without trial and police torture, while frowned upon and occasionally apologized for, commonly occurs.

Citizens of the eleventh class, really not citizens at all, have no rights citizens of the first class or their government are bound to respect. Their residence is forbidden in nearly nine-tenths of the country, all of which they used to own. The areas left to them are cut up into smaller and smaller portions weekly, by high walls, free fire zones and hundreds of checkpoints manned by the army of the first class citizens, so that none can travel a dozen miles in any direction to work, school, shopping, a job, a farm, a business or a hospital without several long waits, humiliating searches and often arbitrary denials of the right to pass or to return. Posh residential settlements for the first class citizens with protecting gun towers and military bases are built with government funds and foreign aid on what used to be the villages and farms and pastures of the eleventh class citizens. The settlers are allotted generous additional housing and other subsidies, allowed to carry weapons and use deadly force with impunity against the former inhabitants, and are connected with the rest of first class territory by a network of of first-class citizen only roads.

Citizens of the eleventh class are routinely arrested, tortured, and held indefinitely without trial. Political activism among them is equated to “terrorism” and the state discourages such activity by means including but not limited to the kidnapping of suspects and relatives of suspects, demolition of their family homes, and extralegal assassination, sometimes at the hands of a death squad, or at others times by lobbing missiles or five hundred pound bombs into sleeping apartment blocks or noonday traffic. Passports are not issued to these citizens, and those who take advantage of scarce opportunities to study or work abroad are denied re-entry.

The apartheid state in question is, of course, Israel. Its first class citizens are Israeli Jews, the majority of them of European or sometimes American origin. The second class citizens are Israeli Arabs, who enjoy significant but limited rights under the law including token representation in the Knesset. The eleventh class citizens are not citizens at all. They are Palestinians.

And let us not forget the views of Oren Ben Dor, an Israeli citizen who teaches Philosophy at Southampton University's School of Law in the UK. On the recent Isreali demolition of the entire nation of Lebanon he writes...

"What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaza and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on an unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other."

Again, this is an Israeli talking. So, getting back to the DN's coverage of Carter's book:

Some of the most vocal critics of Carter's book have been fellow Democrats. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously."

Lets stop right there for a moment and take that in. It is actually "wrong" to suggest that ISRAEL instutionalizes ethinially based oppression? Nancy, dear Nancy, what else would you call it? Ethnicity is literally everything if you live in Israel. I vigorously question the "vigor" with which such a manifestly accurate "allegation" can be rejected.

John Conyers does only slightly better...

John Conyers, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, urged Carter to change the title of the book, which he described as "offensive and wrong."

What a disappointment! These quotes are incomplete and absent the context of the actual question the speakers may have been asked so I should moderate my criticism some. But taken at face value these statements really bother me. Not because they're suprising. They are not. The power of the Pro-Israel lobby is the stuff of legend and the subject of conspiracy theories the world over. And it is also probably wise for the Democrats, having yet to enjoy their first day at the congressional helm, to avoid picking big fights by co-signing controversial viewpoints at this juncture (regardless of whether or not those viewpoints should actually be controversial at all). Still, this kind of outward attack on Carter's work strikes me as more than avoidance on thier part. Simply withholding an endorsement would have accomplished that. But instead they took that extra step to almost excioriate Carter's valid commentary, virtually ruling out any acknowledgement of the facts on the ground.

As this episode illustrates, in case anyone doubted it, that the power of the "Pro-Israel"* lobby it is quite real. Behold the power of cheese.


* - I say "Pro-Israel" in quotes because that framing implicitly assumes that fairness to Palestinians is "anti-Israel", which it is not. As Mr. Ben Dor argues, the state of Isreal as currently constituted is unsustainable specifially because of it's institutionalized system of ethnic and religious-based injustice. No nation and especially nothing approaching a democracy, can survive a constant state of war, especially if that war is waged against both it's own citizens and it's immediate neighbors. A peaceful and, most importantly, equitable solution to this crisis is the most "Pro-Isreali" stance one can take. The alternative is it's eventual collapse and descent into sectarian and ethnic chaos.

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