When is it permissible to label a country an “apartheid state” ?

If you guessed, “when that country is NOT Israel,” then you’re right.

See Nicholas Kristof’s latest op-ed in the New York Times.

Kristof,

How dare you insinuate that one of America’s strongest allies in the Middle East is an apartheid state? Where are the responses, the crazies, calling you out for such an anti-Bahraini, anti-Arab, or dare i say, anti-Semitic stance (Jews are not the only Semites, SHOCKER) ? I always thought that is what happens when you describe a country, other than former South Africa, as being an apartheid state. I mean, isn’t that what happens generally, when Israel’s called out as an apartheid state?

Your comparison is quite unbelievable and incorrect. Yes there is a lot wrong in Bahrain but the division, oppression and segregation characteristic of an “apartheid” state is not present there. The comparison is more reasonable in the occupied territories as Palestinians are physically separated from Jews through a wall/fence; the presence of Jewish only roads and settlements are racist, discriminatory and impede Palestinian travel; Palestinians are subject to discriminatory policies, checkpoints, ID checks and severe military brutality; peaceful protests are oppressed using a brutal use of force; the minority Jewish population controls the majority of land and has almost exclusive use of a majority of water/resources; there is a high amount of displacement of Palestinians solely based on their ethnicity and their lands and property are seized on a daily basis; destruction of Palestinian homes is common, and so is the uprooting of olive trees; and Palestinians are confined to small enclaves.

Moreover, respected men as Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who know a thing or two about apartheid have both asserted that Israel’s policies in the occupied territories make it “worse than apartheid,” yet they, among others, have faced so much criticism for these views. Generally, when anyone even makes that comparison they are ostracized. You can get away with calling any country in the world an apartheid state, even ones whose characteristics have not met that threshold, as with Bahrain, but Israel is protected from this scrutiny.

Even if Israel is not an apartheid state, or you are of that view, why shield a country from this comparison or scrutiny? A good professor of mine once noted, about Jimmy Carter’s book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” that the former President “was not saying that Israel is an apartheid state, but rather arguing, that, to the Palestinians, it feels like an apartheid state.” This seems like an accurate assessment of Jimmy Carter’s book.

Nowhere in the book did he spell out the elements of Israel’s reign in the territories and compare them to the South African system of apartheid, but rather, he discussed the history of the failure of the peace process and the cementing of the Israeli occupation, and the impeding of the two state solution caused by the presence of a minority of Jewish settlers in large settlements, and Israeli control over the Palestinians and Palestine’s resources.

Kristof, you are right about one thing. It is bad when our enemies suppress peaceful protesters. It is even worse when our friends do. Well, then I wonder how bad you must think it is, when, our closest friend in the Middle East, has been carrying out segregationist and oppressive policies for decades, and we have rewarded it, annually, with more military aid than we give to any other nation, and have allowed our government and media to shield it from any sort of meaningful and effective scrutiny.

Pushing Forward

This is an article I wrote for my college newspaper on January 29, 2009, a few days after Israel ended its offensive in the Gaza Strip. I don’t think I posted it before so I wanted to now. I think the message still holds true until today as we have yet to see an end to the siege. Gaza is still like an earthquake zone as Israel continues to refuse to allow in reconstruction materials. Palestinians are rebuilding their homes with MUD. It’s been 8 months since the end of the offensive and Israel has repeatedly denied Gazans their right to move forward, to attempt to rebuild their lives.

Pushing forward

Many proponents of the recent offensive in Gaza have perpetuated the view that Israel’s disproportionate response, incurring the deaths of more than 1,300 Palestinians, was justified, that it was because of Hamas that Israel was forced to kill innocent Palestinians.

Those who perpetuate this misguided view are blind to the fact that collective punishment is illegal under international law, and that nothing justifies killing innocent civilians. Moreover, they neglect to remember time and time again that the Palestinians in Gaza, along with residents of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, have been living under one of the most brutal occupations in modern history, since before Hamas even existed. If those who hold these misguided views would take the time to look at the Israel-Palestine conflict with a memory that spans farther than the past three weeks, they would realize that this recent conflict in Gaza is not some abstract war between good and evil, but a continuation of the 42 years of victimization of the Palestinian people.

It is with these two conflicting outlooks that Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine and Hoos for Israel conducted their demonstrations last week. While some HFI members claimed that they did not express their support for Israel’s offensive publicly, they handed out pamphlets that did express a political view. The pamphlets detailed the number of rockets sent by Hamas into Israel as well as the amount of trucks allowed by Israel into Gaza before the operation. These facts were taken from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Web site, the most powerful pro-Israeli lobbying group in the United States. If that is not politicization, I do not know what is.

In the SPJP memorial, tombstones were lined up to represent Israeli and Palestinian deaths. One was for the Israeli victims and 100 were for the Palestinians, because each tombstone represented 13 deaths. During the operation, 13 Israelis were killed along with 1,300 Palestinians. SPJP also formally requested HFI to join them in the memorial, but HFI respectfully declined.

SPJP put up signs on the South Lawn that read “The world stands up for Gaza.” This exact phrase was the rallying cry of the international community during the entire Israeli offensive, as three quarters of the world condemned Israel’s disproportionate response. It was uttered by millions of European, Asian, African and Middle Eastern citizens, including 10,000 Israelis, who were disgusted with the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces. The collective outcry of so many around the globe demonstrates their solidarity with the innocent victims of Israel’s shelling and bombing.

The layout of these two distinct demonstrations conveyed the messages of both groups; while both groups desire peace, SPJP had a more elevated goal in mind — to honor the dead, to point out the injustice of the Israeli offensive, and to remind the world that we have more work to do to ensure that human rights and justice prevail for all, including the Palestinians.

The only way to move forward is to rectify the errors of the past. Those who said that the SPJP events were not looking forward are the ones who have the solution backwards. They echo the viewpoint of the Israeli government, and many U.S. media outlets, who want the Palestinians to stop touting their pain and forget the past. They want us to forget the fact that Gaza, according to many aid agencies, now looks like it has been struck by an earthquake. They want us to forget the deaths of over 1,300 Palestinians; of the thousands injured without medical aid; of the homes, schools, and mosques that were demolished. They want us to forget that entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, and villages removed from the face of the Earth. But we can not, we will not, and we should not forget.

Our memory of the past two Israeli episodes of collective punishment inflicted on the Palestinians, the first in 2006, and the one most recently, are still fresh in our minds. And it is exactly these memories of the innocent victims of the Israeli massacres, the memories of the destruction in the Gaza Strip, which are indeed pushing us forward. They are pushing us forward in the fight for justice for all. Because peace and reconciliation have proven themselves to be meaningless words without the prevalence of justice.

WPost: “Arab Activists Watch Iran And Wonder: ‘Why Not Us?’”

I also tend to wonder about this point: Why doesn’t the US actively support democratic movements in countries like Egypt instead of continuing to give Mubarak the second largest amount of US foreign aid every year, thereby bolstering these dictatorships? Or does seeing people suffer under brutal political repression only move us to tears and require our interference when it is perceived to be in our own national interest, as in Iran?

“Here, in the last presidential election, the police used live ammunition,” Sharkawy said. “Why didn’t the West speak out against what was happening to us, when we had much smaller numbers? You become skeptical. We understand the United States and the West will pursue their own interests. They don’t want a strong Egyptian government that will have separate opinions from the West.”

For the full article click here

Go Easy on Him NY TIMES!

I know this is very different from the general news you get from my blog, but I had to address this– it’s very important, and it aggravated me so much.

In this NY Times article, Alessandra Stanley just destroyed Jimmy Fallon’s first week at the Late Night Show !

(As you all should know, he’s taken over for Conan O Brien who will be taking over for Jay Leno in July I believe.)

Alessandra was too hard on Jimmy Fallon. She’s LAME.

ICC Issues Arrest Warrant for Al-Bashir

Here’s the BBC article.

After much controversy surrounding the matter, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Omar Al-Bashir, the President of Sudan today.

The ICC did not accuse him of genocide but of five accounts of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

According to AP, the three judges found that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him of genocide because genocide requires a clear intent to destroy and kill a specific ethnic or cultural group.

Nathan Brown: It’s Time for Plan B

Nathan Brown, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes that we have tired our efforts to implement the two state solution at the present moment, and that the U.S. would serve a greater purpose in the Middle East if it would push for an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire.

Stephen Walt at UVA

In a surprise visit (well, it was a surprise to me), Stephen Walt, one of the authors of the famous yet controversial book, The Israel Lobby, lectured today in Cabell Hall.

He talked about the book and the nasty reviews it received in the United States, and he compared them to the rather positive reviews him and Mersheimer received in Europe , and in Israel. He brought up the fact that none of his speaking engagements in Europe or in Israel were cancelled but most of the ones in the U.S. were. (it’s interesting, I think that if the Israel lobby really wanted to protest the message relayed in the Israel Lobby book, then they wouldn’t lobby against Walt and Mersheimers’ speaking engagements and force universities to cancel them– Israel’s lobbyists should be trying to show us how unpowerful they are. With their incessant lobbying they are only making the argument stronger.)