The Americanization of the Israeli-Palestinian Debate - The Atlantic - "When many Westerners peer out at the world, what they’re really looking for is a mirror... Although a close relationship between America and Israel has been taken for granted over the past half century, it solidified only once Americans decided that Israelis were like them. In novels and countless press reports about pioneers and fighters in the ’50s, “Israel and Jews came to be perceived as masculine, ready to fight the Cold War alongside America,” the scholar Michelle Mart wrote in her study of the topic, Eye on Israel. “By contrast, Arabs were increasingly stigmatized as non-Western, undemocratic, racially darker, unmasculine outsiders.” “In the images of Israelis, then,” she wrote, “Americans constructed their own self-image at mid-century.” That construction has been on my mind this month as disturbing events unfolding here have been picked up and interpreted abroad. Many Americans are now using their image of home to construct their image of Israel. Indeed, for some on the progressive left, the conflict between Jews and Muslims 6,000 miles east of Washington, D.C., has become jumbled up with American ideas about race. “What they are doing to the Palestinian people is what they continue to do to our Black brothers and sisters here,” Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan shouted to applause at a rally earlier this month, leaving listeners to ponder the word they. Celebrities tweeted the phrase “Palestinian Lives Matter,” echoing the American protests for racial justice. “Until all our children are safe,” Representative Cori Bush of Missouri told the House, “we will continue to fight for our rights in Palestine and in Ferguson.”... The story of the Jewish minority in Europe and in the Islamic world, which is the story of Israel, has nothing to do with race in America. My grandmother’s parents and siblings were shot outside their village in Poland by people the same color as them. If you stand on a street in the modern state of Israel and look at passersby, you often can’t tell who’s Jewish and who’s Arab. Many Israelis are from Arab countries, and for the 6 million Jews living in the heart of the Arab world (300 million people) and in the broader Islamic world (1.5 billion people), the question of who’s the minority is obviously a tricky one. Most Black people here are Jews with roots in Ethiopia. The occupation of the West Bank is supported by many Israelis mainly because they have rational fears of rockets and suicide bombings, tactics that weren’t quite the ones endorsed by the American civil-rights movement. All of this is to say that although Israel, like America, is deeply messed up, it’s messed up in completely different ways... For these Americans, distant Jews have become an embodiment of the American evil, racial oppression. People have always projected fantasies onto other places and groups, but this particular type of projection, in which Jews are displayed as the prime symbol of whatever’s wrong, has a long history. When it surfaces, it usually heralds an impatience with logical analysis and normal politics, and a move toward magical thinking... Western observers are often tempted to see foreign countries as mirrors of their own, because it makes a story more compelling for members of their audience, who are interested—who isn’t?—mainly in themselves. And it means they can analyze other societies without going to the considerable trouble of studying them, learning their language, or even visiting. So Narendra Modi of India is Donald Trump, and France’s problem is racial inequality, and Dutch conservatives are Republicans. It’s seductive to think that everything you need to know you learned back in Berkeley. But believing that foreign countries operate according to American logic is a recipe for confusion, even disaster. Many Americans looking at Iraq in the early years of this century, for example, saw a democracy-in-waiting stymied only by a cruel dictator. America then took steps that resulted, directly and indirectly, in hundreds of thousands of deaths, including those of more than 4,500 American soldiers, with little to show for it. The world is not a mirror. The world is a kaleidoscope that can be understood only by people who are experts in each individual shard, and even then only partially."
So liberals hate Israel because they see them as Western/American/white, and they hate Westerners, Americans and white people
16 Questions to Consider When Protesting Israel : IsraelPalestine - "When demonstrators chant “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea”, meaning from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, do you realize they are calling for the ethnic cleansing of 6.5 million Jews from their indigenous ancestral homeland? Is so, where do you suggest these Jews go, who will take them and how do you plan to guarantee their safety? My elderly in-laws were born and raised in Israel. What should they do? What will keep them from the fate of the Kurds?
If Jews are not indigenous to Israel, where are they indigenous to? From where did they come? And why does Israel host so many Jewish religious artifacts and archaeological sites featuring Hebrew inscriptions? Were those planted underground as some sort of grand ruse? Would you consider an Irish person choosing to reside in Ireland as a form of colonialism?
If Israel’s citizens are guilty of genocide, as the demonstrators regularly declare, why are they so bad at it? After all, the population growth in Gaza and the West Bank far outstrips that of Israel proper. And why is Israel giving advance warning to Gaza’s inhabitants so they can flee before Israel fires upon Hamas installations, such as the media tower today? Is Israel that inept at genocide? And if not, how do you think it feels for a people who actually suffered genocide to have the accusation so lazily slapped upon them?
Have the protesters around you shown equal concern for the genocide of Uighurs in China or the Rohingya in Myanmar? Have they recently protested at either country’s embassy? If not, why is the situation in Israel so unique for them? What makes the Jewish State so particularly villainous in their eyes?
When people such as Bernie Sanders say “Palestinian Lives Matter”, do you honestly believe that Israelis feel otherwise? I don’t know any Jews or Israelis who are not distraught over the death of civilians in Gaza, and wish desperately that a peaceful resolution could be found that would allow all of Israel’s inhabitants to live safely and securely in the land. Do you really conceive of Israel as an entire country of genocidal maniacs?
What will you say (not if but) when the protesters’ chants mutate from Anti-Zionism to Anti-Semitism with calls to harm Jews wherever they may be found? Late last week, one such demonstrator bloodied a Jewish man with a metal chair. Does this sit well with you? Does your protest include Anti-Semitic images of Jews as vermin or blood thirsty animals? Accusations of Jews controlling the world’s media and finance? Libels of Jews as demonic or parasitic? Do you realize this is why all synagogue preschools need to hire full time security guards?
If Israel is truly an apartheid state, how is there such diverse representation of various communities within private industry and government office? In America, can you openly advocate for the country’s destruction and yet serve in congress? You can in Israel! How did Israeli Arabs come to make up 9% of Israel’s Knesset members? And how did Arab Israeli George Karra get a seat on Israel’s Supreme Court? Why do the majority of Israeli Arabs regularly poll that they would rather remain citizens of Israel than one of her neighboring states or even a newly formed Palestinian state?
Did you know that the majority of Israeli Jews are from the Middle East or North Africa? Or did you assume they all present as white? And if Palestine is truly “freed” from the Jews, will you tell the hundreds of thousands of Jews who fled to Israel when they were expelled from Arab countries to “go back to Europe”?
If you are upset about the wide discrepancy of civilian casualties between Israelis and Palestinians, would you feel better if more Israelis were killed? Should Israel be blamed for building bomb shelters and Iron Dome missile defense systems while Hamas shoots rockets from schools and hospitals? Would more dead Jews satisfy your rage?
If Hamas has so little money for infrastructure and services for its citizens, how do they afford 2,000+ rockets, tunnels, drones, etc? Where did those come from? Did they suddenly win the lottery?
Do you think that if Israel returned to its 1967 borders and offered a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, that all would be forgiven? If so, why was an offer of nearly this magnitude turned down without even a counteroffer? Why does Hamas’ charter distinctly call for the destruction of Israel and attacks upon Jews? And why did the Arab states seek to wipe Israel off the map both in 1948 and 1967 when not a single settlement existed?
Did you know that Gaza shares a border with Egypt, which could be opened at any time? Have you protested against Egypt for not doing so? Jordan occupied the West Bank between 1948 and 1967. Why was a Palestinian State not declared during this time? Why is Israel uniquely to blame for the Palestinians’ awful predicament?
Did you know that Israel allows for a free press while all pictures and stories out of Gaza must be approved by Hamas? Did you ever wonder why there aren’t more pictures of Hamas terrorists in action? And if an Israeli soldier shoots a Palestinian teenager who lunges at her with a knife, is she guilty of killing a child?
If Israel is a warmonger for attacking Hamas missile positions, what would be the more appropriate response as its citizens are fired upon? Sit tight and wait until the attacks end? Offer thoughts and prayers? What would the US do if Mexico launched 2,000 rockets from Tijuana into San Diego?
If your protest is co-organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, do you actually know any Jews who affiliate with this group? Do you realize that they serve as a cover for Anti-Zionist rhetoric and openly advocate for the destruction of the State of Israel? Do you also think that the Westboro Baptist Church speaks for all Christians?...
And perhaps most importantly - where are you and your fellow protesters receiving your information? Do you think Twitter, TikTok and Instagram offer the depth of analysis that such a complex situation requires? Can the conflict really be summarized in a tidy meme? Have you spoken with anyone who has spent considerable time in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza? Does your favorite celebrity or influencer research Middle Eastern history in their free time? Would you take a Middle Eastern Studies class taught by Dua Lipa?"
Avi Benlolo: There can be no excuse for terrorism. It's that simple - "what we are starting to see once again in the media and in some political circles are attempts to excuse Hamas for sending 1,500 high-powered Iranian-made rockets into civilian populations in Israel. Rockets that are launched indiscriminately targeting civilian populations (not the military) are classified as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. They are intended to murder as many people as possible — including children... While strongly condemning Hamas and rocket fire into Israel, our government leaders are also unfortunately drawing a moral equivalence of some sort. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would always support “Israel’s right to assure its own security.” But in the next sentence, he added, “We are also gravely concerned by the continued expansion of settlements and evictions.” What does this have to do with terrorist rocket attacks on innocent civilians in Israel? Do land disputes justify bombing an ally? Would Ottawa allow bombs to fall on any Canadian city without taking action? Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist living in Jerusalem, wrote that he only blames Hamas: “The fanatics who rule over Gaza with an iron fist cannot resist the opportunity to stir up anti-Jewish violence for their own political gain. If innocent Jews and Muslims die in the process, all the better for them. The pretext for the latest missile barrage is the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in Jerusalem, where a long-running legal dispute was scheduled for a court hearing. It is the kind of situation that would be handled by a local municipal court in any other country and there would be no public interest.” Exactly. Instead, what we are seeing once again is that some Western governments are excusing the bombing of Israel and interfering in the civic and security affairs of a free and democratic state. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Iran has been deeply involved in arming Hamas, and in the past week, inciting the violence now taking place. Given the fact that Iran shot down an airliner killing nearly 60 Canadians, Canada’s leaders should be well aware of what Iranian proxies like Hamas are capable of... there is no moral equivalency between a free and democratic state that shares the same values as Canada, and Hamas or the Palestinian Authority"
What Really Is Behind the Latest Burst of Hamas Terror in Israel - The American Spectator - "The media of our day always coalesce around a narrative that fits their preconceived worldview. When viewed in a light that “Palestinians” all are “Victims of Color” and that all Israelis are White Supremacists or their next of kin, it is easy to misjudge the Mideast reality underlying present conflict coming from Gaza. That narrative thus preaches that Jews with legally valid property rights in the eastern portion of United Jerusalem are not entitled to advance their legal claims to oust trespassers, Arab or otherwise, from their homes. That same line of reasoning proposes that supposed Israeli belligerence lies beneath the barrage of some 2,000 rockets launched from Gaza and aimed by Hamas at Israel’s civilian population from Ashdod and Ashkelon to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The truth is that a property dispute in the Shimon HaTzaddik/Sheikh Jarrah community of eastern Jerusalem is not the cause of the present war. Jews there owned property since 1875. Their homes and land were stolen from them and their parents and grandparents in 1948, when Jordan’s armies, bent on “ethnic cleansing,” invaded and illegally drove them out... Israel’s courts, which not only are fair but even lean over backwards to favor Arabs in such disputes, repeatedly have held that the Jewish claims are documented and legally valid. As the Jewish landowners were recognized legally, they did not try ousting anyone. Rather, the courts held they could charge rent to the squatters living in their homes, so they did. Relatively recently, Arab squatters stopped paying rent, so the landlords went to court finally to evict. This happens everywhere in the world when tenants stop paying rent and make clear they will not resume... The notion that the long-overdue evictions for non-payment of rent caused a war is as absurd as expecting Bulgarian immigrants in California to launch 2,000 rockets aimed at destroying the entire American country in response to local court rulings in Old Town Sacramento backing landlords trying to evict 20 families who won’t pay their rent in a Bulgarian ethnic enclave. Against that backdrop, Israel is posed with the conundrum of defending itself in a manner that accords with woke expectations of elegance...
Ramadan always is an occasion for Islamist terrorists to escalate tensions with Israel and with each other. This is as true in Afghanistan today and of Iraq in 2013 as it is in Israel... Israel Independence and Jerusalem Day, annually give rise to Hamas upticks in terrorism aimed at spoiling Israel’s national celebrations.
Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) was elected president of the Palestinian Authority on January 9, 2005. Palestinian presidential elections are held every fourth year. Mazen now is in the 17th year of his four-year term. That is, there has not been an election since 2005. Under enormous internal popular pressure, he finally acceded to holding new elections this spring. As sometimes occurs during a presidential campaign, polling turned against him and his down-ticket slate. He therefore decided — yet again — to call off elections. He sought a cover story to justify yet another cancellation. Israel, which regards all Arabs living anywhere in Jerusalem as denizens of Israel and no other polity, opposes having Palestinian Authority elections conducted in East Jerusalem. Mazen decided to leverage that issue to validate canceling the vote, saying that no elections can be held if Israel will not allow Arabs in Jerusalem to vote for the government of another polity. This is akin to an American president unilaterally canceling scheduled national November elections on grounds that Washington, D.C., residents do not get to vote for their own U.S. senator. When Abu Mazen canceled the vote, all Palestinian Arabs from Gaza to Nablus saw through the façade. To persuade Arabs that, no, really, the whole delay is only because of the Jerusalem voting issue, Abu Mazen launched a propaganda campaign encouraging Jerusalem Arabs to riot against Israel. The rioting included stabbing attacks against Jews. The Israeli police had to restore order. Quelling violence is never gentle — not in Portland, not in Seattle, nowhere.
As Abu Mazen sought to portray himself and his Fatah organization as the great “Defender of Jerusalem,” his main political opponents — the competing terror force, Hamas — saw themselves politically compelled to position themselves among Arab voters as even greater “Defenders of Jerusalem.”...
Israel — incredibly — has just gone through a series of four repeated national elections in only two years"
New proof that it was Hamas — not Israel — that committed war crimes last May - "Delegitimizing Israeli operations — not military victory — was one of Hamas’ main objectives in this conflict... With such false claims, Hamas casts any civilian casualty as illegal. Unfortunately, many in the media and public embraced this false narrative... [Law of Armed Conflict] LOAC requires militaries to distinguish between — and only attack — military, not civilian, targets. Commanders are obliged to make a good-faith effort to take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian risk. These rules do not preclude unavoidable civilian casualties. It is a sad but undeniable reality of war that international law tolerates harm to civilians if it’s not deliberately inflicted, caused by indiscriminate attacks and avoidable with feasible precautions. In our professional opinion, Israeli actions in Gaza reflected a consistent and good-faith commitment to respect and implement these LOAC principles. IDF military legal advisers vetted all proposed targets. Its commanders took all feasible precautionary measures, at times implementing more than the law required as a matter of policy. The IDF dropped leaflets, placed phone calls and sent text messages warning Gazan civilians in advance of airstrikes. Small “knock on the roof” munitions delivered further warning. We saw footage of the IDF waiting for civilians to clear a building — and of commanders calling off strikes when they did not. These precautions came at a cost. They often allowed enemy fighters to escape. They also tied up Israeli aircraft, reducing the number of targets that could be monitored or struck. The IDF accepted these costs because of its commitment to protecting civilians. The same can’t be said of Hamas. It deliberately targeted Israeli civilians. Even when ostensibly attacking military targets, it routinely did so indiscriminately. It exploited Gazan civilians as human shields, deliberately locating its military assets — including rocket launchers, mortars, command posts and military tunnels — in civilian areas when other options were available. This is all compelling evidence of LOAC violations. This was an intentional, and integral, part of Hamas’ strategy. Putting Gazans in harm’s way made it harder for the IDF to strike Hamas targets while complying with LOAC. It also created the potential for civilian casualties that could be leveraged to accuse Israel of LOAC violations."
Meme - Ida B. Wells: "Europe is a geopolitical fiction"
"Like Palestine?"
Ida B. Wells: "..."
Amnesty International says Hamas committed war crimes, too - The Washington Post - "The military wing of Hamas committed war crimes, too, by indiscriminately firing unguided rockets and mortar rounds from civilian areas in Gaza at population centers in Israel. The 70-page report found that rocket and mortar fire from the Palestinian militants also killed 13 Palestinians and six Israeli civilians. Amnesty investigators report that a Palestinian projectile landed next to a supermarket in a refugee camp on July 28, killing 13 Palestinian civilians, 11 of them children playing in the street during a cease-fire. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion at the al-Shati camp, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri blamed Israeli airstrikes. In a text message to journalists, Zuhri called it a “massacre” and vowed that “this crime will not break our will.” A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces at the time denied firing at the neighborhood and attributed the explosions to a failed rocket launch from Gaza militants... The report condemned Palestinian militias for storing munitions in, and launching rockets from, schools, mosques, a Greek Orthodox church and at least one hospital. Amnesty also reported that the militias launched attacks and stored rockets “very near locations where hundreds of displaced civilians were taking shelter.”"
From 2015
Misfired rockets may have killed over a dozen in Gaza battle - "Close to one-third of the Palestinians who died in the latest outbreak of violence between Israel and Gaza militants may have been killed by errant rockets fired by the Palestinian side, according to an Israeli military assessment that appears consistent with independent reporting by The Associated Press... No one in Gaza with direct knowledge of the explosions in question was willing to speak about them publicly. But live TV footage showed militant rockets falling short in densely packed residential neighborhoods. And AP visits to the sites of two explosions that killed a total of 12 people lent support to suspicions they were caused by rockets that went off course... If it turns out that Islamic Jihad harmed some of those it claims to protect, it would make for an even more humiliating outcome for the militant group and its main sponsor, Iran. In Gaza, the ruling Hamas militant group heavily polices dissent... Neither Hamas nor Islamic Jihad responded to Israel’s claims that civilians were killed by misfired rockets. Instead, they have held Israel responsible for all the deaths. Gaza-based human rights groups investigating the strikes also declined to address the claims. But their initial findings indicate that at least some of the explosions were questionable. The Al-Mezan human rights group said some civilians were killed by “projectiles” rather than Israeli airstrikes. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said it has so far confirmed that 27 people were killed by Israeli strikes — far below the overall toll... On Saturday night, seven Palestinians were killed in a blast in the crowded Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it carried out no operations in the area at the time. It released video footage purportedly showing a barrage of militant rockets, with one falling short. Islamic Jihad had announced a rocket attack on the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, just north of Jebaliya, at around the same time as the explosion. Video footage of the aftermath circulated online, showing what appeared to be a rocket casing sticking out of the ground on a narrow, busy street. When the AP visited the site on Monday, the casing was gone and the hole had been filled in with dirt. Palestinians are usually keen to display evidence of Israeli airstrikes to international media... an explosion killed five Palestinians ages 4 to 17 at a cemetery in Jebaliya, also around the same time Islamic Jihad announced a barrage of rockets. The Israeli military said it was investigating. Visiting both sites in Jebaliya, the AP saw none of the telltale signs of an Israeli strike — the wide craters left by F-16s or the narrow holes caused by drone strikes."
From 2022
Damn Israel, forcing Palestinians to kill their own people! It is heartening to see that Palestinians are so committed to the Cause that they refuse to say anything that the Zionist media will twist to make Resistance look bad!
Hamas Youth Camps in Gaza Include Weapons Training, Targets of ‘Israeli Soldiers’ - "As in previous years, the Hamas terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip is running summer camps for children and teens that promote jihad and armed struggle against Israel, incorporating the use and training of various weapons, along with other military skills. “Saplings of Jerusalem” summer camps, which were launched on July 23, are attended by as many as 100,000 boys and girls, according to a report by MEMRI... Similar camps for Palestinian youth are run in the West Bank."
Israel is an apartheid state | The Spectator - "If you’re after evidence of apartheid in Israel, you don’t have to look very far. Amid rioting by Palestinians and Arabs, the Israel Police has declared the Temple Mount in Jerusalem off-limits. For ten days, only practitioners of one religion will be allowed to visit... In recent days, Arab and Muslim rioters have run amok on the Temple Mount and throughout the Old City. They have fired off Molotov cocktails and rocks at law enforcement from inside Al-Aqsa. They have beaten religious Jews on their way to pray at the Western Wall. They have stoned at least ten buses, injuring passengers including a 13-year-old girl. Hence why the Israel Police has said adherents of one religion and one religion alone will be permitted on the Temple Mount for the next ten days. That one religion is, naturally, Islam. Welcome to Israel, apartheid state. This interdict is not unusual and nor is the tumult that has occasioned it; both have played out semi-regularly in recent years. Religious discrimination against non-Muslims is in fact routine on Temple Mount, which is governed by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, a Jordanian religious trust, in cooperation with the Israel Police. For centuries, Jews were forbidden from ascending Temple Mount by the occupying empire of the day, and even after they liberated their capital city in 1967, almost all senior rabbis have forbidden Jews to set foot on the hill. Nevertheless, some have persisted and Israel permits a limited number of its Jewish citizens to visit their holiest site, provided they do not pray while there. Those Jews who do pray are arrested. Jews may only enter the complex through a separate gate designated for use by non-Muslims. The virtues of these arrangements are open to question. For one, they concede Islamic and Palestinian supremacist views about the Temple Mount and the freedom of Jews to worship there. Limiting Jewish access to the hill does not stop Palestinian terror groups, preachers and media routinely prompting riots with false claims that the Zionists are ‘storming Al-Aqsa’. Israeli police operations to curtail said rioting are then packaged by the international media and NGOs as a wanton Israeli attack on Muslim holy sites and worshipers, a framing amplified by gullible western progressives. Ariel Sharon’s decision to visit Temple Mount in 2000 is generally agreed to be the cause of the Second Intifada, in which Palestinian suicide bombers murdered more than a thousand Israelis. (If you’re wondering why the lesson from this incident was ‘Israeli Prime Ministers must not be so provocative as to visit Jewish holy sites in their own capital city’ and not ‘blowing up buses and pizza parlours for four years because someone walked up a hill seems a bit extreme’, you just failed your Foreign Office civil service exam.) Nor do the current arrangements do much for the sacrosanctity of Al-Aqsa, the mosque that is ‘desecrated’ by Israeli police entering to stop rioting but not by the rioting itself. Rather than acknowledge Israel’s self-denying efforts to keep the peace on Temple Mount, the international community simply breezes past them and onto their condemnations. It is taken as given that Israel ought to cede sovereignty in its capital city and task its police with arresting Jewish citizens for praying on a hill. This goes to the hypocrisy that runs through elite western (and, it must be said, Israeli) discourses on Israel and the Palestinians. Western legal norms and the assumptions of rights-based liberalism are applied – often, though not always, dishonestly – to characterise Israeli laws, military decisions and security measures as arbitrary and discriminatory, motivated by racial and religious malice and a nationalist desire to dominate the Palestinians. Because Israel is not Sweden, it is damned as South Africa. Yet this commitment to universalising western values only goes one way. It is not applied to Palestinian demands for a Jew-free state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, nor to Palestinian prohibitions – backed up by the death penalty – against selling property to Jews. Most noticeably, it does not apply when Israel discriminates against its Jewish citizens and restricts their liberty of movement and freedom to manifest their religious faith. Israelis often complain about double standards but there is only one standard and it is always against Israel... It is plainly discriminatory against Jews but Israel figures, rightly or wrongly, that this is the price of keeping an uneasy peace. There's your apartheid state."
10 Reasons Israel Is Not An 'Apartheid' State - "1. All people living in Israel have full equal rights.
Arabs occupy senior positions on the Israeli police force, the Knesset and the Israeli judiciary. For example, Salim Joubran, who currently serves on the Israeli Supreme Court, is a Christian Arab. South Africans living under apartheid could only dream of obtaining these types of positions. Ishmael Khaldi, an Islamic Bedouin, is currently a diplomat in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Majalli Wahabi (Druze) was the acting president of Israel in 2007
2. An Arab judge, George Karra, sentenced an ex-Israeli president Moshe Katsav to prison for seven years.
3. In 1953, the Bantu Education Act was passed.
This separated blacks from whites in the South African educational system... In Israel, citizens are given equal opportunity in the workplace and educational department as evidenced by the fact that there are Palestinians and Arabs in Israeli universities who both study and teach as professors. Today in Israel there are hundreds of Arab schools. Furthermore, education in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Courts, laws, taxes, police etc. are also under PA jurisdiction in the majority of the West Bank.
4. Incitement to racism is a criminal offence in Israel.
This is the polar opposite of apartheid in South Africa, whose government specifically passed incendiary racist legislation.
5. Arabs and Israelis receive the same treatment in hospitals.
Even during Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, Palestinians receive top-of-the-line treatment in Israeli hospitals.
6. Non-whites in South Africa had separate amenities.
7. Israeli Arabs have their own political parties in the Knesset -- some of whom are Israel's harshest critics.
8. Arab citizens are allowed to seek redress through the courts and government if they feel they have been wronged.
9. Arabs in Israel have more fundamental rights than other Islamic and Arab countries in the Middle East.
Ironically, they have more rights than they do in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.
10. In Israel, there are 1.6 million Arab citizens integrated within Israeli society.
According to a poll done by Harvard University, 77 per cent of Arab citizens living in Israel would rather live there than any other country in the world. If these citizens were experiencing "apartheid," why are so many of them supportive of Israel?... Arabs have the right to move freely, vote, obtain an education, work in prominent positions, receive world-class health care, own land and speak freely. Blacks in South Africa had none of these rights."
Arab party leader in Israel rejects 'apartheid' label - "The head of an Arab party in Israel who made history last year by joining the governing coalition said Thursday he would not use the word “apartheid” to describe relations between Jews and Arabs within the country... “I would not call it apartheid,” Mansour Abbas said in response to a question at an online event organized by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a D.C-based think tank. He noted that he was in the coalition and could join the government itself if he wanted to. “I prefer to describe the reality in objective ways,” he added, according to the English translation of his remarks, which he delivered in Hebrew. "If there is discrimination in a certain field, then we will say that there is discrimination in that specific field.”"
Jewish student sues Leeds University 'after being given fail in essay for not criticising Israel' - "Danielle Greyman said her essay about crimes committed by Hamas against Palestinians did not pass because it did not pin any blame on the Jewish state. The 23-year-old student, who had never previously failed an essay at university, was forced to resit the module, which she passed. Despite this, Miss Greyman was unable to get her undergraduate degree certificate in time to take up a place on a master’s course at Glasgow University. In her original essay, Miss Greyman referenced Hamas’s use of human shields, saying it was viewed as ‘a betrayal of the Palestinian people by their government’. The moderator’s note next to that part of the essay said: ‘This ignores the fact that the Israeli state commits acts of violence.’ In a review of her essay, an external examiner recommended that it should have been passed... One of the original markers of Miss Greyman’s failed essay was academic Claudia Radiven, who signed a petition defending scholar David Miller, who was fired by Bristol University following controversial comments about Jews."
Meme - "NEWS OF THE MIDDLE-EAST
Muslims are getting killed
Is Israel involved?
Yes
How many casualties?
under 1,000: STOP these WAR-CRIMES
over 1,000: OMG we must stop the GENOCIDE
No
How many casualties?
under 100,000: lol who cares this shouldn't even be on the news
over 100,000: oh no that's too bad... :("
