Can we finally stop pretending Israel is a “democracy”?
Israel’s Parliament enacted a law that enshrines the right of national self-determination as “unique to the Jewish people” — not all citizens. The legislation, a “basic law” — giving it the weight of a constitutional amendment — omits any mention of democracy or the principle of equality, in what critics called a betrayal of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which ensured “complete equality of social and political rights” for “all its inhabitants” no matter their religion, race or sex. The new law promotes the development of Jewish communities, possibly aiding those who would seek to advance discriminatory land-allocation policies. [...]
The basic laws legally supersede the Declaration of Independence and, unlike regular laws, have never been overturned by Israel’s Supreme Court.
— www.nytimes.com/...
Arab members of the Knesset, who comprise the left-leaning Joint List, protested the vote, calling it both an apartheid law and a “dark day for democracy”. The protest included members of the Druze minority, who serve in the IDF and historically have allied with Jewish political parties.
How is Israel any different from other states which privilege one ethnic or religious group over others?
In many ways, this amendment is merely a recognition of what has already been a fact for decades. Since its creation, the Israeli state has practiced segregation, creating exclusively Jewish (and in many cases, exclusively Ashkenazi) communities. This was done quietly within Israel proper, where a fig-leaf of equality masked de-facto segregation. With these legal changes, the process becomes far more overt.
In the West Bank, Israel has practiced violent apartheid, segregation and displacement of indigenous populations for over 50 years. The government has illegally exploited the resources of an occupied territory, and illegally transferred its population to the region (both are war crimes).
If it helps clarify matters, this is exactly what Putin’s Russia is doing in Crimea and the Donbas. Those actions have resulted in strict sanctions against both Russia and its ruling elite. Crimea’s population is roughly that of Gaza, most of them ethnic Russians. Israel has been doing all the things we find so offensive in Crimea for decades, against Palestinians. Yet, while we actively support sanctions against Russia, sanctions against Israel are considered unthinkable. In the US laws are being passed to make boycotts of Israeli goods illegal.
To further its project of colonization and displacement, Israel has over decades, built an entire legal and military enforcement apparatus to exploit resources for the exclusive benefit of settlers.
Over five decades in control of the West Bank, Israel has marked out hundreds of thousands of acres as public land, and it has allocated almost half of them for use.
But only 400 of those acres — 0.24 percent of the total allocated so far — have been earmarked for the use of Palestinians, according to official data obtained recently by an anti-settlement group after a freedom of information request. Palestinians make up about 88 percent of the West Bank’s population.
The group, Peace Now, said the other 99.76 percent of the land went to help Israeli settlements. — www.nytimes.com/...
99.76% of “public land” goes to the settlers. Israel often presents these as parks or ecological projects, in an effort to greenwash the theft of land. Meanwhile, 0.24% of such public land allocations have gone to the Palestinian population, who are 90% of the population in the West Bank.
Can we all stop pretending that this is anything but naked settler-colonization? It’s goal is to dispossess and impoverish the indigenous population.
Yet, for all the facts we know and have known for decades, many Americans find it difficult to see Palestinians as equal. That inability leads to verbal contortions such as this.
Proponents of the new law cite continuing demographic threats: Some in Israel’s Arab minority are demanding collective rights and already form a majority in the northern Galilee district. Others view it as a largely pointless expression of nationalism that lays bare basic insecurities in a hostile region and will serve only to fan tensions at home and beyond. — www.nytimes.com/...
Where have we heard this demagoguery about “demographic threats” before? Why, from white nationalists in our country. It is the same disastrous ethno-nationalism we see in so many places, and it’s goal everywhere is to destroy integrated societies. If you though the NYT wouldn’t sympathize with that line of thinking, you were wrong.
The NYT‘s writers and editors are concerned about “minorities” demanding rights, and equally concerned that they “already form a majority in the northern Galilee district”. How is this any different from far-right scare-mongering?
What is mind-boggling is that the NYT is the newspaper of record in a city that has been majority-minority for decades. Yet, somehow, its experienced, well compensated journalists covering Israel-Palestine can’t see Palestinians as people and parrot this far-right framing of “demographic threats” without a second thought.
As always, the young people are leading the way.
When it isn’t busy passing constitutional amendments to formalize segregation and second class citizenship, the Israeli government is busy pummeling the people in Gaza.
— @subirgrewal | City of Lost Love Songs: available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble