Monessa Shapiro's article "ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK: a FESTIVAL OF IGNORANCE" on the Politics Web cannot be allowed to go unanswered.
While It is true that the Arab minority in Israel is enfranchised, this is small payment for the discrimination they have to put up with on a daily basis.
The occupiers in historic Palestine use "security" as a justification to apply restrictive and discriminatory measures against the Arab minority, who have never threatened the "security" of the state. The approach of the authorities is never to be guided by the subversion which the Arab minority has not engaged in but by what they might have done had they been given the chance.
Legislation governing the Arabs include:
1. The Military Emergency Regulation of 1948:
The movements into, out of and within security zones is regulated by the military. Arabs residing legally could be banished and their properties confiscated. The final authority in these zones is the military. The Arabs have no recourse to a Civil Court of Appeal.
2. The land Acquisition Law:
This law legalised the seizures of Arab lands as well as future acquisitions. A military governor could declare an Arab area a prohibited zone. Effectively debarring Arabs from tending their farm lands. The land is then liable to confiscation and the property of the Arabs automatically becomes the property of the state.
3. The Admissions Committees Law (2011)
Committees decide who can and cannot live in 700 different towns and villages.
4. Economic Efficiency Law:
"National Priorities Areas" (NPA'S). The State classifies towns and villages as NPA's. Large state resources are allocated to these designated areas.
5. The Citizenship Law (1952) as Amended.
Israeli citizens applying for first ID documents must declare loyalty to Israel "as a Jewish, Zionist and Democratic State".
The above list is merely the tip of the iceberg. Due to obvious constraints it is not possible to list all the laws. Readers are reminded that the occupiers of historic Palestine are guilty of violating the basic principles of minority rights as laid down in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Declaration includes amongst others:
1. No person shall be subjected to arbitrary exile.
2. Guarantees equal and non-discriminatory rights to all persons.
3. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own and to return to his country.
James Warburg, former banker and writer of international affairs, once commented on the occupiers of Palestine's treatment of non-Jews: "Nothing could be more tragic than to witness the creation of a Jewish state in which the non-Jewish minorities are treated as second-class citizens, in which neither a Jew's Christian wife nor their children can be buried in the same cemetery as their father".
It is one thing to create a refuge for the persecuted and oppressed. It is quite another thing to establish a new chauvinistic and narrow-minded nationalism and a state based upon medieval theocratic and ethnocratic bigotry.
Uri Davis, the Jewish author , in his book "Apartheid Israel" says:
"Racism is not Apartheid and Apartheid is not racism. Apartheid is a political system where racism is regulated in law through Acts of parliament. Racism is prevalent in all states, including liberal democracies. In liberal democratic states, those victimised by racism have legal recourse, through the protection of the constitution. In an Apartheid state, on the other hand, the state enforces racism through the legal system".
Any expressions of humanitarian concerns are criminalised and citizens of the state are forced to make racist choices. Apartheid in the occupied territory, including Israel, encompasses every facet of living for all its citizens.
Mathias Chang, in his book "Future Fast Forward" p.160 (3rd edition) says: "Zionism is therefore a racist, fascist, political ideology, hiding beneath the skirts of Judaism".
Let it be known there are no new "experts" crawling out of the "woodwork" as Shapiro would like us to believe. Solly Mapaila is in good company. He is spot on when he says: "The people of Palestine are stateless, they suffer the worst of racist oppression and colonialism of a special type, capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination, all presided upon by Israel, which by the way enjoys automatic and active support from the United States of America, its subordinate allies and puppet regimes. No human being deserves the devastation of life and the atrocities experienced by the Palestinian people who are denied a fundamental right to have a viable state in peaceful co-existence with the other communities of states".
Ibrahim Vawda
Media Review Network
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