Condemning Israel's Racist Occupation

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Israel has become the symbol of racist crimes. "We are no longer the embodiment of progress, as we were trumpeted as being for a long time, but the exact opposite."

A new UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) report criticizes Israel harshly for racially discriminating against Palestinians and Arab citizens in virtually all aspects of their lives.

On March 9, its published findings called superiority based on racial differentiation illegal, scientifically wrong, morally reprehensible, socially unjust and dangerous.

Israeli law includes no prohibition against discrimination. CERD listed numerous abuses, including:

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• segregated Israeli communities;

• separate educational, health, and other systems;

• different local government practices for Jewish and Arab communities;

• discrimination against Ethiopian Jews;

• denying Bedouin Arab citizens access to their land and property;

• discriminatory Israeli laws, including denying family reunifications;

• home demolitions, forced displacements, and land seizures; and

• much more, denying Israeli Arabs and Palestinians equal rights as Jews.

CERD refutes Israel's claim that the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination doesn't apply to Gaza, the West Bank, and Golan. 

Under military occupation, they're governed by an entirely different legal system than Israel. Institutionalized racism defines it. Justice is systematically denied. The committee referred to "the hermetic character of this segregation."

While settlements expand on stolen Palestinian land, Palestinians are denied basic rights, especially besieged Gazans. It urged immediately ending this illegal blockade. It condemned Israel's practice of arresting, brutalizing and imprisoning children. 

It denounced its administrative detention practice without charge, and indefinitely extending it repeatedly for months or years.

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