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Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein recently spoke at the UN and admitted that
"Israel today was an apartheid State with four different Palestinian
groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians,
each of which had a different status...even if the wall followed strictly the
line of the pre-1967 border, it would still not be justified. The two peoples
needed cooperation rather than walls because they must be neighbors." [1]
"An apartheid society is much more than just a 'settler colony'. It
involves specific forms of oppression that actively strip the original
inhabitants of any rights at all, whereas civilian members of the invader caste
are given all kinds of sumptuous privileges." [2]
On May 14, 1948, The Declaration of the establishment of Israel affirmed that,
"The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as
envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social
and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will
guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the
Charter of the United Nations."
However, reality intrudes, for "The truth which is known to all; through
its army, the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the
territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town
into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp."- Israeli Minister of
Education, Shulamit Aloni quoted in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot
Acharonot on December 20, 2006.
How could a state founded on "equality of social and political rights to
all its inhabitants" come to be such a state of hypocrisy?
A Little History:
July 5, 1950: Israel enacted the
Law of Return by which Jews anywhere in the world, have a "right" to
immigrate to Israel on the grounds that they are returning to their own state,
even if they have never been there before. [3]
July 14, 1952: The enactment of
the Citizenship/Jewish Nationality Law, results in Israel becoming the only
state in the world to grant a particular national-religious group--the Jews--the
right to settle in it and gain automatic citizenship. In 1953, South Africa's
Prime Minister Daniel Malan becomes the first foreign head of government to
visit Israel and returns home with the message that Israel can be a source of
inspiration for white South Africans. [IBID]
In 1962, South African Prime
Minister Verwoerd declares that Jews "took Israel from the Arabs after the
Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them, Israel,
like South Africa, is an apartheid state." [IBID]
August 1, 1967: Israel enacted
the Agricultural Settlement Law, which bans Israeli citizens of non-Jewish
nationality- Palestinian Arabs- from working on Jewish National Fund lands,
well over 80% of the land in Israel. Knesset member Uri Avnery stated:
"This law is going to expel Arab cultivators from the land that was
formerly theirs and was handed over to the Jews." [IBID]
April 4, 1969: General Moshe
Dayan is quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz telling students at Israel's
Technion Institute that "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab
villages. You don't even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't
blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books
not exist, the Arab villages are not there either" There is not one single
place built in this country that did not have a former Arab
population."[IBID]
April 28, 1971: C. L.
Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times, quoted South African Prime Minister
John Vorster as saying that Israel is faced with an apartheid problem, namely
how to handle its Arab inhabitants. Sulzberger wrote: "Both South Africa
and Israel are in a sense intruder states. They were built by pioneers
originating abroad and settling in partially inhabited areas." [IBID]
September 13, 1978: In
Washington, D.C., The Camp David Accords are signed by Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and witnessed by President
Jimmy Carter. The Accords reaffirm U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which prohibit
acquisition of land by force, call for Israel's withdrawal of military and
civilian forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and prescribe 'full autonomy' for
the inhabitants of the territories. Begin orally promises Carter to freeze all
settlement activity during the subsequent peace talks. Once back in Israel,
however, the Israeli prime minister continues to confiscate, settle, and
fortify the occupied territories. [IBID]
