Full Version: Is Israel an apartheid state?
In discussion with Jewish arm of my extensive and over large family- one person talked about Isreal being an "aparthied state"-
I have not been able to find a single non-biased link!
One faction says "of course it is" and say that 93% of the land is owned by a Jewish national land bank or some such- and there are political barriers to office etc etc
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/ful...e/hand12312003/
On the other hand, there are the "of course not, we are just trying to survive!
I don't really have a dog in this fight except where it affect American policy, which I feel has been downright stupid, if not inconsistant with our other policies when it comes to dealing with folks like South Africa, Kosovo/Serbia, the Kurds, our own American Indians etc etc- to me, there are more recent ethnic claims with more valid claims to indigenous lands than Isreal- and I think the inconsistancies allow our enemies to capitalize on this obvious discrimination in Isreal's favor.
Questions:
Is Isreal a fundamentally racially discriminatory state?
Could this system be legitmately called an "aparthied state"?
I have not been able to find a single non-biased link!
One faction says "of course it is" and say that 93% of the land is owned by a Jewish national land bank or some such- and there are political barriers to office etc etc
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/ful...e/hand12312003/
On the other hand, there are the "of course not, we are just trying to survive!
I don't really have a dog in this fight except where it affect American policy, which I feel has been downright stupid, if not inconsistant with our other policies when it comes to dealing with folks like South Africa, Kosovo/Serbia, the Kurds, our own American Indians etc etc- to me, there are more recent ethnic claims with more valid claims to indigenous lands than Isreal- and I think the inconsistancies allow our enemies to capitalize on this obvious discrimination in Isreal's favor.
Questions:
Is Isreal a fundamentally racially discriminatory state?
Could this system be legitmately called an "aparthied state"?
Could this system be legitimately called an "apartheid state"?
Are Jews and Muslims officially, legally classified by their ethnic group. Recall that in South Africa, it wasn't as simple as black and white. There was Black, White, Indian, and Coloured (among others). Each group was legally forced to live in certain areas (homelands), could only hold certain jobs and otherwise repressed by the government.
Do not forget that Israel is by and large a socialist government, which is why the national bank owns so much land. Don't forget that the push into Israel started with people buying land up from the native Arabs.
Apartheid is legally a crime in international law. Crime of apartheid
In moral terms, this doesn't come close to what happened in South Africa. Geopolitically, the Palestinians do not want to be Israelis, they want to be Palestinians. Legally, it doesn't fit the definition.
Are Jews and Muslims officially, legally classified by their ethnic group. Recall that in South Africa, it wasn't as simple as black and white. There was Black, White, Indian, and Coloured (among others). Each group was legally forced to live in certain areas (homelands), could only hold certain jobs and otherwise repressed by the government.
Do not forget that Israel is by and large a socialist government, which is why the national bank owns so much land. Don't forget that the push into Israel started with people buying land up from the native Arabs.
Apartheid is legally a crime in international law. Crime of apartheid
QUOTE
The "crime of apartheid" is defined by the 2002 treaty establishing the International Criminal Court as any crime against humanity "committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." It lists such crimes as murder, enslavement, deprivation of physical liberty, forced relocation, sexual violence, and collective persecution.[1]
In moral terms, this doesn't come close to what happened in South Africa. Geopolitically, the Palestinians do not want to be Israelis, they want to be Palestinians. Legally, it doesn't fit the definition.
QUOTE(Amlord @ Oct 20 2006, 09:00 PM) 
In moral terms, this doesn't come close to what happened in South Africa. Geopolitically, the Palestinians do not want to be Israelis, they want to be Palestinians. Legally, it doesn't fit the definition.
I am forced to agree with Amlord, the issue here is far too extreme in its inception.
There are most certainly problems of egality in Israel, and there is a debate to be had about how inequal it is, and then about the "justifications" for this inequality. Even the most pro-Israeli poster would not call the nation lily-white in this regard.
However to couch the debate in the term 'apartheid' is to draw a direct similarity to the apartheid system in South Africa, and there really is no comparison. I fear the terms would need to be changed before too much of a productive debate could be had, because to literally compare the systems of the two nations is simply not realistic...
CruisingRam:
Problems with racism, yes. An apartheid state, no. The following will otherwise always remain my favorite sports piece, and for our purposes, it notes both the racism and the non-apartheid nature of the state:
http://tinyurl.com/yl4h8d
The racism ought to come as no surprise, since where in the world isn't that ugly phenomenon continuing to rear its head? Now note the caption under the photo of our man Abbas Suan. Why would the apartheid state risk the unity, is the apartheid state that stupid? But since we are speaking of apartheid and racism, simply consider why Israel must play in one of FIFA's European qualifying groups.
It's rare that a sports piece leads to discussion of some broader and more poignant human issues, but thankfully, the above-linked piece does just that [as well as paying a fitting tribute to our man Abbas Suan].
Another fine article expresses well the danger posed to the purportedly apartheid state [at least if it wants to remain purportedly apartheid] by having an Abbas Suan and a Walid Badir and an Abed Rabbah on the national team [a phenomenon otherwise unknown to apartheid South Africa]:
http://tinyurl.com/yavh32
Is Wertz anywhere to be found? If so, then please note the report that the "fascist" Ariel Sharon gave the "express order" to provide some additional funds for Sakhnin stadium. Now why would the "fascist" do that? The "fascist" claim has about as much credibility, none, as does the claim that Israel is an apartheid state.
And, CR, please note the report from that last-linked piece re the call of the game, and since the play-by-play guy was the same for both games, it was indeed Meir Epstein who made the call that left more than a few of us teary-eyed. And then Walid Badir put the header home late against France and so all was not yet lost and we could still hold thumbs here at home [and we were, as the man reported, holding hard].
Lastly, what would one of my posts in this regard be without the obligatory, or very nearly so, report from our man in Egypt, the Sandmonkey:
http://www.sandmonkey.org/2006/08/07/nazi-speak/
Leave it to our man the Sandmonkey. And that claim that one hears, to wit, that the charge of anti-Semitism "stifles" the debate or is otherwise simply illegitimate, well, as our man the Sandmonkey reports, where is the use of the same language and the same outrage over dead black babies in Africa? So what are me and the Sandmonkey to think when some speak of "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing" in relation to Israel but don't otherwise have much to say regarding dead black babies in Africa? What explains the selectivity? Is there a rational explanation? If not, aren't we then in the land of irrationality, where things like the more broad racism and the more specific anti-Semitism rule the day?
Sorry, one more. To truly answer your first question, I'd have to write a treatise, and that has not gone over so well here, so I won't. But for the short version, what does it mean to be a fundamentally racist state? And is all racism equally despicable? I mean, taking humans from Africa and reducing them to slavery is one thing, ensuring your own survival as against those who deem you unfit to live because of your race and/or faith is entirely another matter [i.e., if all Eskimos have expressed their wish to kill me, then why is my responsive dislike and hatred of all Eskimos so wrong?]? And maybe our own emotions and thought processes simply parrot scientific principle, with, in the posed hypothetical with the Eskimos, that principle being, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Problems with racism, yes. An apartheid state, no. The following will otherwise always remain my favorite sports piece, and for our purposes, it notes both the racism and the non-apartheid nature of the state:
http://tinyurl.com/yl4h8d
The racism ought to come as no surprise, since where in the world isn't that ugly phenomenon continuing to rear its head? Now note the caption under the photo of our man Abbas Suan. Why would the apartheid state risk the unity, is the apartheid state that stupid? But since we are speaking of apartheid and racism, simply consider why Israel must play in one of FIFA's European qualifying groups.
It's rare that a sports piece leads to discussion of some broader and more poignant human issues, but thankfully, the above-linked piece does just that [as well as paying a fitting tribute to our man Abbas Suan].
Another fine article expresses well the danger posed to the purportedly apartheid state [at least if it wants to remain purportedly apartheid] by having an Abbas Suan and a Walid Badir and an Abed Rabbah on the national team [a phenomenon otherwise unknown to apartheid South Africa]:
http://tinyurl.com/yavh32
Is Wertz anywhere to be found? If so, then please note the report that the "fascist" Ariel Sharon gave the "express order" to provide some additional funds for Sakhnin stadium. Now why would the "fascist" do that? The "fascist" claim has about as much credibility, none, as does the claim that Israel is an apartheid state.
And, CR, please note the report from that last-linked piece re the call of the game, and since the play-by-play guy was the same for both games, it was indeed Meir Epstein who made the call that left more than a few of us teary-eyed. And then Walid Badir put the header home late against France and so all was not yet lost and we could still hold thumbs here at home [and we were, as the man reported, holding hard].
Lastly, what would one of my posts in this regard be without the obligatory, or very nearly so, report from our man in Egypt, the Sandmonkey:
http://www.sandmonkey.org/2006/08/07/nazi-speak/
Leave it to our man the Sandmonkey. And that claim that one hears, to wit, that the charge of anti-Semitism "stifles" the debate or is otherwise simply illegitimate, well, as our man the Sandmonkey reports, where is the use of the same language and the same outrage over dead black babies in Africa? So what are me and the Sandmonkey to think when some speak of "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing" in relation to Israel but don't otherwise have much to say regarding dead black babies in Africa? What explains the selectivity? Is there a rational explanation? If not, aren't we then in the land of irrationality, where things like the more broad racism and the more specific anti-Semitism rule the day?
Sorry, one more. To truly answer your first question, I'd have to write a treatise, and that has not gone over so well here, so I won't. But for the short version, what does it mean to be a fundamentally racist state? And is all racism equally despicable? I mean, taking humans from Africa and reducing them to slavery is one thing, ensuring your own survival as against those who deem you unfit to live because of your race and/or faith is entirely another matter [i.e., if all Eskimos have expressed their wish to kill me, then why is my responsive dislike and hatred of all Eskimos so wrong?]? And maybe our own emotions and thought processes simply parrot scientific principle, with, in the posed hypothetical with the Eskimos, that principle being, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Well, in America for the most part it seems racial issues never get to terribly bad, as in for any particular racial group. Our past being what it was, our present seems to be one that does show people of difference can come to live together in some relative peace. Of course it only takes a few bad apples to pot mark such with difficulty but not much anything in life is easy, heck even breathing has its negatives in all reality, like free radicals.
In Israel of course the issue to me will be different. You have issues that have never been allowed to heal, in my opinion by either side. You have to remember that Jews were coming from a genocide to this, I doubt many had other concerns truly past never having that occur again, and of course for whatever you want to say a group of people I guess does have a right to be conservative, though at times conservative groups seem to hate each other for being such, no one ever said we live in utopia. For the Palestinians, it was an abrupt change that they just had to accept, and of course it did not work out peacefully, so all these years later we still basically in my opinion have the reaction of that day. Sure reaction and action does exist, but in human form its hard to digest what all that means truly in every instance.
I am sure there are people are both sides of that fence that would love nothing more then total death for the other group. Israel peace rallies at times can get violent on an internal level, the kids grow up there exposed to this, and on the Palestinian side people of that group that do tend to live in peace hardly matter when compared to those that don’t.
I personally do not see any light in that tunnel at all if you will, I don’t really know where to go on the issue either, both sides have committed atrocities against each other, just have to do it again. So I pretty much think that the issue is a stalemate really, a brutal ugly one, but its not the only one. To label it an apartheid probably falls short of the reality that spawns day to day activity of peoples in that region. So no, I cant really accept it as an honest depiction of life over there, or the reality of such, i will say for whomever planned the whole venture probably should have put some more thought into it, for I don’t really think it helped end any problems at all.
In Israel of course the issue to me will be different. You have issues that have never been allowed to heal, in my opinion by either side. You have to remember that Jews were coming from a genocide to this, I doubt many had other concerns truly past never having that occur again, and of course for whatever you want to say a group of people I guess does have a right to be conservative, though at times conservative groups seem to hate each other for being such, no one ever said we live in utopia. For the Palestinians, it was an abrupt change that they just had to accept, and of course it did not work out peacefully, so all these years later we still basically in my opinion have the reaction of that day. Sure reaction and action does exist, but in human form its hard to digest what all that means truly in every instance.
I am sure there are people are both sides of that fence that would love nothing more then total death for the other group. Israel peace rallies at times can get violent on an internal level, the kids grow up there exposed to this, and on the Palestinian side people of that group that do tend to live in peace hardly matter when compared to those that don’t.
I personally do not see any light in that tunnel at all if you will, I don’t really know where to go on the issue either, both sides have committed atrocities against each other, just have to do it again. So I pretty much think that the issue is a stalemate really, a brutal ugly one, but its not the only one. To label it an apartheid probably falls short of the reality that spawns day to day activity of peoples in that region. So no, I cant really accept it as an honest depiction of life over there, or the reality of such, i will say for whomever planned the whole venture probably should have put some more thought into it, for I don’t really think it helped end any problems at all.
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