Tag Archives palestine

Why and how the City of Amsterdam should be opposing Israel’s apartheid regime

Why and how the City of Amsterdam should be opposing Israel’s apartheid regime

Numerous Palestinian, Israeli, international and UN organizations as well as scholars have called Israel an apartheid and settler-colonial regime. The City of Amsterdam has historically acted against South Africa’s apartheid ...

Tearing down the walls that colonise Palestine, a thousand bricks at a time

Tearing down the walls that colonise Palestine, a thousand bricks at a time

Palestinians are showing enormous bravery during this moment of horror. The walls of intimidation and despair that Israel has erected in the minds of Palestinians to prevent resistance are being ...

What can we do as Palestine burns?

It is May 2021. Once again, Palestine is burning. Again, the US- and EU-funded Israeli military machine is in full throttle and again, the US – now led by Joe Biden – persistently blocks a UN Security Council Resolution, even to call for a cessation of violence. I am again writing, the latest of dozens of articles, feeling hopeless as people are killed and most of the world remains silent. I ask myself, again … what can I do?

Picasso’s painting of Guernica 1(937) with Palestine colours

In the weeks leading up to the violence that is now shaking Palestine, there has been “fear and fury” in Jerusalem. The pro-settler group Nahalat Shimon has been using lawfare to try and evict Palestinians from their homes in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah (at the time of writing, the case was on appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court). And the violence has spread across the country. Jewish-Israeli mobs have roamed the streets of the “multicultural” towns of Acre, Haifa and Lod, searching for those who are Palestinian – or who look “Arab” – dragging them from their cars and homes, and in one case beating an Arab man on live television. A smaller, but totally unacceptable number of Jewish civilians have also been killed in the mob violence.

Other mobs of Jewish-Israelis roamed through streets, chanting “death to Arabs” and smashing up storefront windows of Palestinian-owned shops in scenes that the organisation Jewish Voices for Peace described as reminiscent of the Nazi-led Kristallnacht.

Also in May, a massive crowd of Jewish-Israelis celebrated in the square outside the Western Wall, celebrating Jerusalem Day, gazing above the square as Palestinians fled a violent police raid of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, one of the holiest places in Islam, during Eid-al-Fitr.

Netanyahu has firmly declared that he would “bring back sovereignty to Israel’s cities with an iron fist, if necessary”. The latest round of violence is no doubt a welcome distraction for the Israeli strongman who has been on trial in Israel for corruption and continually unable to form a government, leading to the country’s fourth election in two years.

And as if that were not horrifying enough, Gaza, too, is in flames – again. The territory is already struggling with a humanitarian crisis in the midst of a 15-year-long Israel siege of the territory. Enraged by the violence in Jerusalem at one of Islam’s holiest places, Hamas militants began launching mostly homemade rockets into sparsely populated Israeli towns. While the majority of the bombs were destroyed by sophisticated missile defence systems provided by the US government, some have managed to make it through. As of 13 May this year, a total of seven people – six Israelis and an Indian national – had reportedly been killed, including an Israeli child. There have been reports of Israelis fleeing with their terrified children to bomb shelters and safe rooms.

The Israeli military – the most technologically advanced on Earth – responded with its usual, brutally terrifying force, which Netanyahu vowed to continue. Once again, Israel’s massively well-armed military has targeted densely-populated civilian areas. By 13 May, the numbers of dead Palestinians was reported to be 113, the large majority of whom were civilians. According to the United Nations relief agency OCHA, these numbers include 14 Palestinian children.

So how did this all start?

To understand how this latest bout of violence started, one needs to face what facilitates these kinds of eruptions of violence, time and again. There are four points we need to understand, two of which squarely point to Israel, and two that point to the rest of the world.

First, Israel is a settler-colonial regime and the majority of Palestinians living in Gaza are refugees and their descendants. Some regard this regime as having started in 1967 when Israel occupied the territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem; others see this as having begun in 1948 when Israel unilaterally declared its independence after ethnically cleansing the territory of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and refusing them to return to their homes and livelihoods. One could go back even further than that, and certainly to the end of the first World War, when Ottoman Rule ended and Britain was designated to administer Palestine and prepare the territory for independence. This never happened. Regardless of when one considers this regime to have started, the main point is that it continues and expands until this day.

Second, Israel is an apartheid regime, both in the Palestinian territories that it continues to belligerently occupy and administer in a grossly unequal way that Al Haq, B’tselem, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations in a difficult-to-find report all describe as a situation of apartheid. Apartheid also exists in Israel itself, as affirmed in 2018 with a racist Nation-State Law that affirmed Israel as a homeland for Jews and Hebrew as the only official language (Arabic used to be included); it is described as a system of exclusionary constitutionalism.

Third, Israel is persistently supported, particularly by the European Union and the United States. Despite an International Criminal Court investigation of reported war crimes and crimes against humanity now taking place, US and EU support remains unwavering, including USD 3.8 billion of military aid that the US provides every year, which is more than its entire combined aid budget for every other country in the world.

Finally, there is widespread ignorance, with citizens and politicians confused by media reporting that – in its well-intended, but misguided efforts at “balance” – ends up favouring an Israeli perspective.

So, what can we do?

Hopelessness tends to lead to inaction. It is the human condition to turn a blind eye when the situation is just too awful, confusing, or far away. However, as Angela Davis powerfully reminded us in a statement posted on 17 May, people in the United States did not remain silent when George Floyd was killed from a police officer putting his knee in Floyd’s neck. And people should not remain silent now as Palestinians – and Israelis – have their lives cut short by yet another wave of violence. Davis condemned not only the violence in Israel and Palestine, but condemned the Biden-Harris administration for their complicity in it.

Clearly, the violence should stop immediately, and there should be justice, but what can those of us in The Hague, New York, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Karachi or Kuala Lumpur do?

First of all, recognise that this is not an even-sided conflict. It is massively asymmetrical.  Unlike Israelis, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have no bomb shelters or sophisticated missile defence systems. They have no drones or fighter aircraft. In Gaza especially, which has been described as an open-air prison, people not only have nowhere to go; they rarely even have electricity, potable water or food nowadays due to the Israeli siege of Gaza that has been going on, and deepening, since 2016.

Second:  voice your anger and concern to family, friends, neighbours, and elected representatives. Let Palestinians tell their own story. Share the music of Shai Zaqtan of Nai Barghouti and others. Post your outrage on social media and make it visible in street protests. As the corona lockdown eases in many parts of the world, speak to others, including at community centres and in places of worship.

Finally, do what you can in your individual and professional capacity to support the Palestinian call for #BDS = Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.

Update: Since the article was initially drafted, the United Nations and Save the Children reported that “58 children[i] in Gaza and two children in southern Israel have been killed in the last week. More than a thousand people in Gaza, including 366 children, have also been injured.” Source, OCHA. At the time of the “ceasefire” on 20 May 2021, this figure was revised to “at least 232 Palestinians, including 65 children, who have been killed in the Israeli bombardment. On the Israeli side, 12 people, including two children have been killed.”

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Jeff Handmaker

Jeff Handmaker is a senior researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and focuses on legal mobilisation.

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Legal mobilization to end impunity for international crimes by Jeff Handmaker

Legal mobilization to end impunity for international crimes by Jeff Handmaker

In 2014, on the 20th of July, the Israeli military targeted and bombed a home in a refugee camp in Gaza, killing several family members of Saad Ziada, including his ...

Confronting Apartheid Through Critical Discussion by Ana María Arbeláez Trujillo and Jeff Handmaker

Confronting Apartheid Through Critical Discussion by Ana María Arbeláez Trujillo and Jeff Handmaker

The history of apartheid in South Africa is generally well-known. Yet, apartheid is not exclusive to that country. According to international law, and on various social grounds, Israel too may ...

Distorted anti-Semitism allegations in UK’s Labour Party are a cover for Israeli apartheid by Jeff Handmaker

On 18 February 2019, Luciana Berger and six other British Members of Parliament (MPs) left the UK Labour Party. The most prominent reason provided by the departing MPs, led by Berger, is that the Party had become ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’, due mostly – or so it would appear – to Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s outspoken criticisms of the Israeli government and military. As discussed in this blogpost, which draws on a longer article published on Mondoweiss, these allegations are both dangerous distortions of anti-Semitism and serve as a shameful cover for Israel’s regime of apartheid.


In the extensive reporting that followed the departure of the Labour MPs, a Spectator columnist alleged that this was the beginning of the end for Labour, while the Guardian claimed that the party faced an anti-Semitism crisis. It was hardly mentioned in any of this reporting that the seven Labour Party members who decided to leave were all closely tied with Labour Friends of Israel, an avowedly pro-Israel organisation. Berger is its former director.

A report by the Media Reform Coalition identified ‘myriad inaccuracies and distortions’ in the reporting of anti-Semitism claims against the Labour Party, which prompted a public statement by prominent journalists and scholars. Fomenting a strategy of disinformation is consistent with claims made by Jonathan Cook, a highly respected author and long-time journalist, who has established that the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs has long been actively seeking to marginalise its critics through a range of measures.

But where did the anti-Semitism claim come from?

The IHRA Definition

The contemporary ‘debate’ over anti-Semitism within the Labour Party relates to August 2018, when pro-Israel members of the party proposed the incorporation of a highly controversial definition of anti-Semitism. Called the “Working Definition of Antisemitism” and drafted in 2016 by a group called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the IHRA definition contains vague and dangerously far-reaching conflations of criticisms of Israel and references to the holocaust.

The lobby to incorporate the IHRA definition was fierce and unrelenting, largely led by Berger and others affiliated with Labour Friends of Israel. At the time of the August 2018 debate, there were even efforts to smear Hajo Meyer, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz who had once spoken at a Labour Party rally where he made comparisons between the Nazi regime and his observations of Israeli policies. Meyer, an outspoken retired theoretical physicist, recorded his experiences in a moving memoir The End of Judaism: An Ethical Tradition Betrayed, published in 2012.

Steven Garside, a member of the UK Labour Party and Palestine Solidarity Campaign who strongly opposed the IHRA definition, maintained that erroneous allegations of anti-Semitism were in fact related to Corbyn’s harsh criticisms of the Israeli government and military. Ash Sarkar of the Sandberg Instituut condemned the move as a threat to free expression. Prominent human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson warned that the definition would suppress legitimate criticism of Israel while failing to cover genuine cases of anti-Semitism.

But despite these criticisms and warnings, Labour ultimately decided to incorporate the definition in full.

Since then, emboldened by the wide-ranging IHRA definition, groups such as Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Chronicle, with very little substantiation, have sought to equate criticism of Israel as “Jew hate”.

For liberal supporters of Israel, adopting the IHRA definition has been a crucial strategy. However, the true aim of such vacuous, yet highly damaging allegations is to avoid a critical dialogue on Israel’s policies of apartheid against Palestinians. Unlike South Africa apartheid, which from the 1960s became increasingly reported, understood and eventually condemned, Israeli apartheid has been shamefully underreported and is far less understood.

So what does Israeli apartheid look like?

The many forms of apartheid in Israel

Israeli apartheid takes many forms, whether this be the overt racism enshrined in Israel’s 2018 “Nation-State law” that discontinued Arabic as an official language, which is now being challenged in Court, or Israel’s continued blockade and bombing of Gaza (since 2005) that is currently the subject of a preliminary examination by the International Criminal Court.

Apartheid also takes the form of literally hundreds of insidious Israeli military orders, including Order 101 that makes it impossible for Palestinians to legally protest. Israeli regulations make it virtually impossible for Palestinians to build a home. This is due to the fact that Israel’s land and zoning regulations are, according to Israel’s Basic Law, oriented around “preserving” the land for Israel’s Jewish inhabitants.

But the most insidious manifestations of Israeli apartheid are the decades-long, everyday experiences of Palestinians. Farmers have to stand in long lines to reach their sheep in the agricultural village of Qalandia (that is surrounded by a high, concrete wall). School children in Hebron cannot walk to school without being stopped daily by soldiers at a military checkpoint to check the contents of their schoolbags. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has heard numerous cases of official abuse against Palestinian women, including a seven-month pregnant woman assaulted at a checkpoint.

Given these examples, and much more, of Israel’s apartheid policies, it is exasperating that there is such a resistance to criticise Israel. And yet, this is exactly what happens. Liberal groups such as Labour Friends of Israel in the UK, Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) in the Netherlands and others repeatedly fuel the public’s outrage on anti-Semitism through disingenuous use of the IHRA definition, yet simultaneously maintain a silence that Israel’s policies amount to apartheid, not unlike the approach of like-minded liberal groups in Israel.

Apartheid cannot compete with a global social justice movement

Just as was ultimately the case in South Africa, neither Israel’s government, nor its most adamant, liberal supporters, can compete with a global social justice movement committed to ending Israel’s regime of apartheid. Rooted in equal rights claims, this movement is bolstered by growing judicial attention to Israel’s commission of war crimes and a highly successful, Palestinian-led global campaign of boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS).

The success of the BDS movement is acknowledge to have transformed the debate on Israel-Palestine. Indeed, as prominent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has put it, BDS has been a true success story for the movement, succeeding to undermine Israel’s strongly cultivated image as a liberal democracy.

The conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that just like those who turned a blind eye for decades to apartheid in South Africa, the failure of Luciana Berger, Labour Friends of Israel, CIDI, and others to confront Israeli apartheid will place them all on the wrong side of history.


Image Credit: https://www.stopthewall.org/apartheid-wrong


JeffHandmakerISS
About the author:

Jeff Handmaker is a senior researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and focuses on legal mobilisation.

He is a regular author for Bliss. Read all his posts here. 

 

 

Resistance and persecution: fighting the politics of control by Salena Tramel

Resistance and persecution: fighting the politics of control by Salena Tramel

Social justice movements from around the world are pushing back against a shift toward nationalism, extraction and environmental destruction. Those who resist increasingly do so at risk of great personal ...