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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Ignoring zionists war crimes |
Current rating: 0 |
by Michael Jansen
(No verified email address) |
12 Jul 2002
Modified: 08:41:33 AM |
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No One should be surprised by the decision taken last weekend by the Israeli government in support of a bill which bars Palestinian citizens of Israel from buying houses in Jewish communities and bans them from acquiring parcels of state-owned land. This practice has existed since the creation of the state. |
 No One should be surprised by the decision taken last weekend by the Israeli government in support of a bill which bars Palestinian citizens of Israel from buying houses in Jewish communities and bans them from acquiring parcels of state-owned land. This practice has existed since the creation of the state. |
Zionist ideology, which conflicts with Israel's laws and with the principles of democracy, holds that once land becomes “Jewish”, it is inalienably “Jewish”. The author of the bill, National Religious Party Knesset member Rabbi Haim Druckman, called the cabinet decision a “victory for Zionism”. And Education Minister Limor Livnat, who sponsored the resolution in the cabinet, said that the measure “does not stem at all from discrimination, but from the main tenet of Zionism — the return of the Jewish people to its land”.
Denying that the measure is undemocratic, she said that each communal grouping in Israel should be allowed to live on its own, in other words, in segregated communities.
Less than 10 per cent of the land in Israel is privately owned. Ninety-three per cent falls under the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) which either appropriated state lands or expropriated Palestinian property. Israel was obliged to take this course because the Jewish community owned only a small percentage of the land in the 78 per cent of Palestine captured in 1948. Although the ILA is bound, by law, to allocate this land without discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or religion, municipalities housing Palestinian citizens of Israel, 18 per cent of the population, have jurisdiction over only 2.5 per cent of the land.
Shulamit Aloni, founder of the Citizens Rights Movement in Israel which became the leftist Meretz Party, summed up the situation by saying that Israel had become a segregationist state by seizing Arab land, designating it as “state land” and ruling that it should be exploited solely by Jews. This task was accomplished largely by the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund, which are given state land by the ILA for the development of exclusively Jewish communities. While these Zionist organisations have been building small Jewish communities in areas thinly settled by Jews, the government has been squeezing out the “Arabs”.
In the Negev, the government has been demolishing “illegal” communities built by bedouins who are not granted permission to construct houses, a discriminatory practice widely used by the Israeli occupation authorities in the West Bank. Similar Jewish communities are being planted in the Galilee, where the expansion of Palestinian municipalities is strictly circumscribed. “Illegal” Arab constructions are bulldozed, illegal Jewish structures remain in place.
While the declared purpose of the proposed legislation is to prevent Palestinian citizens from moving into Jewish communities, the adoption of the bill by the Knesset has far greater import for Israel and its inhabitants. It could be used on the ground, in the medium- to long-term, to deprive all of Israel's Palestinian citizens of all their already heavily infringed land rights.
It is significant that Labour Party ministers absented themselves from the cabinet session at the time the vote was taken. Labour leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer claimed that right-wing ministers waited until the Labourites had departed before calling for a vote. But this was no excuse: Labour's ministers had been informed ahead of time that the measure was on the agenda.
Only one Labour member, Ephraim Sneh, voted against. The attitude of Labour towards this racist proposal demonstrates that the party has shifted significantly to the right of the Israeli political spectrum and that it no longer cares about the reaction of Arab constituents. One Israeli commentator made the point that since the human rights demonstrations of October 2000, Palestinian citizens of Israel have come to be regarded as “the enemy” by many Israelis.
Israeli editorialists and commentators have expressed concern that this measure will revive the formulation “Zionism is racism”, and about accusations that Israel is an apartheid state modelled on South Africa before its racist legislation was repealed. In truth, Zionism is, indeed, racism and Israel has always been an apartheid state. While many Israeli analysts recognise these harsh facts, Western commentators shut them out. It is interesting to note that many quality papers in the US and Europe chose to bury or ignore the Israeli cabinet decision: clearly their proprietors and editors do not wish to revive the “Zionism is racism” accusation.
This is a particularly sensitive issue because, in 1975, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. It took Israel and its friends and allies six years to get that resolution rescinded. Meanwhile, on the ground in Israel “proper” and in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel continues to expropriate Palestinian land, discriminate against its Palestinian citizens, build Jewish settlements, confine Palestinians to shrinking islets of territory and pass laws for Palestinian inhabitants of these “bantustans”. Aloni summed up the situation in a few words: “By right of might, we are acting as a racist nation.”
On the one hand, Israel's deeply entrenched racism has been exacerbated by the physical presence of the occupation interacting with the growing political power and influence of ultra-Orthodox religious parties and ultra-nationalist secular formations. Occupation, involving the rule of one people over another, always produces a feeling of racial superiority in the mind of the occupier. He is on top, so he sees himself as a higher being than the occupied. Ultimately the occupier comes to believe he has the right to dominate the other. This attitude is rampant in Israel today.
Consequently, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers abuse, assault and shoot Palestinians with impunity. Recently, five innocent civilians, including three children, were killed by Israeli troops in Jenin because the Palestinians mistakenly rushed into the streets believing the curfew had been lifted. This week, a woman and her two-year-old child driving in a car in Gaza were murdered because Israeli troops thought the “profile” the Palestinians presented was threatening. Although the Israeli army says it investigates such incidents, offending soldiers are never brought to book.
Since March, Israel has besieged, blockaded and invaded Palestinian towns and cities, imposed punitive curfews on hundreds of thousands and arrested thousands of Palestinians. The army's actions are supported by a large majority of Israelis who have no feelings for the Palestinians and no comprehension of their sufferings. Most Israelis simply do not want to know, argues Amira Hass, the Haaretz correspondent most conversant with the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.
Israel's right-wing government justifies bad behaviour and cruel abuses by claiming the country is waging a “war against terror”. This endeavour is in fact a campaign to crush Palestinian resistance to the racist occupation and the Israeli land grab. Meanwhile, liberal commentators and politicians in the Western world shut their eyes to unpleasant sights, close their ears to the cries of the victims of Israel's racist policies and practices, and purse their lips to prevent the emergence of comments critical of Israel.
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a quick note |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
12 Jul 2002
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"It is significant that Labour Party ministers absented themselves from the cabinet session at the time the vote was taken. Labour leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer claimed that right-wing ministers waited until the Labourites had departed before calling for a vote. But this was no excuse: Labour's ministers had been informed ahead of time that the measure was on the agenda."
Maybe that's why they left? As a minority on Sharon's cabinet, they couldn't have blocked it. But the Labor Party has made their stance known; they have officially said that they will oppose the bill on its next (second of three) reading, the Attorney General has come out against it, and the bill is not likely to pass, for the obvious reason: that it fundamentally racist.
Racial discrimination in land ownership in Israel is illegal, as affirmed by a Supreme Court ruling in 2000; this bill is a fundamentally racist attempt to nullify that court ruling, and its mere existence says all there is to say about the Sharon administration. However, in the end saner heads will prevail.
Incidentally, could the author please cite which authoritative codification of Zionist ideology he's referring to in his first paragraph, that land which becomes "Jewish" must always remain "Jewish"? His claim is frankly and obviously wrong, unless he's going to claim that Menachem Begin wasn't a Zionist. Using folks like the NRP to define what Zionism is, is like using Bob Jones University to define Christianity.
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