The Apartheid Libel: A Legal Refutation
Secretary of State John Kerry may have quickly retracted his recent off-the-record comment to the effect that without a peace agreement, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state.” But his quip nonetheless has helped push the accusation into the mainstream conversation and ensure that it will continue to be repeated by Israel’s critics.
Yet the apartheid allegation—or, as Kerry carefully put it, the potential for apartheid accusation—has no relation to reality. To understand why, one must first understand that “apartheid” is not simply an epithet, but a legal term with strong historical connotations and a specific definition. Its origins, of course, lie in the name South Africa gave to its system of de jure segregation between blacks and whites in all aspects of life. This was done to ensure the perpetuation of white minority rule. International condemnation of this regime lead to various treaties—such as the Convention Against Apartheid and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—which created and defined a “crime of apartheid.” This crime was held to mean “inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalized 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.” These “acts” included such things as “widespread” murder, enslavement, and so forth. The legal standard for labeling a government an “apartheid regime” is set quite high—indeed, so high that no country since the end of South African apartheid has ever received the distinction. As international human rights lawyers have observed, despite massive systematic oppression of racial and ethnic minorities in countries from China to Sri Lanka to Sudan, the apartheid label has never been applied to those countries by the U.S. or anyone else. Not surprisingly, given that it was defined in reaction to the particular policies of a particular regime, the crime of apartheid is not seen as a general concept, but rather a very specific type of crime. This makes its fairly sudden appearance in otherwise respectable discussions of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, and the possibility of its becoming part of the mainstream political discourse, particularly disconcerting.
The apartheid claim, as applied to Israel within the 1949 Armistice lines, is entirely absurd, with the Israeli Arab minority having full civil and political rights. The new apartheid accusation focuses on the West Bank, claiming that Israel denies Palestinians political participation on the basis of their ethnicity. (The legal definition of apartheid speaks of “racial,” rather than national or ethnic discrimination, but that is the least of the weaknesses with the apartheid accusation). That is to say, Palestinians cannot vote in Israeli elections.
The idea that Palestinians should have a right to vote in Israeli elections, however, rests on the false assumption that Israel governs them—and more specifically legislates for them. Ironically, even as the apartheid accusation was making more news than it ever had before, events transpired that proved this to be completely untrue. For example, the Palestinians left the peace process and joined 15 international organizations whose membership is open only to independent states. In addition, they began forming a national unity government between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. The Palestinians can only take such actions because, as a consequence of the Oslo Accords, they have their own government—or governments. In fact, over 95 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live under the legislative control of the Palestinian Authority. The PA is, of course, a Palestinian government. It may be sometimes unclear whether the Palestinians are ruled from Ramallah or Gaza City, and their internal politics are far from democratic, but they are certainly not ruled from Jerusalem. Looked at objectively, there is nothing sinister in Palestinians not voting for Israeli Knesset members, any more than there is in Israeli settlers not voting in Palestinian elections. Each group votes for its own government—and the Palestinian government’s decisions dictate the vast majority of what happens in their daily lives.
http://www.thetower.org/article/the-apartheid-libel-a-legal-refutation/
At the end of the article he makes an important point, the apartheid label applied to Israel is not serious criticism, it's political demagoguery.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It has nothing to do with some Israeli bigots.
Top 15 jew hating countries by percent antisemitic:
This is a very serious problem that needs to be addressed by the world in order to move forward.
You should edit your posts.
You know how hard i try.
