an engraved invitation with his overt racist agenda and actions.

No amount of hasbarist gymnastics can undo the damage caused by Bibi the Bigot.


BDS.

more young American Jews for his decrepit policies..the apartheid label is going to
stick in the mindset of Americans..more than ever before.

“The rule of the right is in danger,” Netanyahu says in a video posted to Facebook just hours before polls closed. “Arab voters are coming in droves to the ballot boxes. Left-wing NGOs bring them in buses.”

I’m not buying settlement produce because I’m against apartheid. However, I do buy some Israeli stuff; Pickles, cous cous, Bamba etc. The problem for me it’s that I never thought that Israel would ever possibly become an apartheid state.

Now with Netanyahu winning the election, he can continue destroying Israel’s democratic foundations practically unopposed, and it feels as it’s just a matter of time before Israel actually becomes an apartheid state.

I really don’t want to stop buying Israeli goods, but if this continues I’ll have to.

The only thing that is different is that all pretense that it is not has been thrown out the window.

While non-jewish citizens can’t actually hold full citizenship (under the law of Return), they still have substantial rights. These rights are just not the same as for those who have the full citizenship. According to Freedom House, Israel is still a democracy, just not a very good one, and they ought to know.

It’s when these minmum democratic rights are eroded, that Israel will become an apartheid state. I have no doubt that Netanyahu will be able to push Israel over the apartheid precipice, whether it’s by loyalty laws, building in the Negev, abolishing the independency of the High Court, exarcerbating the housing crisis for Israeli arabs, or cementing the legal second class status of non-jewish citizens in some other way.

The push towards apartheid has been going on for some time, actually exactly as long as Netanyahu has been PM, and I’m beginning to fear that it’s unreversible, regardless if Netanyahu is at the rudder or not. I feel that Israel is just one more crazy law away from apartheid.

For me, BDS of Israel means giving up on Israel as a democracy, and I won’t do that just yet.

Israel cannot be an "ethnic" democracy. By nature, democracy is administered "By the People, For the People and OF the People."

When a political system is administered to the ethnic majority...whether born there or not, at the expense of the few, then it ceases to be a democracy and becomes a tribe.

These rights have been eroded, through law, for a long time, and the push for apartheid has been going on longer than Nutty PM has been in power. He was just dumb enough or petrified of losing enough that he went full montey and told the world what it already knew.

For me, BDS of Israel means bringing it back from certain disaster: making it a whole democracy for all while giving the Palestinians the homeland that they deserve.


So enough of this bullshit.

You are referring to the natural rights of people living in a full or real democracy. Israel is not a real democracy in that sense, it's more on a level equal to India or Mexico, two countries that are lacking somewhat in providing democratic rights to their people, not for lack of desire to do so, but rather because they haven't gotten there yet. Unlike India or Mexico however, Israel has chosen to curb its democratic progress because full civil rights are not consistent with Zionism.

Israel has for long been the only democracy in the middle east, admittedly a pretty shitty one, but still a democracy. I don't think the apartheid analogy is a fitting one as long as the non-Jewish citizens still have basic rights. Some good old discrimination doesn't apartheid make, that happens everywhere and isn't called apartheid. I strongly believe that there is a somewhat invisible lowest threshold where discrimination in a democracy becomes apartheid. I also believe that Israel isn't there yet, the discrimination of its non-Jewish citizens isn't bad enough. Yet.

In the future, the question whether Israel is an apartheid state or not, and if then BDS is the right thing to do will probably be less ambiguous.

Non-Jewish citizens of Israel still have the same level democratic rights as that of a developing nation, it’s just that compared to Israeli citizens with full rights (by right of the law of Return), these rights are less. Of course, for us who come from fully developed democracies this amounts to discrimination, but Israel and it’s supporters don’t see it that way.

But is it really apartheid? I think not. Apartheid for me is what’s going on in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and to a lesser extent, West Jerusalem.

In essence, if the ethnic group discriminated against still has basic democratic rights over the full range (not only suffrage), I say that's not apartheid; it's just discrimination. If these basic rights are impaired or even removed, then it's apartheid and nothing else.

Apartheid is simply a word that is too strong when describing what Israel does to its non-Jewish citizens, at least that's what I think. What's going on in the West Bank and Jerusalem isn't really part of Israel proper (apart from Western Jerusalem); there are different jurisdictions and different legal subjects, the circumstances are not equal, and it doesn't matter that Israel is the entity fully morally and legally responsible for it.

So, nope. No apartheid in Israel.

but a link in a current thread brought me here and I feel compelled to respond.

Whereas most of the world is quite distressed by these results, it is a great boon for them.

Most folks here (and progressives in general) were hoping that Likud would lose. Not so among the BDS crowd. This is exactly what they wanted.

One can tell the level of desperation in hasbara 101 when they start telling the world what BDS wants.

But the thing that hasbara 101 fears is the simplest of questions from not BDS but the world.

"Why has Israel become an open apartheid state?"

"Why does Binyamin Netanyahu seemingly use the race card against a segment of his population?"

"Why does Binyamin Netanyahu blatantly expand settlements then say there will never be a Palestinian state?"

"Why did a vast amount of the Israeli electorate vote for right wing and bigoted politicians?"

And...

"Why are the worst hasbara back benchers fumbling the AIPAC talking points?"


BDS was created because of Israeli apartheid. It would never have existed if it weren't for Binyamin Netan-nutty and those who feel they have to steal what doesn't belong to them.


Guess what, Israel? You broke it, you bought it.

Of course not.

They would've said how all the parties are just as bad. How the so-called center are even more insidious because they keeps the facade of the peace process going, etc. etc. With Likud winning, their job is easier though since Netanyahu is so understandably repellant to progressives.

It's just like how the anti-Palestinians are happy when Palestinians select right-wingers to lead them. They can say - see, they are horrible - we told you so!!

And now, the BDSers cannot contain their glee.

That would depend on whether the Zionist camp was interested in a political solution that didn't include more settlement building, sustaining the illegal Israeli colonies as well as the police state that envelops the West Bank.

And again, what would hasbara 101 say or lie about for Israel? What fantasy-based excuses are they dredging up to cry about ?


I can't speak for the anti-Palestinians, but the should probably stop since bigotry is never helpful.


There is no glee in wanting to end apartheid. Ending apartheid is a duty that all democracies, and people of good conscience, should should seriously embrace. All it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing, and they won't sit by and do nothing. Glee has nothing to do with it. It's just what people of good conscience would do.

I find it morally repugnant that you imagine that the BDS movement is "gleeful" when the Likrudnicks and the apartheid-loving bigots in Israel are the ones celebrating right now.

Enjoy your fantasy.

Netanyahu got a mandate for more racism, more settlements, and an end to negotiations for a Palestinian state.

As an American, I'm glad we won't be wasting our time and prestige on the farce of US-led bilateral talks.

Israel likes the current state of affairs with the Palestinians just fine, since the goal is to control them, not be at peace with them. Only external pressure will get them to reconsider.