It Sure Looks And Smells Like Apartheid

July 20, 2011 01:03 AM
By Rami G. Khouri
The Daily Star

The Israeli parliament’s vote last week making it a crime to support any boycott of Israel, including products from Israeli settlements in occupied Arab lands, has rightly generated considerable debate about what this means for Israel, Zionism and Israelis.

The complex and larger-than-life tale of the modern state of Israel has always been seen by its two very different faces around the world. For Jews and many others, Israel has been about a vibrant nationalism miraculously reborn from the horrors of the European Holocaust and centuries of discrimination and subjugation of Jews by white Christian Europeans and Russians. For most Palestinians and Arabs, Israel has been about a predatory and malicious combination of colonialism and racism, the creation of an exclusionary ethnic state on land that was taken from others, with Jews having a higher quality of personal and national rights that the indigenous Arabs.

These two competing narratives have played out for the past century. The miracle of vibrant Jewish nationalism and impressive statehood, on the one hand, and the criminality of Zionist colonialism and racism, on the other, are impossible to reconcile. Yet reconcile them we must – or at least Zionists and their supporters must – if we are ever to approach any possibility of a negotiated peace that allows Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs to live a normal and peaceful life in the Middle East. The anti-boycott law that has been approved in Israel will provide new ammunition for those who see Israel and Zionism as intemperate racists, or even, as some Israeli critics have said, fascists.

The basic issue is not whether it is good or bad, right or wrong, to criticize Israeli policies and to support a boycott of Israel. It is not about whether the Arabs should formally recognize Israel as “a Jewish state,” or whether Israel is a vibrant democracy that can teach some lessons to the surrounding Arabs. The issue is simply whether Israel and Zionism are above the law of humankind that attempts to maintain peace and security among peoples by enforcing certain principles of justice and order.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2011/Jul-20/It-sure-looks-and-smells-like-apartheid.ashx#ixzz1SfUzO4A5

BTW did I mention my two nationalities killed British imperialists?

:shrug:

i am yet to understand... HOW IS THIS LAW RACIST??? (do you even know what apartheid means?)

...because it can't be blamed on Israel.

:eyes:

Not all apartheid is created equal
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/832423--cohn-not-all-apartheid-is-created-equal

UJIA chairman Mick Davis says Israel will become apartheid state if there is no two-state solution in as the minority will rule over the majority.

<snip>

"A top leader in the British Jewish community stirred a wave of strong reactions this week among the U.K. Jewish community, after publically criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the waning peace talks and insisting that the Anglo-Zionists begin to voice their opinions on the matter.

Mick Davis, chairman of the UJIA and executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, warned in front of more than 160 people at the London Jewish Cultural Center that Israel could become an apartheid stateunless there was a two-state solution with the Palestinians, "because we then have the majority going to be governed by the minority."

Davis said Netanyahu lacked the courage and the strategy to take the steps to lead to peace in the Middle East."

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/diaspora/u-k-jewish-leader-s-rebuke-of-netanyahu-sparks-ire-of-british-zionists-1.326586