Apartheid
Apartheid Apartheid
154 have reproductive rights, and they are basic human rights. Although Gaza is even more densely populated than (all of) China: if a Gaza woman really wants seven children, then having them must be up to her, more than to any man or any group of men or other women. To let Palestinian refugees ‘return’ only to areas presently under Palestinian National Authority rule is another pseudo-solution. These areas are already overcrowded and they have unacceptably high unemployment rates. Most of the refugees or their immediate ancestors were driven out of what is today Israel and therefore that is the only place to which they can return, and to which they must be allowed to return with dignity, not only because of international law, which demands the Palestinian right of return (UN Resolution 194). With any other ultimate destination the use of the word ‘return’ would be hypocrisy. To play down Israeli responsibilities in order to direct all blame and more pressure on Palestinian families and the Palestinian National Authority to end femicide is yet another pseudo-solution. But so is the opposite ‘strategy’: to play down Palestinian responsibilities. The problem of ‘honor’ killings is obviously much older than Israel. Therefore, I do not see any priority among the three levels of responsibility for Palestinian femicide. This may seem a pessimistic conclusion, as there is seemingly no simple solution. There is no logical or practical single place to start attacking Palestinian femicide. But, at least, there is a solution. It is known as human rights. Both Jews and Palestinians, both in Palestine/Israel and in the Diasporas, both men and women, both state or pseudo-state authorities and civil society, need to tackle their own ethnicist and sexist warfare directly. I have argued here that male Israeli Jews carry more responsibility for this demographic war and that they therefore have to do more; they must change their ways more in this regard than the Palestinians or the Israeli Jewish women do. They also have to become main targets of proactive peace-making efforts. But all participants on all sides need to change. Perhaps the three tiers of responsibility for Palestinian femicide identified above should be brought to bear on every single case of femicide. But that is not the thesis that has been argued here. Rather, there will be no peace in the Middle East worth the name until the demographic war is ended along with the conventional armed conflict. Beyond the three forms of systematic apartheid violence we have studied here, there is a fourth form of apartheid violence, namely, between members of the ethnic elite. Although there have been sensational assassinations of two apartheid prime ministers, Hendrik Verwoerd and Yitzhak Rabin, by extreme racists for whom apartheid was apparently not enough oppression of indigenous people, there has never been systematic apartheid violence between Israeli Jews or between white South Africans (the British who fought the Boers were not (yet) South Africans, they were British citizens and British colonialists). Systematic apartheid violence is either interethnic or it takes place within the indigenous community. We shall come back to this issue in Part III. In summary, Israeli apartheid reveals its most vicious face by widely denying Palestinians the most basic of all rights, the right to life. This is done differently under different circumstances. Being a young male Palestinian under Israeli military occupation is one of the closest things to an a priori death sentence for a healthy human being in the world since the end of the Second World War. 2001 was the cruellest year so far for Palestinians in almost 35 years under military occupation, according to a leading Palestinian rights group, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights. In that year alone, ‘excessive force’ by Israelis killed nearly 700 people, 100 of them children. In the following year, however, the death toll was even higher, it rose to over a thousand Palestinians. The methods used to kill them varied from bombarding civilians from military planes, high-power bullets penetrating house walls and ‘accidentally’ killing people in their homes, to targeted assassinations by death squads, summary executions of captives, deaths by means of torture during interrogation or incarceration in Israeli military prisons, and many further entirely avoidable deaths due to bureaucratic red tape or individual Israeli soldiers, for instance in ambulances held up at roadblocks, or by the criminal (yet consistently unpunished) use of Palestinian
155 human shields during Israeli army operations. 297 But Palestinians are not just victims. (And neither were the Egyptians under Greek and Roman rule, nor the black South Africans under white domination.) In terms of apartheid violence, they are also perpetrators, both against Israeli Jews and against other Palestinians. Compared to the levels of Israeli violence, and also with regard to the Israeli origins of violence in modern Palestine, however, Palestinians are victims to a much larger extent than Israeli Jews are. And, as in apartheid South Africa and Graeco-Roman Egypt, that extent is not merely a quantitative difference but also a qualitative one. Apartheid violence is systematic, and it is a crime against humanity. Even some of the violence perpetrated by resistance fighters amounts to crimes against humanity. But the more serious crime against humanity must be the one that falls under the responsibility of the invader apartheid elites and of their soldiers, paramilitary forces, police, allies, and collaborators. We will return to violence throughout the remainder of this investigation. Violence permeates apartheid and remains its deepest root and its most vicious symptom. 297 N.N.: Palestinian Rights Group Slams Israeli Occupation, May 6, 2002; and Heller, C. July 22, 2003. A year later, the human rights group, Amnesty International (AI), said at least 1,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli soldiers in 2002, and that most of these killings had been unlawful. Palestinian militants had killed 420 Israelis during the year, at least 265 of them civilians. According to AI, the presence of international human rights monitors could have saved many lives. Palestinians and large constituents of the international community have also continuously called for monitoring of the conflict by intergovernmental or non-governmental agencies, but Israel will not allow any such thing to take place in Israel or in the territories it occupies since 1967, and the USA has chosen to look the other way, as usual. See Ackerman, G.: Amnesty Criticises Israel, Palestinian Militants, 2003. The only conceivable reasons behind these refusals are that Israel does not want the human rights violations it commits scrutinized or even known, and that it certainly knows that the human rights violations it commits are by far both more numerous and more severe than those that Palestinians commit.
- Page 103 and 104: II. A System of Gross Human Rights
- Page 105 and 106: 105 ‘Palestinians’, Israel has
- Page 107 and 108: 107 by orders or even laws from abo
- Page 109 and 110: 109 though it also saves lives and
- Page 111 and 112: 1. Violence 111 The use of physical
- Page 113 and 114: 113 In each of the three apartheid
- Page 115 and 116: 115 Later (and possibly earlier) le
- Page 117 and 118: 117 The first example of systematic
- Page 119 and 120: 119 1879. Only three years later, h
- Page 121 and 122: 121 handcuffed into the back of a p
- Page 123 and 124: come out but it was probably put in
- Page 125 and 126: 125 (UNITA in Angola) and Rhodesia
- Page 127 and 128: 127 the equality of rights have ero
- Page 129 and 130: 129 an entity capable of self-deter
- Page 131 and 132: 131 rights violations, especially o
- Page 133 and 134: 133 gas grenades (in size and color
- Page 135 and 136: 135 Palestinian children in Israeli
- Page 137 and 138: 137 Between 1987 and 2003, the IAEA
- Page 139 and 140: Times: ‘There is hardly a single
- Page 141 and 142: 141 were complete. Due to this, Whi
- Page 143 and 144: 143 the state of Israel’s in-vitr
- Page 145 and 146: 145 murders are thus often given fu
- Page 147 and 148: 147 as a majoritarian democracy is
- Page 149 and 150: 149 Authority, which does not prose
- Page 151 and 152: 151 Demography (ICD) and its polici
- Page 153: 153 Egypt today by one of its forem
- Page 157 and 158: 157 hand’. This is precisely the
- Page 159 and 160: 159 suffering from dementia. 305 Th
- Page 161 and 162: 161 the creation of Bantustans in S
- Page 163 and 164: 163 were quite obviously not to be
- Page 165 and 166: 165 Moreover, as we shall see in Ch
- Page 167 and 168: talent and principle this must incl
- Page 169 and 170: colonies within and around the city
- Page 171 and 172: 171 In the following year, the Isra
- Page 173 and 174: 173 employees by Israeli employers
- Page 175 and 176: 3. Citizenship 175 This is where th
- Page 177 and 178: 177 entailed by this system of citi
- Page 179 and 180: 179 whatsoever. Like the women in A
- Page 181 and 182: 181 KwaZulu comprised twenty-nine m
- Page 183 and 184: 183 Just as the Basic ‘Law of Ret
- Page 185 and 186: 185 health care and other rights, s
- Page 187 and 188: 4. Land 187 Land dispossession and
- Page 189 and 190: 189 separate quarters for Greeks of
- Page 191 and 192: 191 towns under the condition that
- Page 193 and 194: 193 settlements were being built th
- Page 195 and 196: 195 because when given self-rule in
- Page 197 and 198: order to enjoy elementary rights. W
- Page 199 and 200: 199 5.1. Tax unto Starvation Ptolem
- Page 201 and 202: 201 keeping such a brutal industry
- Page 203 and 204: 203 and often extremely unhealthy w
155<br />
human shields during Israeli army operations. 297 But Palestinians are not just victims. (And<br />
neither were the Egyptians under Greek and Roman rule, nor the black South Africans under<br />
white domination.) In terms of apartheid violence, they are also perpetrators, both against<br />
Israeli Jews and against other Palestinians. Compared to the levels of Israeli violence, and also<br />
with regard to the Israeli origins of violence in modern Palestine, however, Palestinians are<br />
victims to a much larger extent than Israeli Jews are. And, as in apartheid South Africa and<br />
Graeco-Roman Egypt, that extent is not merely a quantitative difference but also a qualitative<br />
one. <strong>Apartheid</strong> violence is systematic, and it is a crime against humanity. Even some of the<br />
violence perpetrated by resistance fighters amounts to crimes against humanity. But the more<br />
serious crime against humanity must be the one that falls under the responsibility of the<br />
invader apartheid elites and of their soldiers, paramilitary forces, police, allies, and<br />
collaborators.<br />
We will return to violence throughout the remainder of this investigation. Violence<br />
permeates apartheid and remains its deepest root and its most vicious symptom.<br />
297 N.N.: Palestinian Rights Group Slams Israeli Occupation, May 6, 2002; and Heller, C. July 22, 2003. A year<br />
later, the human rights group, Amnesty International (AI), said at least 1,000 Palestinians had been killed by<br />
Israeli soldiers in 2002, and that most of these killings had been unlawful. Palestinian militants had killed 420<br />
Israelis during the year, at least 265 of them civilians. According to AI, the presence of international human<br />
rights monitors could have saved many lives. Palestinians and large constituents of the international community<br />
have also continuously called for monitoring of the conflict by intergovernmental or non-governmental agencies,<br />
but Israel will not allow any such thing to take place in Israel or in the territories it occupies since 1967, and the<br />
USA has chosen to look the other way, as usual. See Ackerman, G.: Amnesty Criticises Israel, Palestinian<br />
Militants, 2003. The only conceivable reasons behind these refusals are that Israel does not want the human<br />
rights violations it commits scrutinized or even known, and that it certainly knows that the human rights<br />
violations it commits are by far both more numerous and more severe than those that Palestinians commit.
Change language