Apartheid

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text about the Jewish character of Israel (out of the first sentence):
[A]part from the Law of Return, which gives a ‘Jew’ and his family
(but not to Arab refugees) the absolute right to come to Israel, no law
discriminates between a ‘Jew’ and a non-Jew. But this is only makebelieve:
numerous laws accord special privileges to persons ‘to whom
the Law of Return applies’, without mentioning ‘Jews’ specifically.
This is so self evident, that all state officials act accordingly without
even being aware of it. The ‘Israel Land Authority’ distributes land to
Jews, not to Arabs. All state development projects include Jews only.
Among the hundreds of new towns and villages set up since the
founding of Israel, not a single one was established for Arabs. There
is no Arab minister in the Government, no Arab judge on the Supreme
Court bench. 378
By comparison, Blacks in the USA – who make up a smaller minority than
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in relative terms (12 and 19 per cent, respectively) – still
face structural and personal discrimination on an enormous scale, but they are no longer
subject to any of the harsh legal conditions that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, not to
mention what those without that citizenship (the vast majority of Palestinians) must endure.
Most recently, even black Supreme Court judges and black government ministers have
appeared in the USA. At the same time non-citizen Palestinians are being treated by Israel like
Native Americans in reservations during the last two centuries.
In 2002, Israel announced it planned to take the unprecedented step of revoking the
(already underprivileged) citizenship of three ‘Israeli Arabs’ suspected of links to ‘terrorist
groups’. The move followed a plethora of ongoing harsh punitive measures against
Palestinians, including politically motivated trials, the demolition of houses belonging to
suicide attackers and the forced exile of members of their families from militarily occupied
territories, officially in order to curb attacks by militants. Both of the latter, of course, fly in
the face of some of the most central judicial axioms worldwide, including the very definition
of a judicial person. But such details were of little concern to the Israeli government, in spite
of international condemnation. The Palestinian parliamentarian in the Knesset, Ahmed Tibi,
who (still) has Israeli citizenship, said Arab citizens were being unfairly targeted and
portrayed as far more involved in anti-Israeli attacks than was the case. ‘The struggle of Arab
citizens (of Israel), the Palestinian struggle, is political, public...within legal procedures’, he
said. ‘They [the Israeli Jews] view the citizenship of Arabs as a gift with conditions.’ Israeli
left-wingers and legal experts called the Israeli law draconian and a violation of civil rights
which would hurt the country’s international status, noting that citizenship had not been
revoked for two of Israel’s most notorious prisoners, who are of course both Jews: Yigal
Amir, who was convicted of assassinating prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and
Mordechai Vanunu, who was jailed for leaking information on the country’s nuclear program
in 1986 and ‘released’ under strict rules in 2004.
On September 9, 2002, the first case of Israeli citizenship being revoked from a
Palestinian (a so-called ‘Israeli Arab’) accused of planning suicide attacks on Jews was
implemented. The loss of citizenship now means that Nahad Abu Kishaq, if he is ever freed
from jail, is banned from living on Israeli territory, where he was previously eligible for state
378 Avnery: Israel: The Jewish Demographic State? 2002. Nearly two years after this statement was made, Israel
appointed its first Arab Supreme Court judge, Salim Jubran. N.N.: Israel Appoints Arab to Supreme Court, May
7, 2004. There is actually a parallel between Israeli and South African apartheid laws in the sense of the Avnery
quote. In his introduction to Mandela 2002 (1965): xi, Quayson writes about South Africa: ‘Each repressive law
gathered force from the ramifications that lay well beyond its parameters and which coincide with the negative
implications of other apartheid laws.’ The ethnicism is thus sloppily hidden in both country’s laws, which were
of course introduced after ethnicism has become illegal internationally.