Apartheid

268
De-secularization among the Jews themselves is also pursued vigorously by the Israeli
elites, especially in the case of east Jerusalem. Tanya Reinhart, the dissident Israeli professor
at Tel Aviv University, analyses the situation in an unusual way (for an Israeli) a few months
into the Second Intifada:
In today’s setting, it is hard to recall that just a few years ago, only
some fringe lunatics demanded Israeli control of ‘Temple Mount’ [Al
Haram al Sharif]. Every time they tried to enter the place and pray,
Israeli police would be there to block their entrance or drag them out.
Even the word ‘Temple Mount’ was perceived as belonging to the
bizarre vocabulary of religious fanatics. Today it is the Israeli
government that launches the holy war. Israel’s foreign affairs minister
- the ex-liberal Shlomo Ben-Ami - declares day and night that ‘no
nation can give up its sacred sites’ and the world nods and accepts. . . .
Israel’s claim on ‘Temple Mount’ is completely new - brought up only
since the recent Camp David negotiations [held in the summer of
2000]. . . . Barak and Sharon [respectively the head of government and
of the parliamentary opposition at the time]…see only one solution to
the ‘Palestinian problem’ – subjugation and control! It is not at all
impossible that in their sick general’s minds they believe that if one
applies sufficient force for sufficient time it may be possible to drive
more and more Palestinians out of Jerusalem and the central West
Bank so this area becomes more Arab-free. And this approach isn’t
confined to just the occupied Palestinians. For several weeks now,
Israeli Palestinians have been subject to vicious attacks, and more and
more voices in the media (orchestrated, as always, from above)
complain about how they have too many rights and are not ‘loyal’ to
Israel. . . Israel has become the land of apartheid. 658
Racist Israelis have also at times even gone as far as their previous tormentors, the
Nazis, as well as the Afrikaners, in trying to prove the genetic inferiority of Arabs and ‘other
Blacks’ (!) compared to Jews. The racist apartheid mindset is vividly illustrated by a young
rabbi, quoted by Chomsky, who speaks of the ‘filth’ of mixed marriages between Jews and
Arabs and the ‘hybrid children’ that result. (Hybrid is a biological term for crossed species,
and most certainly not for ‘crosses’ between two genetically close, in fact genetically
indistinguishable, human populations who also speak closely related languages.) 659
The dehumanization of the enemy is of course observable on both sides in the conflict.
For instance, a Palestinian suicide bomber who blew up himself and five Israelis at a shopping
mall in the Israeli city of Netanya on May 18, 2001, had previously left behind a videotape, in
which he said: ‘I will make my body a bomb that will blast the bodies of Zionists, the sons of
monkeys and pigs, to avenge every drop of blood spilt on the soil of Jerusalem.’ 660 As
and Shaheen: Unkindest Cuts, 2003: 76-81, which is where the author compares anti-Arab depictions in
contemporary US motion pictures with anti-Jewish depictions in German Nazi films. On the closely
interconnected power of the military, the government and the (privately owned) mass media, including the
motion picture industry, in the USA, see Herman & Chomsky 1988. On Orientalism in this context, see Said
1979 (1978): 284ff and Shaheen 2003: 77. On literature see also Little: Representing Arabs: Reliance on the
Past, 1998: 261-272. On Patai, see Whitaker: The Arab Mind, 2004. In general, see also Löwstedt: Stereotypical
Images of Arabs in the Western Mainstream Media, 2004.
658
Reinhart: Israel – Land of Apartheid, 2000. The only obvious criticism that could be launched against this
analysis is that Israel in fact has been a land of apartheid (in a wide sense) continuously since 1948. In another
context, however, Reinhart does acknowledge that Israel and the Palestinians have been in a state of war since
1948. See N.N. November 8, 2002.
659 2
Chomsky 1999: 151ff. See footnote 320 for the equivalent Greek labeling of the children of mixed Greek and
non-Greek parentage as ‘hybrid’.
660
N.N.: Palestinian Bomber Talks on Video of Vengeance, May 19, 2001