Apartheid

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‘apartheid’ cannot usefully or even meaningfully be restricted to refer to policies and actions
formulated and carried out by a government or state alone.
With the Israeli elites so unanimously intent on warfare, so remarkably spearheaded by
an opposition politician rather than the government, it calls for the earnest question whether
Israel is even a democracy for its Jewish citizens. It does not appear so. How can non-elite
Israelis carry any burden of responsibility for apartheid when they are being deceived by their
politicians, generals and media? But they can. They do have access to foreign media, and
although most of these were also deceptive in an anti-Palestinian way, many were not.
Moreover, ‘Israeli Arabs’ did not swallow the lies. Finally, Israeli Jews in general have
enough free time, financial and technological resources and means to inform themselves. That
is their civic duty, one that they have failed. Yet most of the responsibility must lie with the
Israeli elites, including also the business elites in general, i.e. not just the media, but also the
advertisers.
Less than 25 per cent of all those killed in the Second Intifada, so far, have been Jews.
Almost all killings and clashes at first took place on occupied territory, on which the Israeli
forces had moved in, surrounding and bombarding Palestinian cities, towns and settlements
with tanks, artillery and (US-made and -delivered) helicopter gunships as well as (US-made
and -delivered) F-16 bomber jet planes. The killings that did take place on Israeli soil in the
initial fighting were the killings of 13 Israeli Arabs, some at demonstrations, some in their
own homes. These killings and other attacks on Palestinians with Israeli citizenship were
carried out by Jewish mobs, police and soldiers. But the US Secretary of State, Madeleine
Albright, insisted that Palestinians were ‘laying siege to Israel’. 702 Youths armed with rocks
besieged one of the world’s most formidable military powers! The Cable News Network
(CNN), part of the largest media corporation in the world, Time Warner Turner, reported on
its website on the first day of hostilities that Palestinian protesters had pelted Israeli
702 Interview with Madeleine Albright, NBC ‘Meet the Press’, Sunday, October 8, 2000, quoted in Ashrawi: A
Tragic Reversal: Madeleine Albright’s View of Reality, 2000 (emphasis, H.A.). According to Ashrawi, Albright
even repeated herself and exclaimed: ‘Those Palestinian rock throwers have placed Israel under siege,’ adding,
again, that the Israeli army is defending itself. She is also quoted thus in Said: Double Standards, 2000. Albright
went on to bless the sale and delivery of more attack helicopters for the Israelis to use in assaults on Palestinian
civilians, in spite of a campaign by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, and others, to stop the deal. See their Suspend Helicopter Sale to Israel (A Joint Letter to Madeleine K.
Albright), 2000. On the continued unsuccessful efforts to stop western powers from supplying Israel with the
means to commit grave human rights violations, see N.N.: Amnesty Seeks to Halt UK Arms Exports to Israel,
August 16, 2001; Evans, D.: Britain Under Fire Over Israel Arms Report, 2002. After Amnesty International had
published an investigative report accusing Israelis of being behind the great majority of human rights violations
in the first year of the Second Intifada, Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the non-governmental human rights
organization ‘biased and not objective’ and said Israel considered Amnesty International’s reports on the conflict
‘a product of its political agenda’. N.N.: Amnesty International Calls for Mideast Observers, November 13,
2001. On the most pro-Israeli media in the world (even more so than the Israeli media themselves), see Said:
American Zionism: For US Media, Israel is the Victim, 2000. The USA is the only country in the world that has
more Jewish citizens than Israel does, although Jews only make up 2 per cent of the entire US population.
American Jews’ view of Israel is often a more romanticized and extremist one than that of most Israeli Jews. In
both views, Arabs play an unambiguously evil role and simply do not belong. See Giacomo: Powerful U.S.
Jewish Lobby Flexes Political Muscle, 2002. As a result, US citizens in general are very anti-Palestinian.
Furthermore, the indoctrination in schools starts early and never lets up: ‘For decades it has been decreed to [US]
schoolchildren there were no Palestinians when the Zionist pioneers arrived [in Palestine] and so those
miscellaneous people who throw stones and fight occupation are simply a collection of terrorists who deserve
killing. Palestinians, in short, do not deserve anything like a narrative or collective actuality, and so they must be
transmuted and dissolved into essentially negative images. This is entirely the result of a distorted education,
doled out to millions of youngsters who grow up without any awareness at all that the Palestinian people have
been totally dehumanised to serve a political-ideological end, namely to keep support high for Israel. What is so
astonishing is that notions of co-existence between peoples play no part in this kind of distortion. Whereas
American Jews want to be recognised as Jews and Americans in America, they are unwilling to accord a similar
status as Arabs and Palestinians to another people that has been oppressed by Israel since the beginning.’ Said:
Crisis for American Jews, 2002