On Apartheid and the ’toning down of rhetoric’

Now, after Israel’s policy has been appraised as Apartheid by various human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch, it has suddenly become antisemitic to say so.

What a coincidence. Before that, the IHRA ‘definition’ of antisemitism that many governments and Jewish organizations promoted suggested that even appraising Israel as a “racist endeavor” could constitute antisemitism.

It goes hand in hand. I mean, how can an apartheid state not be a racist endeavor?

And yet this must be toned down. We must not seriously engage in the debate which could bring us to the shocking conclusion, that Zionism is racism. Because Israel already tore up the UN resolution which stated that, back in 1975. UN Resolution 3379 determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” and recalled “the unholy alliance between South African racism and zionism”. Israel’s UN ambassador at the time, Chaim Herzog, held a long speech in defiance of that resolution, which he referred to as “anti-Semitic”, “malicious” and “based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance”. At the end of his speech, he tore up the resolution. In 1991, Israel managed, through US pressure, to get that resolution repealed, as a condition for entering the endless ‘peace process’. The timing was also convenient since the Soviet Bloc, which had sponsored the resolution, had just disintegrated. George Bush held a speech at the UN calling for its repeal, saying that “Zionism is not a policy; it is the idea that led to the creation of a home for the Jewish people, to the State of Israel… To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations.”

Peace it did not bring, just much process, and never-ending Israeli colonialist expansion into more Palestinian lands.

Even Israeli think-tanks have known for decades, that upticks in what they consider antisemitism take place mostly after grand scale Israeli offensives against Palestinians. And so the apparent demand is, that Israel should be able to practice Apartheid, flatten civilian residential buildings in Gaza, knowingly wipe out entire families, killing hundreds of Palestinians including 65 children in Gaza, the largest open-air prison on earth (an unlivable one too, according to the UN), and not be called racist. If you do that, according to Zionist Israeli logic, you have crossed a line and you are engaging in antisemitism. To love a Jew, you must speak no evil of Israel.

And when the condemnation grows, and the Apartheid appraisal is rightfully pointed to, the cry begins – this is antisemitism! And even the progressive Bernie Sanders falls in the net of propaganda – saying that “we should tone down the rhetoric”.

So now an accurate assessment has become “rhetoric”. The Crime Against Humanity, second only to Genocide, which Israel has been appraised to be practicing, by meticulous human rights organizations including Israel’s own B’Tselem recently, is suddenly “rhetoric”, it’s hyperbole, it’s unhelpful.

No, the way forward not to silence critique and condemnation of the crime. We should not be hiding a crime against humanity. On the contrary, we should go further – as B’Tselem does – we should acknowledge that Israeli Apartheid is not just a slogan, not just a word – it is a “regime of Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea.”

We should abhor and we should be outraged, and this should lead to the natural response to Apartheid – boycotts, divestments and sanctions. But ah, the IHRA definition will come to Israel’s rescue, saying that this is “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”. But the obvious question is, how can an Apartheid state at all be considered a “democratic nation”?

This is not the time to fall for the Israeli tricks. The late Israeli minister Shulamit Aloni spoke of this trick very clearly in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Nowback in 2002. It is quite sobering to go through the full section:

Goodman: Often, when there is dissent expressed in the United States, against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called antisemitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?

Aloni: Well, it’s a trick – we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country (USA) people are criticizing Israel then they are antisemitic. And the organization is very strong and has a lot of money, and the ties between Israel and the American establishment are very strong, they are strong in this country – as you know they have power. It’s OK, they are talented people and they have power, money, media and other things, and their etiquette is ‘Israel, my country, right or wrong’ – the identification – and they are not ready to hear criticism. And it’s very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semites and to bring up the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jewish people, and that justifies everything we do to the Palestinians…

Now is time to reflect, that Apartheid is not merely a slogan. It is a fact. And if it is a fact, it means that Israel, in its control from the river to the sea, is a racist endeavor. And if the ideology that informed the formation of this reality all along was and is Zionism, then hey, Resolution 3379 was right.

Even if you still believe that Zionism could somehow have wound up differently, that it was not inherently racist, then still, you cannot ignore the reality of Apartheid. And when that realization arrives, it is not the time to tone down the discussion. This is precisely the time to articulate these grave matters. These are not petty matters – these are crimes against humanity.

While the victims are mostly Palestinians, humanity is us all. This is not the time to be tricked into silence. This is the time to shout: no to Apartheid!

So where are the Palestinian voices in mainstream media?

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