| > I am not Jewish but the logic here is sound. Jews need their own country so they can take control of their destiny. Why exactly? I'm genuinely curious. >Israel is not an apartheid state. South Africa was. We now have 3 major human rights organizations saying Israel is practicing apartheid against the Palestinians. We also have former South Africans openly saying Israel's apartheid is actually worse than that practiced in South Aftrica. I would venture that these people would know: "Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government." "Observers in South Africa are preparing to mark "Israeli Apartheid Week" on Monday. Tutu, meanwhile, has declared his support for the use of boycotts and economic sanctions as a means to compel Israel to alter its policies." https://www.jpost.com/diplomacy-and-politics/desmond-tutu-is... As for Nelson Mandela, he clearly supported the Palestinian cause: "We identify with the PLO because just like ourselves they are fighting for the right of self-determination," he said. "Arafat is a comrade in arms, and we treat him as such."
'Our freedom is incomplete' In a 1997 speech on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela reaffirmed his support for Palestinian rights. "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." (Very interesting 1 hour 13 minute video interview Town Hall with ABC's Ted Koppel from 1990)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcQIEIRLU1Y I believe that people get angry about it because the human rights abuses have gone on for so long without any noticeable change in Israeli policy. Some of this is related to the myth of equating Zionism with Judaism and as the location of Mandatory Palestine as the mythical homeland for the "ancient" Children of Israel. After1904, the fixation on Palestine as the only territory in which Zionism could be implemented was reinforced by the growing power of Christian Zionism in Britain and in Europe. They believe, and still believe, that "Jewish return” would herald the "end of time" and the return of the Messiah. It represented a double gain: getting rid of the Jews in Europe, and at the same time fulfilling the divine scheme in which the Second Coming was to be precipitated by the return of the Jews to Palestine [1]. [1] Stephen Sizer, “The Road to Balfour: The History of Christian Zionism,” at balfourproject.org. This is the prevailing narrative in the West (especially in the US). The counter narrative, and this has been promoted by the New Historians (Israeli's in the 1990s) and Arab historians (since the 1950s), has been that the formation of the state of Israel was primarily a settler colonial enterprise: immigration started ramping up from 1910-40 and completed with the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (from early 1948 to 1949) and the looting and destruction of their villages (both to prevent return and to erase any memory of the indigenous people (Arab Jews, Arab Christians and Arab Muslims) that inhabited Mandatory Palestine. Not sure if that helps but it should give you a summary of the prevailing narratives. |
Mandatory Palestine simply was not a country or recognized as such. PLO, Hamas, these guys aren't fighting for independence in my view, they are out to destroy, out of hatred and self-pity.
I'm not going to side with a culture that teaches their kids to kill their enemies at an institution where academic learning should take place. I always side with a culture that teaches tolerance, peace and education.
If the Palestinians truly wanted political independence, then they chose the worst way to do it, through violence. The IRA gave this up when they realized they could achieve independence politically and economically. My hope is that the Palestine side realizes this and overthrows Hamas and PLO with a rational minded leader.
It's also not out of the ordinary to assume under the security threats that Israel faces not only from Palestine but also its neighbors, that their security apparatus is aimed at prioritizing the safety of its citizens and sovereignty which means a pro-longed war.
It is similar in some ways to South Korea's situation but worse in many ways—you have a densely populated small mass land connected on all sides to hostile conventional forces as well as asymmetric threats from within. then I ask is the Korean peninsula an apartheid state? It's very clear to me as an outsider to see which one is the aggressor and poorer.
South Africa is under a completely different premise—it's goal was colonialism and its aftermath was an ugly systematic racism. Israel was created for very different reasons, it was the systematic persecution based on theology and class envy based on stereotypes that formed out of long existing persecutions.
So no, to me, the Palestine-Israel situation is completely different from South Africa's policy which was aimed at keeping the Dutch descendants colonial wealth.
Is America an apartheid state? No but there are certain elements that remind us of it in parts of it. Having said that is there also part of Israel that is uncomfortable to North Americans and Western Europeans because we believe we live in an open society yet its ridiculous to me how we ignore our own problems and our own hypocrisy towards "outsiders".
My message to people who support Palestine is this—you have change nothing you make it worse because you embolden these violent terrorist groups that run it which in turn creates overwhelming response from the people that get attacked.
I will never understand people who get upset when a terrorist group launches rocket attacks on civilians and it is met with equal or greater force.
Many conflate the pro-longed war as apartheid state, well in that logic, Korean peninsula is an apartheid state for making North Koreans poor. They did it to themselves after decades of asymmetric warfare and conventional attacks on the South.
Terrorism and violence as a way to push political independence is counter-productive, it only removes credibility for your cause. If you support Palestine that means you also being okay with terror attacks or "freedom fighters".
Let me remind you a group calling themselves The Base also sought to launch terrorist attacks to liberate their skin tone, ironically calling themselves after terrorists that attacked their country. Are neo-nazi white supremacist groups in America living in an apartheid state? In their head they are, at least according to the FBI