Israel - apartheid state

Now with all the bloodshed currently occurring in Gaza it's easy to get caught up in how dreadful the killing is.

But I think it's important to remember that even without all the current slaughter, the Israeli authorities affect the minutiae of life for Palestinians in deeply offensive, intrusive ways.

Here is a letter from a Palestinian man whose Swiss wife was, as of January 2007, no longer going to be allowed to live in Palestine. I can only think that you'd have to love someone very, very deeply to be prepared to live there in the first place.

Israel has decreed that my wife and I can no longer live together. I am Palestinian and she is Swiss and we have been married for 28 years. She was given two weeks to leave the occupied Palestinian territory. The Israeli Ministry of Interior wrote on her Swiss passport: LAST PERMIT. We have been living together in Ramallah for 12 years. We came in 1994, when, after the Oslo Agreement, we were encouraged to move to the West Bank by the prospect of ‘peace’ and development.

He goes on to explain that his situation is far from unique, and that the Israeli authorities were cracking down on foreign nationals in the Occupied Territories. One of his daughters, visiting from Switzerland, was detained and grilled for hours at the airport by Israeli security personnel.

Reading the letter you realise just how much of a police state Palestine is, and how much power the Israeli authorities have - not only to get away with murder on a daily basis, but to tear families apart.

Mere words cannot express the disgust I feel at this kind of action, disgust for the people who would perpetrate it and for those who would condone it.

reply to post by rich23

13/01/2009/ Haaretz
Israel bans Arab parties from running in upcoming elections

The Central Elections Committee (CEC) yesterday banned the Arab parties United Arab List-Ta'al and Balad from running in next month's parliamentary elections amid accusations of racism from Arab MKs. Both parties intend to challenge the decision in the Supreme Court.

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Members of the the new Meretz alignment reacted angrily to the decision.

"Labor and Kadima's position is a declaration of war on Israel's Arab citizens," a party member said. "Do Barak and Livni really prefer blocking Israel's Arabs' right to parliamentary activity and driving them to street demonstrations?"

There is a growing population of Israeli Arabs within Israels borders .
Something that the government are clearly uncomfortable with.

reply to post by rich23


The only reason to get rid of foriegn nationals is to make sure that when you kill palestinians that the others don't get killed and their governments don't get on your back.

I never knew how horrible their situation was. If any other nation was doing this there would have been sanctions, if this was being done to Isreal it would be an outrage, yet the reverse is not?

This does not seem right or fair. It's horrible to break apart families, and to destroy a down trodden people.

Here's an excellent article by Robert Fisk.

It took Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times's resident philosopher-in-chief, to speak the unspeakable. "When does the mandate of victimhood expire?" he asked. "At what point does the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews cease to excuse the state of Israel from the demands of international law and of common humanity?"

As someone of Irish extraction I'm pleased that an Irishman came up with this pithy and wholly apt summary of the situation.

But the tide may be turning. Even Gerald Kaufmann, a UK Labour MP, has decided that enough is enough. He was brought up as an Orthodox Jew and a Zionist, and now (hooray) cannot avoid comparing Israel with Nazi Germany. There's an extract from a recent speech here.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added: "

They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."

I guess another question is, how many more Palestinians have to lose their lives before people wake up to what's going on?

Kaufman's speech - if you click on the link I posted above you get video - was pretty good. I found it very moving simply because of who he is: as he says, he's an Orthodox Jew brought up a Zionist - and for someone of his background and connections, it's a very clear-eyed speech.

However, George Galloway delivers a fantastic short speech in this link.

I don't have too much time to spare for "Gorgeous George", but he does speak well, and this particular speech is definitely one of his best. It's short and finishes with the stinging point that the UK bears responsibility for the situation right now thanks to the Balfour Declaration, a promise (I'm quoting approximately here) "made by one people to another based on taking the land of a third."

As he says, the UK government need to pull their finger out.

Someday soon I'm going to have to learn to embed video in these posts.