Why Israel is an Apartheid State

Why a settler colonial Jewish State is Inevitably a Racist State

   

A few years ago ex-President Jimmy Carter was pilloried for suggesting that Israel was pursuing a policy of Apartheid in the Occupied Territories.[i] Today even ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak says that without a peace agreement Israel will become an apartheid state.[ii] Yet this should not blind us to the differences between Zionism in Israel and Apartheid in South Africa in terms of political economy. Whereas Apartheid sought to exploit the labour power of Black South Africans, Zionism seeks to exclude it altogether. 

The other major difference is that, until recently, Israel did not engage – at least openly – in ‘petty Apartheid’. There were no signs saying ‘Jews Only’. Institutional and state discrimination remained hidden beneath the surface although it was just as real. Even today in the West Bank there are no 'Jews only' signs on the road.  It's just that the Army doesn't need a sign to enforce what is Military Law.

Flags of the Apartheid States

Racial segregation ‘separate development’ was integral to the political and legal doctrine of South African Apartheid.[iii] There is however more than one way of skinning a cat. In Israel, the same principles that Apartheid South Africa stood for have been achieved, without the need to declare them openly. 

In a survey of 400 teenagers, 35% of Jewish youth had never spoken to an Arab teenager and 27% of Arab youth had never spoken to a Jewish teenager.[iv] Israeli Jews and Palestinians are educated separately, live separately and socialise separately. The instruments of power in Israel are in the hands of the Jewish majority not the Palestinian minority.

The reaction of the JNF in 2005 to the decision in Kadaan that you could not refuse to sell land to Arabs

The roots of Israeli Apartheid go back to before the British Mandate. The JNF bought land and then expelled the peasants who were farming it. The policies of the Zionist colonisers were Jewish Labour, Land and Produce. First the Zionists expelled the Arabs from the economy and then from the country altogether. It was this which caused the riots of 1929. As the Hope-Simpson Report reported:

‘the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extra-territorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. … It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists…’

‘That this replacement of Arab labour by Jewish labour is a definite policy of the Zionist Organisation is also evident from the following quotation, taken from A Guide to Jewish Palestine, published by the Head Office of the Keren-Kayemeth Leisrael –The Jewish National Fund – and the Keren-Hayesod, in Jerusalem in the 1930s…

The Arab population already regards the transfer of lands to Zionist hands with dismay and alarm. These cannot be dismissed as baseless in light of the Zionist policy described above….

The policy of the Jewish Labour Federation is successful in impeding the employment of Arabs in Jewish colonies and in Jewish enterprises of every kind.’ ^[v]

The Jewish Labour Federation was Histadrut, founded in 1920 as the General Federation of Hebrew Labour. It was a Jewish only ‘trade union’.

In South Africa the Group Areas Act 1950 forbade Black people from living in the same town as Whites. In Israel the same objective was achieved through indirect means. Land in towns such as Kiryat Shmona was owned by the JNF and could not therefore be rented by non-Jews. Legislation was not needed to prevent Arabs from renting flats in Safed. An edict by its Chief Rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, that Jews were forbidden to rent apartments to Arabs, was sufficient.^[vi]

In 2000 Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in the case of Ka'adan that it was illegal to refuse to sell state lands, including those owned by the JNF, to non-Jews. The Court hadn’t wanted to reach this ruling, however it was left with no choice.^[vii] In 2005 Attorney General Mazuz decided that the 93% of state land which is controlled by the Israel Lands Administration, including that owned by the JNF, could be sold to non-Jews.^[viii] This undermined the whole basis on which the Zionist movement had colonized Palestine.^[ix]

In 2011 the government responded to the concerns of those who believed that selling ‘Jewish’ land to non-Jews undermined the very basis of Zionism by introducing the Reception Committees Law. This allowed small communities, under 500, (now increased to 700) to determine whether or not someone ‘fitted in’ to their community based on a set of social criteria. Instead of direct discrimination there would be what we know as indirect discrimination. Ostensibly Arabs would be rejected, not because they were non-Jews but because they didn’t fit in with existing Jewish communities. It is a distinction without a difference. This is how racism in Israel has traditionally operated. Instead of following the example of Apartheid South Africa and introducing legislation that forbade Arabs from leasing or buying ‘Jewish’ land, , Israel left it to the good sense of Jewish communities to reject Arabs who wanted to access Jewish land and to the regulations of para-state groups like the JNF.^[x]

In the United States, the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, ruled that racially separate facilities did not violate the Constitution.^[xi] Segregation, the Court said, was not discrimination. In practice separation has always meant inequality, otherwise why have it? It was not until Brown v Board of Education 1954 that the ruling in Plessy was overturned. In Israel separation is not decreed in law but comes about as the consequence of administrative practices, regulations, land, social and employment policies that are guided by Zionism, which is a state ideology.  A Jewish state cannot be other than a racist state because of the settler colonialist context in which it was established. Being Jewish in Israel is as important as being White was in South Africa.

In the 2006 Democracy Institute Survey, 62% of Israelis wanted the government to encourage local Arabs to leave the country ^[xii] and 75% of Jews didn’t approve of sharing apartments with Arabs. Over half of Israeli Jews believed that the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to a survey by the Geocartography Institute. 55% said “Arabs and Jews should be separated at entertainment sites”.’^[xiii]

In 2014 the Democracy Institute found that 62.9% Jews disagreed with the statement that ‘Jewish citizens of Israel should have greater rights than non-Jewish citizens.’ But when it came to more concrete questions, such as whether it was acceptable for Israel to allocate more funding to Jewish localities than to Arab ones, then 47.2% agreed compared to 47.5%; who disagreed.

In the 2016 Pew Opinion Survey a plurality (48%) of Israeli Jews wanted Israeli Palestinians to be expelled from the country. 79% believed that Jews are entitled to preferential treatment.^[xiv]

An official policy of apartheid and racial segregation would be problematic because of Israel’s political dependence on the West. It would also create difficulties for diaspora Jews. How could one support apartheid in Israel and oppose anti-Semitism in one’s own country? The problem for Zionism is how to achieve an apartheid society without being seen to do so.

Zionism has therefore deployed a number of different strategies to achieve a Jewish supremacist society. One method was the use of para-state organisations such as the JNF to implement discrimination, another was the use of indirect discrimination – using an ostensibly neutral policy that in practice is discriminatory.  For example in order to get a job in many areas you have to have served in the army! In Israel Arabs, with the exception of the Druze, do not serve in the Army.^[xv]

In Israel all families with more than four children received a special grant. The problem was how to restrict this to Jews. The innocuously titled Discharged Soldier’s (Reinstatement in Employment) (Amendment No. 4) Law 1970 achieved this purpose by restricting such benefits to those who had served in the army or whose relatives had served. Uri Avneri, a member of the Knesset, in a speech opposing the law stated that:

‘The intention is to encourage births among one part of the population of Israel and to effect the opposite among the other part, to pay grants to the hungry children of one part of the population and withhold them from the hungry children of another part, the distinction… being an ethnic one…’

However the Haredi section of Israeli society also didn’t serve in the Army. The solution to this ‘problem’ was to pay a grant equivalent to the benefit directly to the Ministry of Religion which then disbursed it to Orthodox Jews.

Virtually every section of Israeli society – from manufacturing and trade, education (except universities), teaching, the civil service – is segregated. Arab areas of society, be it education or local government are underfunded compared to their Jewish counterparts. For the year 2013/14, per-student funding in high schools was 35 percent to 68 percent higher for Jews than for Arabs.^[xvi]  Fewer Arabs per head of population go to university.

However when it comes to poverty then Arabs are the winners! As the Jerusalem Post noted, the Annual Poverty Report ‘relayed a startling gap between different population groups in Israel. The incidence of poverty among Arab families in 2012 was a staggering 53.4% compared to 14.1% among Jewish families. 36.6% of poor families in Israel today are Arabs. ^[xvii]

Because of the Occupation Israel is becoming an openly apartheid society. In the West Bank there are two systems of law – one for Jewish settlers and another for Palestinians. Even in pre-1967 Israel, the calls for an openly apartheid society are increasing. At the ‘peace talks’ Tsipi Livni MK, a “moderate” Zionist, tried to include the areas where Israel’s Arabs live in the areas that would be exchanged for the settlement blocs of the West Bank.^[xviii] There has been a whole raft of legislation, such as the 2011 Nakba Law, specifically targeted at Israel’s Arabs. The Zionist Right wish to go from the implicit to the explicit, from hidden to overt discrimination.

Police violence against Israeli Palestinians is another area of inbuilt and systemic discrimination. When demonstrations took place in Kafr Kanna in response to the killing of 22-year-old Khir Hamdan by the Police, Netanyahu called for the withdrawal of citizenship from Israeli Palestinians who he alleged had rioted. Those taking part in Jewish riots have never been threatened with the loss of citizenship, because Israel is a Jewish state.^[xix] The Police killing was captured on video and showed the Police had lied and deliberately murdered an Arab teenager.  About this Netanyahu had nothing to say.

By way of contrast, when an Ethiopian soldier was captured on camera being beaten up by the Police, there were riots. Netanyahu’s reaction to this was to invite the soldier to his residence and hug him whilst denouncing anti-Ethiopian racism.^[xx] 

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[i]            Jimmy Carter: Israel's 'Apartheid' Policies Worse Than South Africa's, Ha’aretz 11.12.06.,

[ii]           Netanyahu policies may turn Israel into apartheid state – former Israeli PM, RT, 17.6.16.

[iii]           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

[iv]           In the survey of 400 Jewish and Israeli teens, 27% of Arab Israelis reported never having spoken with a Jewish youth.   http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Survey-35-percent-of-Jewish-Israeli-teens-have-never-interacted-with-Arab-peers-404831

[v]           Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, SIR JOHN HOPE SIMPSON, October 1930 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hope-simpson-report.

[vi]           Poll: 55% back rabbis' anti-Arab ruling, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3998010,00.html Dozens of top Israeli rabbis sign ruling to forbid rental of homes to Arabs, http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/dozens-of-top-israeli-rabbis-sign-ruling-to-forbid-rental-of-homes-to-arabs-1.329312, Ha’aretz 7.12.10.

[vii]          Battling against Israeli 'apartheid', BBC News, Lucy Ash, 23.12.04., http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4111915.stm

[viii]         Ha’aretz, 27.1.05. AG Mazuz Rules JNF Land Can Now Be Sold to Arabs , http://www.haaretz.com/ag-mazuz-rules-jnf-land-can-now-be-sold-to-arabs-1.148348

[ix]           For hostile reactions see for example Is This Land Still Our Land? The Expropriation of Zionism, Azureonline, No. 36, Spring 2009, Golovensky and Gilboa, http://azure.org.il/article.php?id=492

[x]           'Laws won't help get rid of Arabs’, YNet, 29.11.10., 'Laws won't help get rid of Arabs, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3990861,00.html

[xi]           It was not finally overturned until Brown v. Board of Education 1954.

[xii]          http://en.idi.org.il/tools-and-data/guttman-center-for-surveys/the-israeli-democracy-index/ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3248693,00.html

[xiii]         ‘Marriage to an Arab is national treason’ 27.3.07, YNet. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3381978,00.html Roee Nahmias

[xiv]         Israel’s Religiously Divided Society, Pew Research Centre, https://tinyurl.com/y38wdrnv

[xv]          The definition of indirect discrimination is where a policy, criteria or practice is imposed, which is ostensibly neutral, but which in practice a whole class of people (for example women) find it more difficult to achieve.

[xvi]         For Jews and Arabs, Israel’s School System Remains Separate and Unequal, Ha’aretz 7 July 2016,

            http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.729404

[xvii]         Annual report shows 1.7 million Israelis living below poverty line, 17.12.13. http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Annual-report-shows-17-million-Israelis-living-below-poverty-line-335255

[xviii]        Palestine Papers, Permanent Revolution, Autumn 2011 see Clayton Swisher, Al Jazeera: Introducing the Palestine Papers, https://leaksource.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/al-jazeera-introducing-palestine-papers-live-updates/

[xix]         Netanyahu: Those who call to destroy Israel should have citizenship revoked, +972 Magazine, 8.11.14., http://972mag.com/bibi-those-who-call-to-destroy-israel-should-have-citizenship-revoked/98537/ Meet the Arab-Israelis living in fear of expulsion, Residents in the flashpoint Israeli town of Kafr Kana fear mass expulsion if a controversial new law designating the country a Jewish state is approved, The Telegraph, 1.12.14, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11263845/Meet-the-Arab-Israelis-living-in-fear-of-expulsion.html

[xx]          Netanyahu hugs black Jewish soldier who was assaulted by Israeli police officers sparking riots by Ethiopian Jews, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3067010/Israeli-president-says-Ethiopian-protest-exposes-wound.html

You don’t have to be anti-Semitic to be a Zionist but it certainly helps

Katie Hopkins backs up the Pittsburgh murderer- Jews are Responsible for using refugees to undermine the White nations

By their friends shall ye know them

Katie Hopkins is a byword for racism and bigotry.  What is in the throat of the tabloid leader writers is on the Twitter feed of Katie Hopkins.  There is no neo-Nazi insult that is too vile or genocidal for Katie Hopkins.  Hence why the Mail took her on from the Sun.

However Hopkins has managed to excel herself with her latest tweet justifying Robert Bowers, the murderer of 11 Jews at Pittsburgh. In his last message Bowers tweeted ‘HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch our people get slaughtered. Screw your optics I’m going in.’ HIAS being the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Hopkins tweeted:

‘Watching the pin-the-blame on the donkey after #PittsburghSynagogue. Gab. Trump. White Supremacists. The Media. Muslims. Look to the Chief Rabbi and his support for mass migration across the Med. There you will find your truths.” #Pittsburg

It’s not clear which Chief Rabbi she is talking about. Britain’s Chief Rabbi, the hapless Ephraim Mirvis, has never supported mass migration, but it is a useful myth. The Chief Rabbi is a metonym for Jews. In other words the Jews are responsible for the refugees which Trump railed against in the recent Congressional election campaign.

Katie Hopkins anti-semitic comment on Ed Miliband's wife, Justine

The Jewish Chronicle engaged in some synthetic outrage Katie Hopkins condemned for blaming Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting on 'Chief Rabbi's support for mass migration, but they carefully refrained from publicising her support for Israel.

It is a favourite theme of the neo-Nazi Right that the ‘problem’ of refugees is the ‘fault’ of the Jews. It would seem that Katie Hopkins, who spends increasing time in the company of the far-Right, has adopted this meme. '

Hopkin’s  reaction to the suicide bomb at Ariande Grande’s concert in Manchester, when 22 people were killed, was to call for a ‘Final Solution’ of Muslims, which led to her departure from LBC.

Katie thinks the world of Tommy Robinson aka Yaxley Lennon

Katie Hopkins is however a consistent bigot.  She may be the highest profile racist in Britain today, apart from her good friend Tommy Robinson, but she is also a sincere and dedicated Zionist.

When it comes to BDS, as opposed to bombing, Katie is full of concern for Palestinian jobs - no matter that they deliberately stifle the Palestinian economy

Palestinians, the original inhabitants are 'rodents' i.e. vermin - neo-Nazi language from the Sun and Mail's former columnist

Katy Hopkins concern for Israeli families contrasts with her disinterest in the victims of the aerial bombing of Gaza's infrastructure

She visited Israel and went out of her way to praise the Israeli military and the settlers and demonise the Palestinians.  However none of this prevented her from being an anti-Semite. Quite the contrary to her diaspora Jews must seem pitifully weak.

Let us recall other comments that went virtually unnoticed by the Zionists until she picked on the Jews. As thousands of refugees were drowning in the Mediterranean, as they tried to flee civil war and famine in Africa, Katie Hopkins, took a pride in demonstrating how ‘tough’ she was.  One of her most infamous quotes was

“Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit “Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984”, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors”

Courtesay of the Daily Mail, Katie Hopkins went out to meet fellow fascists

UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, pointed out that the term “cockroaches” was used by both the Nazis and those behind the genocide in Rwanda. In the Sun she wrote

“No, I don’t care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.’

Katie Hopkins with holocaust denier Peter Sweden

Hopkins joined the C-Star in Sicily, which had been crowd funded by the fascists, whose purpose it was to prevent the rescue of drowning refugees. Ironically the fascist ship broke down and had to be rescued by the German ship Sea Eye which was there to rescue refugees! It was whilst meeting the group Defend Europe in Sicily that she posed for photographs with Peter Sweden, who is a holocaust denier. Sweden tweeted that

the globalists (mainly Jews) are the ones bringing in the Muslims to Europe, they seem to work together” and “it is the Vatican and the Jews who are behind the NOW [New World Order]

The collected sayings of Peter Sweden

Marie van der Zyl, the President of the Board of Deputies wrote that

“It is distressing to see Katie Hopkins posing for a photograph with a Holocaust denier, as part of her trip to support the ‘Defend Europe’ campaign,”

It must be distressing for Zyl, who fully supports the equally bigoted policy of Israeli Ministers when it comes to refugees.

After all it wasn’t all that long ago when Katie Hopkins was an honoured guest at the annual dinner and dance of the Zionist Federation.  And who could possibly object to her presence when Israeli Minister Gideon Saar was the guest speaker?  Saar even had the chutzpah to claim that Israel didn’t deport asylum seekers.  Even as dedicated a Zionist as Rabbi Lea Mühlstein was walked out. The Jewish Chronicle claimed that the dinner was ‘marred by the heckling of Gideon Sa’ar'. Katie tweeted

“Lovely to spend time with friends & supporters @ZionistFed celebrating 70 years of Israeli Independence. Go Bibi. Go Israel”

Katie Hopkins was a hit with those who attended the Zionist Federation dinner

Katie seems to have had a wonderful time having her photo taken with fans and of course the chief ghoul himself, Mark Regev.

This provoked Daniel Sugarman, a hack journalist to complain that Katie Hopkin’s presence at the Zionist Federation’s Gala Dinner was akin to a pork chop at a Friday Night Dinner. Most unfair to pigs. Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson, and why Israel needs to up its media game. Daniel ran through some of Katie’s more unsavoury comments on “cockroaches”, the need for a “final solution” and her letter “dear black people: if your lives matter, why do you shoot and stab each other so much?”

Katie  Hopkins enthusiasm for Poland's antisemitic government comes as no surprise

All of the above is true of course but how is this different from referring to African refugees as a ‘cancer’.?  This is exactly what Miri Regev, Israel’s Minister of ‘Culture’ (as in Goebbels) did.  Admittedly Regev apologised for using the term – that is she apologised to cancer patients for having compared them to refugees. An Opinion Poll conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute found 52% of Israelis supported her comments, and 33% supported violence against refugees. The moral of the story is that Katie should emigrate to Israel where she can convert to membership of the Jewish race and can then join the Israeli government. Sugarman found it

‘infuriating but, sadly, not surprising. There are unfortunately some within the wider Zionist movement who appear to believe that any amount of loathsome behaviour is bearable, as long as a perceived support of Israel is there.’

Katie had tweeted about how she had “pencilled him in” (Mark Regev) as her fourth husband.  Clearly it would be a match made in hell. But Sugarman is being a hypocrite. There is nothing that Katie said that has not been said every day by Israeli politicians. 

For those interested there is a fascinating interview in the November 2018 edition of the Israel Today magazine with Katie Hopkins which informs us that she is ‘one of the few willing to speak truth to ills in our societies, irrespective of the consequences of doing so’.

Tony Greenstein