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Israel, Apartheid and Anthony Albanese

18/7/2021

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Click here to Israel, Apartheid, and why Albo is seriously wrong and seriously right
 
The zoom conducted by Mr Albanese, the leader of the Federal Opposition, with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has received wide publicity and greatly angered the Palestinian diaspora in Australia. This is sad and ironic, given Mr Albanese has a long history of supporting Palestinian rights and helped found the federal parliamentary friends of Palestine.
 
So, where does the problem lie?
 
The focus of the anger lies in his refusal to accept the word Apartheid as the most apt way of describing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In its most extreme form, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians refuses to recognise they have any rights, let alone equal rights.
 
All cultures and languages use words and phrases from other peoples to convey meaning, particularly when one’s own language does not have an exactly equivalent word.  Many Italian and French words are commonplace in English (Australian) usage as of course are words from more ancient languages such as Greek and Latin.  Apartheid is an Afrikaans word that means apartness or separation.  It described a government enforced system of racial segregation. The word has power both to describe and to shock.  Indeed, Israel has its own word for the same reality – Hafrada - which carries the meaning of both separation and segregation. It is used by the Israeli government to describe their policy.
 
Apartheid is the predictable outcome when the political theory of Zionism is enforced on a subject people.  (I distinguish between Zionism as a theological or cultural construct and Zionism as an enforced political dogma).  Mr Albanese is quite wrong to dismiss the words of the Nobel Peace Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who describes the situation facing Palestinians as directly akin to the situation facing black and coloured South Africans under the apartheid regime.  However, the term is no longer applicable simply in comparison with South Africa.  The Rome statute of the international criminal court states “The crime of apartheid means inhumane acts of a character committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”. While not wishing to apply the word ‘apartheid’ within Israel itself, nevertheless the Nation-State-law of 2018 provides for 65 laws that discriminate against Palestinians, 20% of the population.
 
He is also wrong to dismiss the recent poll to emerge from the US that indicates a quarter of all American Jews describe Israel’s control and treatment of Palestinians as Apartheid while the figure amongst younger Jews is even higher. While it is true that poll results are determined by the questions asked, it is undeniably true that a significant proportion of the Jewish diaspora is highly critical of Israel and its abuse of human rights and the Jewish members of APAN will attest that ECAJ, and least of all the Zionist Federation of Australia, do not speak for them.
 
Finally, he is wrong not to take seriously the highly respected Israeli human right organization B’Tselem which uses the word apartheid to describe Israeli policy of systemic human rights abuse in the Palestinian territories.
 
Apartheid is insidious in its advance.  It starts with annoying rules which apply to one race but not to others.  It proceeds with tools of identification which permit one group freedoms which are denied to others. It climaxes in one race being systematically ‘cleansed’ from homes farms and villages they have occupied for generations to be corralled into smaller and smaller areas of deprivation and poverty, with violence used to keep them in place. Palestinians experience all these phases. Sunday’s news stories from the Israeli paper Haaretz chronicle the story of a Jewish settler on the West Bank shooting at Palestinians while the Israeli military watched on.  Stories of apartheid emerge every day and visitors to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza will experience them for themselves.  From my own experience I echo the words of an Australian parliamentarian who, following his week in the Palestinian Territories, said “I cannot now unsee what I have seen”.
 
Apartheid is the most apt word to describe the situation faced by Palestinians and I encourage all who claim to stand for universal human rights, especially politicians, to name the reality, in keeping with the legal meaning of the term in international law.
 
On the other hand, Mr Albanese is seriously right in his reassurance that a government he leads will recognise Palestine in its first term.
 
Israeli leadership is of the view that the whole of the West Bank (known in Israel as Judea and Samaria) and East Jerusalem will be part of Israel, but the Palestinians who live in these areas will never be part of Israel.  Numerous senior ministers in the Knesset are on record as saying that not one inch of these lands will ever be ceded to Palestinian control, nor will Palestinians be granted Israeli citizenship. Netanyahu and the current prime minister, Bennett are part of this chorus. It is the charter of the Likud party.
 
In 2010, Henry Siegman, former director of the American Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America, wrote:
Israel’s relentless drive to establish “facts on the ground” in the occupied West Bank … seems finally to have succeeded in locking in the irreversibility of its colonial project. As a result of that “achievement”, one that successive Israeli governments have long sought in order to preclude the possibility of a two-state solution, Israel has crossed the threshold from “the only democracy in the Middle East” to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.
 
That is why recognising Palestine, recognising the right of Palestinians to exist, is so important and the foundation of any just and peaceful future that may lie ahead.  Recognising Palestine does not pre-empt a future.  It is however essential to affirm that both halves of the population that almost equally occupy these lands deserve an equal share in that future.
 
I applaud the courage of Mr Albanese and his colleagues in the Labor Party for making this stand and for staking a claim on the right side of history.
 
Both Israelis and Palestinians deserve better than their current crop of politicians. They serve neither peoples well.  If they stay on their present trajectory, unhappiness fear and violence will be the common lot of all who live in this unique slice of planet earth for the foreseeable future.   But it need not be this way.  There is every reason why respect and a desire for mutuality will lead to shared flourishing. Walls, armaments and a disgraceful political class will keep both peoples from living the life they both deserve.
 
Mr Albanese, thanks so much for your long history of speaking up for human rights, but in this case, do not be afraid to name the situation for what it is, for only in naming it, can pressure be brought to change it.
edit.
2 Comments
Roslyn Ross
18/7/2021 05:23:13 pm

Full marks for having the courage to speak the truth. In this age when there is so much talk of human rights, justice, freedom and respect for others, it is astonishing how many still support the apartheid State of Israel.

Thankyou for having the courage to speak out for principles of justice, human rights, rule of law, democracy, common human decency and Christianity. Well done.

Any study of the history of allowing some European Jews to colonise Palestine in 1947 makes it very clear that the colony was never going to be a democracy, offering rights to the indigenous people which equalled those of the coloniser because the raison détre, first mooted by the Zionists in the mid to late 19th century, was for a State in and on Palestine where followers of Judaism would have superior rights and always dominate.

The various reasons, excuses etc., given for why this was 'necessary'did not come for another half a century when the Nazis arrived on the scene. However, a decision by the UN and others to partition someone else's country, against the will of the indigenous people, to allow followers of one religion to set up their own State, in essence a theocracy for members of Judaism, which would immediately disenfranchise and dispossess the indigenous people, Muslims and Christians, would never be tolerated today.

How can anyone justify the continued colonisation of Palestine, where Israel denies 6 million indigenous Palestinians freedom, justice and human and civil rights simply because they are non-Jews? Both Mandela and Tutu had it right, and they would know, calling Israel for what it is, an apartheid State. The fact that it is done in the name of religion and not race as happened in South Africa is irrelevant. It is still bigotry and racism even in the name of religion and perhaps even more to be condemned.

The Zionist Israelis now subjugate and dominate all of historic Palestine and continue to place illegal Jewish settlers in Occupied Palestine, euphemistically referred to as the 'West Bank. They refuse to do what other nations founded through colonisation have done - create one democratic state shared equally by the indigenous Palestinians and their European colonisers. Why? Because Israel demands that followers of Judaism remain in total control and non-Jews remain inferior as human beings in Occupied Palestine and as citizens in what is called Israel.

How anyone living in a free Western democracy can support Israel is the question and why so many politicians 'toe the line'as Israel commits one human rights atrocity after another in order to maintain its colonial military domination of Palestine is the other question never asked?

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Andrew (Andy) Alcock
28/7/2021 12:06:47 am

This is a great background to Anthony Albanese's comments about apartheid Israel and his notion of anti- semitism.It would appear that he has not done much homework about this issue. I sadly don't see him as a great fighter for human rights. He studiously avoids answering contacts about Witness K and Bernard Collaery - the men who assisted Timor-Leste, the poorest nation in SE, Asia to stop Australia from stealing their resources after they had endured 24 years of fascist Indonesian genocide and brutality. Albo did say that East Timor should not have happened in 2020 about 21 years after the last Indonesian soldiers had been forced out by the UN INTERFET peace-keeping force led by Australia. And I don't remember him speaking out about the issue when our East Timorese friends were in their darkest hour. Anyway, his comments on the ME irked me, so I sent him an email which is below: :


The Honourable Mr Anthony Albanese
Leader of the Opposition
Parliament of Australia 
CANBERRA ACT 2600

Dear Mr Albanese

RE:    THE ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN ISSUE

I have been a supporter of the freedom struggle and the human rights of the Palestinian people for over 50 years.

As a result, I was very concerned to hear your comments attacking thos who describe Israel as an apartheid state.

After World War 2, terrorist Zionist gangs went on rampages throughout Palestine murdering local Palestinians and occupying their houses, businesses and lands. This was how the modern state of Israel was founded  - by terrorism.

Since then, the Palestinians have become foreigners in their own country because of the actions of the Zionist state of Israel and its military. Some of the crimes used against Palestinians have been:

* the continuing occupation of Palestinian lands and the construction of israeli settlements on them in violation of UN sanctions and universal law. 

* the establishment of road blocks that treat Palestinians in a discriminatory way and make it difficult for them to meet with family members, go to work, attend medical appointments etc.

* the invasion of Palestinian homes by israel's Defence Force (IDF) harassing the residents and making arbitrary arrests Many former IDF soldiers have condemned the behaviour of the IDFin its aim to harass, terrorise and even murder Palestinian citizens Iincluding children

* the bulldozing of Palestinian houses by the IDF and allowing Jewish settlers to build houses on the stolen land. 

* in the occupied West Bank, Israel has constructed a wall which is being used to reinforce its illegal seizure of Palestinian lands and properties 

Palestinians have been banned from walking on the streets. In additoion Jews only services eg schools, medical clinics and public transport have been established and 

* since the election of the Hamas government, Israel has imposed an illegal and inhumane blockade against the Palestinians who live there. 

* during the COVID-19 pandemic the Government of Israel has destroyed Palestinian COVID-19 clinics, harassed Palestinian volunteers and medical staff and blocked vaccines from reaching occupied Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. 

Over the years, human rights groups, the the UN, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jeremy Corbin,  and "righteous Jews - eg Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky, Tania Reinhart, Milo Peled,Antony Lowenstein along with Palestinian Jews have condemned the inhumane, racist and villifying actions carried out by the apartheid state of Israel against the Palestinian people.

It is very appropriate to condemn such behaviou as it clearly violates the Universal Ceclaration of Human Rights and it is very appropriate to describe it as "apartheid". This is a a South African term to describe the previous racist regime in that country before it became a democracy.

And to criticise the Zionist Israeli government for its crimes against humanity is not antisemitism as apologists for ZIonists and their dreadful treatment of Palestinians claim.
Arabs are Semites too and this includes Palestinians. Israel's treatment of Palestinians is therefore antisemitism. It is also noteworthy that not all the Jews who came from Europe now living in Israel are technically Semites. 

To use such an argument demonstrates ignorance of the historical situation.

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    ​Bishop George Browning. 
    ​Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn 1993 - 2008.

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    ​PhD Thesis: Sabbath and the Common Good: An Anglican response to the Environmental Crisis.

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