Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

*Nick Cave thread

It does depend what comparisons you're drawing though. Saying Israel practices a form of apartheid is a valid comparison

― Free Ass Ange (Tom D.), Friday, December 15, 2023 4:32 PM bookmarkflaglink

It is. And like anvil, I was trying to understand if the claim of apartheid is a claim about Israel's treatment of people in the occupied territories or a claim about its treatment of Arabs within Israel as well.

I hate Nick Cave so I avoided that thread didn't know it was a discussion of the merits of BDS #onethread

well this is bad: "Middle school teacher arrested after allegedly threatening to behead Muslim student who said Israeli flag offended her"

That was insane. Just terrible.

I don't have a strong opinion on this, and I understand if people think its semantics, but I wonder if Russia is a better comparison than South Africa? A Ukrainian that is living in the occupied territories, in Mariupol or Berdyansk, doesn't have the same rights as a Ukrainian that is living in St Petersburg or Kazan (or for that matter anyone in Mariupol vs St Petersburg), but we don't call what Russia is implementing in its occupied territories a form of apartheid (though maybe we should, not sure).

The problem with Russia is more generally considered to be occupation not apartheid, and for me I think occupations potentially always result in apartheid like situations, because the territories that are occupied get treated differently

Apartheid is institutionalised racial hierarchical segregation. Key to this is the institutionalison. Multiple generations of Palestinians have grown up in a normalised system of occupation, subject to combinations of state perpetrated measures and those carried out by settlers and facilitated by the state (politicians, courts) that range from violations of human dignity to physical violence including large numbers of civilian deaths year after year. Though it is not unreasonable to speculate that this may be established as a norm in occupied Ukraine, it would be more appropriate I think to suggest that whatever situation pertains there is the result of a state of emergency stemming from the outbreak of an illegal war of aggression.

But with parts of Ukraine approaching a decade under occupation, plus the arrival of settlers during that time period, at what point do we say that its has become a normalised system of occupation?

Is a state of emergency necessarily a temporary situation, and can there be a situation of indefinite temporary?

I feel like Russia and Israel apply different rules to territories they have taken and apply different rules to people who live in those territories than in the rest of their country, whereas South Africa applied those rules universally. That could still be apartheid but it seems more predicated on occupation than in the case of SA

Is Jewish considered a race? I don't think it is in the US.

"Socially, the country will implement Jim Crow-style segregation. Palestinians will be forbidden from purchasing property from non-Jews. Everything up to and including maternity wards will be segregated by race."

https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/israels-government-of-psychopaths

That's his description of Smotrich's vision for Israel. Smotrich and Ben Gvir are psychos. It's a stain on Israel that they were allowed in the government. But .. they are not the government. Netanyahu needed them to regain the prime ministership and he thinks he can keep them under control. Maybe he's right that he can keep them under control but it now looks very doubtful he'll stay in power once the fighting stops. So what good did this shameful bargain even do him? I do think the successor government is likely to send the Kahanists back out to the shadows where they belong.

I wanted to understand the statement

Apartheid is institutionalised racial hierarchical segregation.

in terms of Israel.

I guess I hadn't thought too deeply about the "apartheid" label until plax (ico) typed that definition out.

I don't want to trivialize the situation in Israel/Palestine. And I also wouldn't want to trivialize what people experienced under Apartheid in South Africa or the US under Jim Crow laws, which were state enforced racial segregation.

Race is an immutable characteristic. Apartheid is a crime against humanity.

Do people think Jewish is a race when they say this?

Race is an immutable characteristic.

Is this still the thread where we talk about I/P as it relates to other countries btw because it doesn't seem that way? (I am as guilty as anyone)

table I am pretty sympathetic to that view.

Which is why I am again questioning the "apartheid" label and definition.

xp yes - this came up as a result of Tracer posting stickers of "apartheid" hummus for use in the UK.

Actual Jim Crow laws are a pretty good way to disprove "race is an immutable characteristic"!

Yes I understand that. I'm still asking the people who use "apartheid" in reference to what they mean in Israel.

Plax said it was institutionalized racial hierarchical segregation.

Saying race is a construct would seem to discourage use of the term "apartheid" as a descriptor.

No it doesn't. Israeli law (notably the nation state law) is widely considered (by those encompassing supporters and critics) to establish Arab people in Israel and the oPt a racially inferior group. This is a social and legal construct, not an immutable distinction between groups of people.

You said hierarchy, which implies races, plural.

You're saying it's Israeli laws singling out Arab citizens of Israel and constructing their identity in terms of race?

I'm genuinely asking because apartheid has a lot of shock value.

Friend wrote this piece for the Nation. Well worth reading.

Why is it not enough for culture workers to condemn the war in high-profile venues? Measuring public opinion alone, the movement against the war on Gaza is highly popular, but deeply disempowered. A 70 percent supermajority of the US supports a cease-fire, including a majority of both Republican and Democratic voters. But the US government still foots the multibillion-dollar bill for Israel’s war crimes—which include the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure, launching airstrikes at schools, invading Al-Shifa Hospital under the false claim that it hosted a military base, and repeatedly bombing the Al-Jabalia refugee camp. A small, though growing, minority of democratically elected representatives at the federal level—the actual decision-makers whose votes secure or prohibit military aid to Israel—have publicly called for a permanent cease-fire. In other words, while people who oppose war and genocide need to hold the line, we don’t actually need to win the battle for public opinion against the war—that is already decisively on our side. Instead, we need to understand the power structure that makes a small number of decision makers decide to facilitate the war in Gaza and that insulates them from the consequences of their actions. And then we need to use that knowledge to cause a greater crisis for them than the one they fear from our opponents.

Do people think Jewish is a race when they say this?

I'd say race is a more modern construct than judaism, which has very deep roots in the much older identity of tribalism. According to modern racial categories, the diaspora has tended to deracinate judaism, but the fact of jewish identity being maintained for a couple millennia, always as a minority within other nations, cultures and ethnicities, has led to a dynamic that duplicates racial dynamics fairly closely.

"You said hierarchy, which implies races, plural."

When two groups are constructed such that one is racialised and the other not, that is a hierarchy.

I'm not sure how you think that the term apartheid has shock value in this context, could you unpack that?

Those Israelis who don't want Jews to live beside Arabs, or don't want Jews to have relationships with Arabs, or don't want Arabs to have the same rights as Jews, I wonder what they consider the Palestinians to be.

What I am trying to get at is that "one is racialised and the other is not" - is that written in Israeli law somewhere? I hadn't read that. Who is doing this racializing?

Regarding shock value, Apartheid seems to define the Israel/Palestine conflict in terms of skin color - for want of a better word. That has shocking connotations in the US for several reasons. It seems to go along with "racist project" and other charged terms.

I said earlier I think a comparison is valid. I wasn't sure if you were saying it literally is "apartheid."

This convo has me wondering about the origin of matrilineal descent in Judaism, and I found this wiki, which was surprising in the extent of its detail and I’m glad I read it!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew

Also I was interested in possible US/UK differences.

In the US I don't think I hear Jewishness expressed as a race except maybe by white supremacists. It has bad connotations for me because of Hitler. In the US I believe Jewishness is considered more like national origin, religion, or ethnic protected groups. It struck me as weird reading people from the UK expressing discrimination against Jewish people as a form of racism. Maybe I get more used to it the more I read ILX.

fgti, that's a very nice link.

I feel like it fits in with an article addressing the fracture on the far left with left or liberal Jewish people due to misunderstandings over terminology and symbols.

Yeah that makes sense. I think racism can be defined as “prejudice against an ethnic group” without necessarily defining the ethnic group as a race

fgti, that's a very nice link.

Isn’t it? I was blown away by the amount of info there. Interesting to read that matrilineal descent has its roots in scripture, too.

Apartheid seems to define the Israel/Palestine conflict in terms of skin color

I haven't seen this. What I have seen are (for example) accounts from people visiting Israel who were asked by IDF soldiers what their religion was, because the answer to that question determined whether or not they were allowed to walk down a particular street. Thus it seems to me that when people use the term "apartheid state" to describe Israel, they are using it to mean "government which grants one group (Jews) more legal rights than another group (Arabs)". And that there are equivalencies in the way Palestinians are required to pass through military checkpoints to get from one place to another, and the areas in which they live can be sealed off at any time, the same way black citizens had to present papers to go places in apartheid South Africa and their townships could be closed off or raided by the military at any time. It's an apartheid system both in terms of one group being legally superior to another, and in the concrete details of how the oppression of the legally inferior group is conducted.

In the US I don't think I hear Jewishness expressed as a race except maybe by white supremacists. It has bad connotations for me because of Hitler. In the US I believe Jewishness is considered more like national origin, religion, or ethnic protected groups. It struck me as weird reading people from the UK expressing discrimination against Jewish people as a form of racism. Maybe I get more used to it the more I read ILX.

Corbyn was constantly called a racist by people attacking him for being antisemitic. I lost count of the number of times I heard rightwing public figures saying "Why is antisemitism the only acceptable form of racism?" Mostly Jewish rightwingers or right wing Jewish publications btw. It took me two seconds to google this...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/17/going-london-shows-anti-semitism-still-acceptable-form-racism/

Apartheid seems to define the Israel/Palestine conflict in terms of skin color

No it doesn't.

(xp) ... that's from two years ago btw!

I haven't seen this. What I have seen are (for example) accounts from people visiting Israel who were asked by IDF soldiers what their religion was, because the answer to that question determined whether or not they were allowed to walk down a particular street.

― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Saturday, December 16, 2023 1:18 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Are you sure this wasn't in the West Bank? I am not aware of any "Jewish only" streets in Israel proper. There is not de jure segregation within the '48 borders. There is discrimination, but there is not systematic segregation. Also I think even in the West Bank, whether you can drive on certain roads is, at least legally, defined by whether you have Israeli citizenship rather than ethnicity/religion.

The nazis constructed a racial hierarchy that marked jewish people as a racialised other. They developed eugenic typologies that encompassed physical, intellectual and moral characteristics and designated them a 'subrace' as part of their campaign of genocide. It didn't matter whether or not jewish people constitute a race as this did not impede the development of this way of constructing them as such.

Within the context of international law, the court that responded to the Rwandan genocide stated in its rulings that "conventional definition of racial group is based on the hereditary physical traits often identified with a geographical region, irrespective of linguistic, cultural, national or religious factors". (Race as a category is largely undefined in HR conventions). I'm not sure that I've ever encountered any sustained attempt to understand race/racism that defines it simplistically as 'skin colour'.

To be clear, the understanding of Israel as an Apartheid state is not mine but one supported by many, including Israeli civil society organisations (B'Tselem), international humanitarian organisations (Amnesty international), and various agencies of the UN. A key document is the ESCWA report "Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid" https://aardi.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/ESCWA-2017-Richard-Falk-Apartheid.pdf

there's several xposts that should be in there so it doesn't make that much sense in the context of the conversation that developed while i was typing it.

Thus it seems to me that when people use the term "apartheid state" to describe Israel, they are using it to mean "government which grants one group (Jews) more legal rights than another group (Arabs)".

People say things like "gender apartheid." In the latter case I didn't think it carried the strong implication of racism. Maybe I am wrong.

I believe you when you say there are Jewish rightwingers in the UK who introduced conflations of race into certain UK discussions. I wonder if that was that always the case, if it's more recent. Horrific event that article is reporting on, btw.

xp to Tom

Are you sure this wasn't in the West Bank? I am not aware of any "Jewish only" streets in Israel proper.

I am not sure. I could be misremembering.

i want to just say I think these are good healthy discussions to have (about race, ethnicity, etc) and I'm glad they are happening here on ILX so I can read them, rather than on some godawful place like twitter. It underscores why ethnic studies is an important discipline and also makes clear why the right wing would like to eliminate it.

I'm not sure that I've ever encountered any sustained attempt to understand race/racism that defines it simplistically as 'skin colour'.

You introduced the term

Apartheid is institutionalised racial hierarchical segregation.

I certainly hope you're not going to try to shame me for your introduction of the term Apartheid or trying to guess what you mean by "racial"

Excuse me?

For what? You have done nothing to be excused for.

I believe you when you say there are Jewish rightwingers in the UK who introduced conflations of race into certain UK discussions. I wonder if that was that always the case, if it's more recent. Horrific event that article is reporting on, btw.

It's true that the prospect of an actual socialist being elected Prime Minister focused their minds somewhat.

I realize it gets complicated, but understanding the legal regime in Israel/Palestine requires understanding of the different geographic areas, the history, and the definition of who is Jewish. There are a bunch of different overlapping concepts. Among non-Jewish Arabs, the main distinction is whether someone is descended from the people who were not forced out or did not leave in '48 or those who were forced out or left. Those Arabs who remained were given full citizenship in Israel and they and their descendants make up about 20% of the population. They include Arab Muslims, Bedouins, Druze, and Christians. Some of them prefer to call themselves Palestinians, others less so. They may face discrimination, mostly de facto but some de jure, but there is not a national regime of formal segregation. They can vote, serve in government, attend universities, etc. Housing discrimination and employment discrimination exist and there is less of a legal regime to address them than in the US. On the other hand, they are exempt from mandatory military service.

Palestinians in the West Bank (which has been under military occupation since 1967) face something closer to Apartheid. Gaza has not been militarily occupied since Israel pulled out its troops and the 8000 or so Jewish residents in the mid 2000s, however Israel blockaded Gaza after Hamas (which is openly hostile to Israel) won elections, so (along with Egypt) it has had considerable control over the flow of goods and people over the borders.

I can understand why activists might prefer the shorthand of "Israel's regime is apartheid" for communications purposes. But if the entire area had the same legal regime as within the '48 borders, I don't think you would be able to call it apartheid.

I did not introduce the term apartheid to the discussion of Israel and the situation in the oPt, this has a long history. I did not introduce it to this thread, you mentioned it twice before I did and I responded to you. You do not have to guess what I mean by racial because that is not relevant, what is important is what is meant by racial in the context of international law which defines the crime of apartheid. It is true that this is not straightforward (despite its invokation in key human rights law for decades, it is not until the Rwandan genocide that the concept was clarified by a court, as I mentioned above). The ESCWA report I linked above "sets out to demonstrate how Israel has imposed such a system on the Palestinians in order to maintain the domination of one racial group over others." (my emphasis)

mqny xps racism has never been about strictly defined "races" (despite its own insistence) and racial categories have never been stable or coherent - Jewish people definitely have been and are racialised in various ways in various times and places - the existence of the term antisemitism (pseudoscientific/linguisitic euphemism for Jew-hatred based on the notion of an inherently foreign/devious "semitic race") is testament to that even though racialisation (and race) has changed shape a lot since then

A clear articulation of the position is made in "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid" a legal analysis commissioned by the South African Human Sciences research council (quoted in many subsequent UN documents).

"[...] this study finds that Jewish and Palestinian identities function as racial identities in the sense provided by ICERD, the Apartheid Convention, and the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Israel’s status as a ‘Jewish State’ is inscribed in its Basic Law and it has developed legal and institutional mechanisms by which the State seeks to ensure its enduring Jewish character. These laws and institutions are channelled into the OPT to convey privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantage Palestinians on the basis of their respective group identities. This domination is associated principally with transferring control over land in the OPT to exclusively Jewish use, thus also altering the demographic status of the territory. This discriminatory treatment cannot be explained or excused on grounds of citizenship, both because it goes beyond what is permitted by ICERD and because certain provisions in Israeli civil and military law provide that Jews present in the OPT who are not citizens of Israel also enjoy privileges conferred on Jewish-Israeli citizens in the OPT by virtue of being Jews. Consequently, this study finds that the State of Israel exercises control in the OPT with the purpose of maintaining a system of domination by Jews over Palestinians and that this system constitutes a breach of the prohibition of apartheid."

https://www.palestineportal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Occupation-Colonialism-Apartheid_Exec-Summary.pdf

To be clear the designation of Israel as an apartheid state is not an activist comms strategy but a position with strong roots in analysis of international human rights law.

if many people who lived through apartheid are happy calling the situation for Palestinians apartheid I don't see the need to quibble too much about how similar or different it is in which places for which Palestinians