Saree Makdisi on why Jimmy Carter is right to call Israel an apartheid state.
0 thoughts on “On apartheid in Israel”
Flawed argument…Palestinians in the territories have a history of murdering innocent people. They have murdered families as they drive through the highways. That is why they have mobility restrictions.
If the argument were consistent then Israeli Arab citizens would be discriminated against…but they aren’t. Treated no different from Jews, they even get preferential treatment in some circumstances.
SA apartheid was based on blatant racism. A completely different phenomenon. Anyone who thinks they are similar knows both histories very poorly.
Im surprised how this person with such a shallow reasoning could be a profesor. I guess she has never been there if she does not know what would be the result of the ‘one road for all’ approcach. We can just bet how many settlers would reach their houses during intifada. But anyway, it is a pitty that Palestinians dont have their own state that they can make their own apartheid for themselves.
Alarmist analogies like Rwanda not withstanding, there is something to Carter’s apartheid analogy, despite the fact that it is couched in a kind of kooky left-wing Evangelical ahistory. What distinguishes the situation in Israel from that of South Africa right now (apart from the Israeli Arab minority) is the fact that the Palestinians are not now working in Israel, whereas the cantons were designed to facilitate the movement of black labor in and out of white south Africa, thereby maintaining separateness while ensuring economic growth. Since the second Intifadah, the place of Palestinian laborers has been taken by temporary workers from Asia and Africa. So the big difference in my view is a technicality. Obviously the grand context is radically different, but looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in isolation the apartheid analogists have a good point.
The ‘humiliation’ of a regional ethnic minority ruling over the vast regional ethnic majority is what forms the link to Rwanda. In both cases, the majority banked on portraying the minority group as foreigners who had no legitimate claim to land and who were supported by the West. In both cases, there was a split in the ethnic majority group (the moderate Hutus being Fatah). In both cases there is deep paranoia of spies from the ethnic minority infiltrating the government and in both cases there is the use of conspiracy theories to fuel hate (on both sides). These similarities can’t be ignored, but at the same time we must, to a degree, restrain from going as far as relying on fear of genocide. In the same respect, one must refrain from romanticising the conflict with comparisons to the Apartheid.
The apartheid analogy is a valid one, and thankfully has been gaining traction in numerous circles. What many people confuse when I tell them I don’t believe in Israel’s right to exist, is that I might be advocating throwing them back in the sea or some kind of Iranian nuclear holocaust. Far from it, what is my concern, and should be the same for all is justice. The Zionist settlers who moved to Palestine with a settler mentality refused to integrate or interact with the Palestinian people. Not only was this offensive, but it also provoked hostility from the people, especially once the intentions of these settlers were known.
I wonder what the Middle East was like if these immigrants had worked with the people of Palestine and fought with them for independence and a free nation rather than act as a tool for Britain and the United States. I’m sure life would have been very different for both peoples. Unfortunately things cannot be undone now, but more bloodshed can be avoided provided Israel abandons its Zionist ideology and Israeli’s accept they need to do more to mend bridges and acknowledge first and foremost their responsibility for this mess. Sticking your head in the sand and revising history to suit your interests is no solution and won’t get you far.
The solution is two states. Integration will happen after, if ever. Rwanda is in Central Africa, whereas Israel is one of the wealithiest countries in the world. Not intending to be flip, just responding to the previous posts.
Revising history is bad. But would you agree that to some extent we need to forget history? If “we were here first” was a justification to pivot around for policymaking, you might as well throw your support behind Le Pen, Pat Buchanan, and Mugabe as well.
The apartheid analogy makes sense to me too but zionist are terribly scared of it because apartheir is recognized by everubody as an evil thing and it is undermining isareli claims of being a democratic haven with clean hands.
Arab Israelis are often summon to the rescue of israel democratic credentials and if they indeed vote they still face serious not only social discrimination (but minorities everywhere unfotunately hardly ever have the chance of not having to deal with that) but also legal once. Israelis laws may not be as blatantly discriminatory as SA laws where but they nevertheless discriminate at many level such as employement education acess to public services…
For exemple a number of israeli quasi official institutions like the jewish national fund serve only jews and threfore discriminate against arab-israelis.
“We were here first” – the likes of Pat Buchanan can argue that one, but it is pretty silly. I dont’ know how far back Buchanan’s ancestry goes in the USA but if he’s Irish, I doubt it’s more than two hundred years. My own mother’s Anglo forebears can claim 380 years. Of course somebody was here in America before us. Of those people, many of them were completely exterminated, while the rest of their descendants now live on poor reservations, plagued by alcoholism, drug addiction and diabetes.
In any case, ‘we were here first’ is a stupid argument for a white American to make. It’s part of that denial of history that we struggle against in the Middle East.
America is a nation of settlers – and the white settlers, like Israeli settlers today, violated treaties, attacked native villages, and fought bloody wars in order to acquire territory. OFten the worst massacres were “provoked” by native attacks, and spoken of as completely justified. I think the analogy between the settling of the USA and Israeli settling of Palestine is a useful one – not perfect of course.
We could debate analogies till the cows come home and the situation will continue to be what it is – framing it one way or another is of course useful and even powerful sometimes, but I don’t find the hair-splitting of historical parallels to be the most useful way of undestanding the conflict. Ah well.
It’s amusing to hear folks object to the “we were here first” argument when Palestinians use it, given that Israelis use it too, just in a more mythical sense.
It is necessary to differentitae between discrimination which occurs in relation to Arabs witihn Israel proper. This kind of discrimination is seen in all countries with a minority grouping. In fact it is less than would be expected given the overall relationship with the Arab states. In terms of Arabs in West Bank the term aparthied is not appropriate as the relationship is not one of citizens. These Arabs are in effect ‘stateless’ and as such there is a different set of concepts which applies to their treatment. Overall however they are a hostile population and the physical measures which are put in place to control them are on the basis of the security risk they represent rather than their race.
Hope this helps -” victory to progressive secular nationalism everywhere”
“It’s amusing to hear folks object to the “we were here firstâ€� argument when Palestinians use it, given that Israelis use it too, just in a more mythical sense.”
Flawed argument…Palestinians in the territories have a history of murdering innocent people. They have murdered families as they drive through the highways. That is why they have mobility restrictions.
If the argument were consistent then Israeli Arab citizens would be discriminated against…but they aren’t. Treated no different from Jews, they even get preferential treatment in some circumstances.
SA apartheid was based on blatant racism. A completely different phenomenon. Anyone who thinks they are similar knows both histories very poorly.
Im surprised how this person with such a shallow reasoning could be a profesor. I guess she has never been there if she does not know what would be the result of the ‘one road for all’ approcach. We can just bet how many settlers would reach their houses during intifada. But anyway, it is a pitty that Palestinians dont have their own state that they can make their own apartheid for themselves.
For every similarity to the Apartheid I see ten similarities to Rwanda up leading up to the spring of 1994.
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/qana1206/
Alarmist analogies like Rwanda not withstanding, there is something to Carter’s apartheid analogy, despite the fact that it is couched in a kind of kooky left-wing Evangelical ahistory. What distinguishes the situation in Israel from that of South Africa right now (apart from the Israeli Arab minority) is the fact that the Palestinians are not now working in Israel, whereas the cantons were designed to facilitate the movement of black labor in and out of white south Africa, thereby maintaining separateness while ensuring economic growth. Since the second Intifadah, the place of Palestinian laborers has been taken by temporary workers from Asia and Africa. So the big difference in my view is a technicality. Obviously the grand context is radically different, but looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in isolation the apartheid analogists have a good point.
The ‘humiliation’ of a regional ethnic minority ruling over the vast regional ethnic majority is what forms the link to Rwanda. In both cases, the majority banked on portraying the minority group as foreigners who had no legitimate claim to land and who were supported by the West. In both cases, there was a split in the ethnic majority group (the moderate Hutus being Fatah). In both cases there is deep paranoia of spies from the ethnic minority infiltrating the government and in both cases there is the use of conspiracy theories to fuel hate (on both sides). These similarities can’t be ignored, but at the same time we must, to a degree, restrain from going as far as relying on fear of genocide. In the same respect, one must refrain from romanticising the conflict with comparisons to the Apartheid.
The apartheid analogy is a valid one, and thankfully has been gaining traction in numerous circles. What many people confuse when I tell them I don’t believe in Israel’s right to exist, is that I might be advocating throwing them back in the sea or some kind of Iranian nuclear holocaust. Far from it, what is my concern, and should be the same for all is justice. The Zionist settlers who moved to Palestine with a settler mentality refused to integrate or interact with the Palestinian people. Not only was this offensive, but it also provoked hostility from the people, especially once the intentions of these settlers were known.
I wonder what the Middle East was like if these immigrants had worked with the people of Palestine and fought with them for independence and a free nation rather than act as a tool for Britain and the United States. I’m sure life would have been very different for both peoples. Unfortunately things cannot be undone now, but more bloodshed can be avoided provided Israel abandons its Zionist ideology and Israeli’s accept they need to do more to mend bridges and acknowledge first and foremost their responsibility for this mess. Sticking your head in the sand and revising history to suit your interests is no solution and won’t get you far.
The solution is two states. Integration will happen after, if ever. Rwanda is in Central Africa, whereas Israel is one of the wealithiest countries in the world. Not intending to be flip, just responding to the previous posts.
Revising history is bad. But would you agree that to some extent we need to forget history? If “we were here first” was a justification to pivot around for policymaking, you might as well throw your support behind Le Pen, Pat Buchanan, and Mugabe as well.
The apartheid analogy makes sense to me too but zionist are terribly scared of it because apartheir is recognized by everubody as an evil thing and it is undermining isareli claims of being a democratic haven with clean hands.
Arab Israelis are often summon to the rescue of israel democratic credentials and if they indeed vote they still face serious not only social discrimination (but minorities everywhere unfotunately hardly ever have the chance of not having to deal with that) but also legal once. Israelis laws may not be as blatantly discriminatory as SA laws where but they nevertheless discriminate at many level such as employement education acess to public services…
For exemple a number of israeli quasi official institutions like the jewish national fund serve only jews and threfore discriminate against arab-israelis.
My two cents…
“We were here first” – the likes of Pat Buchanan can argue that one, but it is pretty silly. I dont’ know how far back Buchanan’s ancestry goes in the USA but if he’s Irish, I doubt it’s more than two hundred years. My own mother’s Anglo forebears can claim 380 years. Of course somebody was here in America before us. Of those people, many of them were completely exterminated, while the rest of their descendants now live on poor reservations, plagued by alcoholism, drug addiction and diabetes.
In any case, ‘we were here first’ is a stupid argument for a white American to make. It’s part of that denial of history that we struggle against in the Middle East.
America is a nation of settlers – and the white settlers, like Israeli settlers today, violated treaties, attacked native villages, and fought bloody wars in order to acquire territory. OFten the worst massacres were “provoked” by native attacks, and spoken of as completely justified. I think the analogy between the settling of the USA and Israeli settling of Palestine is a useful one – not perfect of course.
We could debate analogies till the cows come home and the situation will continue to be what it is – framing it one way or another is of course useful and even powerful sometimes, but I don’t find the hair-splitting of historical parallels to be the most useful way of undestanding the conflict. Ah well.
It’s amusing to hear folks object to the “we were here first” argument when Palestinians use it, given that Israelis use it too, just in a more mythical sense.
It is necessary to differentitae between discrimination which occurs in relation to Arabs witihn Israel proper. This kind of discrimination is seen in all countries with a minority grouping. In fact it is less than would be expected given the overall relationship with the Arab states. In terms of Arabs in West Bank the term aparthied is not appropriate as the relationship is not one of citizens. These Arabs are in effect ‘stateless’ and as such there is a different set of concepts which applies to their treatment. Overall however they are a hostile population and the physical measures which are put in place to control them are on the basis of the security risk they represent rather than their race.
Hope this helps -” victory to progressive secular nationalism everywhere”
“It’s amusing to hear folks object to the “we were here firstâ€� argument when Palestinians use it, given that Israelis use it too, just in a more mythical sense.”
A claim with which I disagree with equal fervor.