Arabs of Israel

Did you know 52% of Israelis do not recognize Arabs as a people?

Israelis just voted for occupation – stop pretending they want peace

Israelis have just voted in favour of continuing to deny all Palestinians, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, equal rights.

https://youtu.be/zQn-FXqvBgM

Israel’s election results are in. In terms of narrow party-focused politics, the results were inconclusive. The two main electoral lists resulted in a near draw.

According to the final vote tally, the Blue and White electoral alliance – led by two former Israeli generals and an ex-TV news presenter – ended narrowly ahead with 33 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

But they were only a single seat ahead of the ruling Likud Party of the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who won 32 seats.

Nonetheless, the Israeli president has just provided Netanyahu with the first opportunity to form a government, since the incumbent obtained more recommendations from incoming lawmakers overall.

But in terms of what the elections mean for the indigenous people of Palestine, this vote concluded with an emphatic result. Israelis have just voted to continue to permanently impose their racist military occupation regime upon millions of Palestinians.

Liberal Zionists in the UK and the US, when criticised for their support for Israel, quite often take a defensive posture claiming that they oppose “the Netanyahu government.”

Many have been on social media in recent weeks, praying for the downfall of Netanyahu. They also sometimes claim to oppose “the occupation” stating that they work for a “two-state solution” to “the conflict.”

But all that is just so much sophistry.

Leader of the Blue and White political alliance, former chief of staff of the Israeli army, Benny Gantz (L) and Revital Gantz (R) cast their votes during the Israeli legislative elections, at a polling station in Rosh Haayin district of Tel Aviv, Israel on 17 September 2019. [Faiz Abu Rmeleh – Anadolu Agency]

It is to ignore the reality of the Zionist regime and what it means for Palestinian lives.

The truth is that Israelis have overwhelmingly just voted in favour of continuing the occupation forever.

Israelis have just voted profoundly in favour of continuing the violent, racist, military dictatorship that the Israeli military imposes on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, indefinitely.

Israelis have just voted in favour of continuing to deny all Palestinians, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, equal rights.

And Israelis have just voted unquestionably in favour of continuing to permanently deny Palestinian refugees their internationally recognised legal rights to return to their homes, in present day Israel.

These are the cold hard facts of this most recent Israeli election – as indeed, in every Israeli election.

All Zionist parties in the Knesset, oppose ending the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Only the Joint List – an alliance of parties led by politicians who are mostly Palestinian Arabs – called for an end to the occupation. Even the so-called “left wing” Zionist party Meretz (now part of the Democratic Union list), did not issue a statement claiming that they would end the occupation.

The Joint List did reasonably well, winning 13 seats. But even that means that only almost 11 per cent of citizens of Israel voted to end the occupation of any Palestinians at all.

It means that more than 89 per cent of Israeli citizens voted to keep 5.3 million Palestinians living under the boot of their military dictatorship, forever denying them the most basic human and political rights.

For all the cant of the Western liberal Zionists about “Israeli democracy,” the fact is that none of those 5.3 million people have a vote in the elections for the only government that really controls every aspect of their daily lives – purely, and simply, because they are not Jewish.

None of these are the actions of a democracy. This is an apartheid regime – an ethnocracy.

As the Palestinian intellectual, Diana Buttu, put it this week (in an interview which you can watch in the video above), there is no real difference for Palestinians between Netanyahu and the leader of the Blue and White list – former Israeli general, Benny Gantz.

Israeli Prime Minister, leader of Likud Party Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara Netanyahu (L) cast their votes during the Israeli elections, at a polling station in Jerusalem, on 17 September 2019 [HAIM ZACH/Anadolu Agency]

As Buttu explained, the latter is “a man who even when individuals said that all that they were demanding was equality, came out and said very succinctly he does not at all believe in equality. On the issue of Gantz verses Netanyahu, when it comes to Palestinians, they are exactly identical.”

In his election campaign this year, Gantz repeatedly boasted of how many Palestinians he has killed during wars he has led. His election videos gloated that in the 2014 war, he had bombed parts of Gaza back to the “stone ages”.

When Netanyahu unveiled his plan to annex large swathes of the West Bank this month, rather than condemning him, Gantz too explained that the Jordan Valley would forever remain under Israeli military occupation.

All of this means that anyone campaigning in favour of Palestinian rights, has to face up to a stark reality – the vast majority of Israelis support the occupation. They do not oppose it, as is often claimed.

The figure of 89 per cent of Israelis in support of the occupation, is extremely conservative. A majority of the less than 11 per cent, who voted for the Joint List, will have been Palestinian citizens of Israel.

It is true, that a small minority of dissident Israeli Jews are against the occupation and for equality – just as how in apartheid South Africa, there was a small dissident minority of the white settler population who opposed – and even fought against – the white supremacist regime there.

But we have to face up to this simple fact. Just as was the case with white South Africans – the vast majority of Israelis are never going to vote away their privileges under Israel’s racist system.

Full equality will have to be imposed upon them.

That means isolating Israel’s apartheid regime, by supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and return using boycott, divestment and sanctions.

The Palestinians’ inalienable right to return is the real story

Yvonne Ridley

US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib delivers a speech at the event that was held by Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington DC, United States on 10 January 2019 [Safvan Allahverdi/Anadolu Agency]

European settlers were behind the foundation of the United States of America and Israel, both of which are currently steering a path towards right-wing extremism fuelled by race hate. As such, perhaps we should not be in the slightest bit surprised at the blatant emergence of the three-headed monster representing white privilege, racism and nationalism in both countries.

The presence of this grotesque troika is undeniable. Donald Trump, the US President who has already banned millions of Muslims and people of colour from travelling to America has, this week, unveiled plans to detain asylum-seekers and their children indefinitely in his latest aggressive bid to discourage migrants from crossing the US-Mexico border. In Israel, his closest international political ally Benjamin Netanyahu is another unabashed white nationalist, who presides over the apartheid Zionist state which discriminates against its own Palestinian citizens — one-fifth of the population — using openly racist legislation.

If there was any doubt about the naked racism, misogyny and white supremacy at play with these two characters, it surely ended with the well-documented banning of US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from making a visit to occupied Palestine and Israel. Both women are Muslim; both are women of colour; and they represent one half of the so-called “Squad” in the House of Representatives in Washington, the other members of which are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

Tlaib of Michigan — where she was born — is the first Palestinian-American Congresswoman. Both she and Somali-born Omar of Minnesota should have joined around 40 other US politicians for the traditional Washington freebie to Israel typically organised by AIPAC, the immensely influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee or one of its Zionist affiliates. This particular jolly is being funded by the innocuous sounding American Israel Educational Foundation.

The trip would have given Tlaib the opportunity to add on a private, two-day visit to her 90-year-old grandmother Muftiya in Beit Ur Al-Tahta, in the Occupied West Bank. Upon hearing of her plans, apparently, Trump was straight on the phone to his best friend Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. The outcome was predictable: both Tlaib and Omar were denied entry to Israel on the grounds that they support the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which stands up for Palestinian rights.

Quite why anyone should be surprised is beyond me. Not so long ago, Trump told Tlaib and the rest of the Squad to “go back” where they came from. It was an extraordinary outburst against democratically-elected members of the US Congress, which earned him condemnation from state leaders virtually everywhere in the world apart from — you’ve guessed it — his mate Netanyahu.

Palestinian in Gaza protests the right to return to their homeland on 14 May 2018 [Mahmoud Khattab/Apaimages]

The most shocking thing is that these two white nationalists clearly no longer care what the rest of the world thinks about their unbridled misogyny, Islamophobia, racism and hate. Trump even mocked Tlaib’s obvious disappointment and tears over the decision not to let her visit her nonagenarian grandmother, claiming that the Democratic Congresswoman was merely “grandstanding”. It is worth pointing out that Tlaib had become visibly upset when she recalled how she and her mother had to endure “dehumanising checkpoints” in Israel, despite being US citizens simply visiting their Palestinian relatives.

And that is the real story in all of this. It’s not simply about two right-wing white nationalists blocking a couple of US congresswomen from visiting Palestine; it’s also about the millions of Palestinians who, from the 1948 ethnic cleansing of their homeland to this day are not allowed to exercise their legitimate right to return, even for a visit to family and friends.

These diaspora Palestinians may or may not support BDS, but every single one of them is blocked by Israel if they try to exercise that right, despite UN General Assembly Resolution 194 passed on 11 December 1948, which makes it clear that everyone has the right, under international law, to re-enter their country of origin. The fact that this is denied to Palestinian refugees, and that Netanyahu is baiting Trump to annul their refugee status by, in the first instance, shutting down the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which provides essential services to “Palestine refugees”, should shame us all, especially those who claim to champion human rights and the rule of law.

It is outrageous that America’s closest ally is denying entry to two of its elected lawmakers, but it is even more outrageous that they are only experiencing what millions of Palestinians go through every day. In the rush to condemn Netanyahu about Tlaib and Omar, let us not forget to condemn him for Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing and colonisation of Palestine as well. The Nakba didn’t begin and end in 1948; it is ongoing. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are important players, but the Palestinians’ inalienable right to return is the real story in all of this.