Showing posts with label Apartheid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apartheid. Show all posts

10th Israel apartheid week ongoing and is a huge success

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Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an international series of events that seeks to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid policies towards the Palestinians and to build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

UK and US: February 24-March 2
Europe: March 1-8
Canada: March 3-11
Palestine: March 8 – 15
South Africa: March 10-16
Jordan: March 27-29
Read the full call out, find out more about how to participate and check out the list of events

Map of participating cities

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Lockheed Martin announces investment in Israeli cyber security to help protect the Occupation & Apartheid

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J Post
American security contracting giant Lockheed Martin on Sunday announced that it and EMC will invest in “advanced technology projects” in the fields of cloud computing, data analytics and related cyber technologies in Beersheba’s technology park.
“Our goal is to foster applied research and continued growth in Israel’s technology sector,” said Lockheed Martin vice president of international engineering and technology John D. Evans. “We recognize evolving global needs, as well as the wealth of innovation taking place within Israel and its universities.”
The announcement comes ahead of Israel’s first cyber security conference, meant to promote the country as a hub of digital security.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been pushing cyber security as an economic driver, attended a special conference on the issue at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday.
Read More Here
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African Truth of Israeli Apartheid

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African immigrants demonstrate against racist policies of the Israeli regime.

By Finian Cunningham

For more than six decades since its creation in 1948, the Israeli regime has hidden its crimes against native Arab people with the façade of “national security”.
The Israeli usurpers have systematically stolen land from the native Palestinians, killed them, brutalized them, and pushed millions into exile or into squalid ghettos.
Yet when charged with these blatant crimes against humanity, the Israeli regime defends its racist genocidal conduct in terms of security against “Arab terrorism”. It has gotten away with this despicable charade and affront to international law and morality in large measure because of the cynical indulgence of its patron in Washington.
American presidents repeat the mantra of “Israel’s right to security” – even as that regime shoots down Palestinian children, as it did again this week, and launches air strikes on family homes, schools and hospitals.
Nevertheless, this outrageous distortion is now being laid bare from a surprising quarter, as impoverishing African refugees residing in Israel rise up to expose its barbaric policies. And the Israeli regime is dealing with this mounting African refugee problem in the only way that it knows how – through ruthless racist repression.
Tens of thousands of Africans who fled to Israel for political asylum in recent years have this week taken to the streets of Tel Aviv to protest at the inhumane conditions being imposed on them.
In the past five years, Israel has seen a wave of refugees from Africa. Most of them have entered by crossing the Egyptian border, often after enduring hazardous journeys and running the gauntlet of smugglers and armed gangs.
There is estimated to be some 60,000 Africans – mainly from Sudan and Eritrea – seeking asylum in Israel. Officially, Israel is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on Refugees and is therefore legally obligated to offer asylum to these people.
However, with the Israeli regime grappling to deal with record levels of poverty and unemployment among its eight million population, it is responding to the African refugees with draconian measures.
Last month, the Israeli parliament gave the go-ahead to round up all Africans and put them in detention centers, pending their deportation back to countries of origin. On returning to their countries, the refugees will almost certainly face persecution or death.
Such a callous move is in direct contravention of international law. Faced with imprisonment in specially built Israeli jails in the Negev Desert and subsequent forced repatriation, the Africans are embarking on protest marches to gain international attention. “We are human beings, not animals,” read banners held by protesters, who marched outside the embassies of the US and European states in Tel Aviv, appealing for international help.
The African demonstrators were reportedly taunted with racist slurs by Israeli crowds. “Infiltrators”. Go back to Africa.” “You are taking over our land.”
The irony of such vilification could hardly be less bitter. Racist attacks in Israel against Africans have soared over the past year, with women and children assaulted in the streets by angry white mobs. Most of these racist attackers are themselves newcomers to Israel, brought in from the US, Russia and South America, and given fast-tracked Israeli citizenship simply because they are Jewish. These settlers live on lands that the Israeli regime has illegally usurped from Palestinians.
This week as Africans were pleading for refugee status, the Israeli regime announced new plans to construct hundreds more settler units in the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank. This was while US Secretary of State John Kerry was on a visit to Jerusalem, allegedly to promote “peace talks” between the Israeli regime and the Palestinians, whom the Israelis have been dispossessing unabated for six decades.
Many people around the world are waking up to the fact that the Israeli regime is nothing less than an abomination. For too long, its persecution complex, ably assisted by American administrations, has distorted international perception. But not anymore, it seems.
The growing boycott movement against the Israeli regime marks a tidal shift. This year has been declared the International Year of Solidarity with Palestine. People are realizing the truth that the regime is a sectarian “Jewish-only state” that has constructed itself on apartheid laws of discrimination against native Palestinians.
Campaigners against illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands have compared the regime with the criminal South Africa apartheid. They say that international sanctions must be likewise brought to bear on the Israeli regime in order to bring its systematic crimes against humanity to an end.
Israeli racial oppression of Palestinians more than qualifies the regime as an apartheid state deserving of censure and pariah status.
For too long, though, Israeli and American government propaganda has shielded the racist illegal occupation of Palestinian land with a bogus narrative of “security” and “defence”.
This narrative, always threadbare, is now being seen as a flagrant lie through the barbaric mistreatment of African refugees.
What security threat could women and children from poverty-stricken African countries pose to the Israeli regime? Their gross mistreatment in violation of international law just proves the real and only nature of the Zionist entity – it is a racist state of oppression that must be abolished.
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Israel and Apartheid: Confused? You will be

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Accused of enacting 'apartheid' itself, in the past Israel aided the South African regime

 MIRA BAR HILLEL
The lame excuses made up by Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to go to Nelson Mandela’s memorial on Tuesday have raised eyebrows and wry smiles all over the world. Having insisted on a £150,000 refit of the plane he and his wife took for the five-hour flight to Lady Thatcher’s funeral in London earlier this year, the trip to Johannesburg would, he claimed, be “too costly”. This from a man who spends thousands a year – from the public purse - on pistachio ice-cream and scented candles.     
However, it is quite possible that Mr Netanyahu may have been less than ecstatically welcomed in the new South Africa anyway, following revelations that the country’s apartheid regime was the Israeli defense industry’s biggest customer and sponsor.
For many years it was virtually a capital offence to use the word “apartheid” as an analogy to policies of the Israeli government in the Occupied Territories. In 2007 my friend Danny Rubenstein, the venerated Arab Affairs analyst of Haaretz newspaper, was invited by the Zionist Federation of Great Britain to address an event. On his way he stopped to address a UN committee in Brussels, and used the word “apartheid” to describe Israel’s attitude towards the Palestinians.
In response, he was unceremoniously dumped by the ZFGB and left high and dry in a B&B in Golders Green on a Friday night. He was eventually rescued by the New Fund for Israel and invited to a crowded gathering in a North London Reform synagogue.
But while Rubenstein was mainly concerned to warn the audience of the dangers of Israel following in the footsteps of the Afrikaaners, his interviewer – and most of the questioners - kept harping on what was constantly, if coyly, referred to as “the A-word”.
Yet it now emerges that for decades Israel supported the “A-word” regime and its military with advanced weapon systems at a time when Western sanctions meant no one else would. According to Haaretz editor Aluf Benn, the cooperation reached its peak in the late 1980s, the twilight of the apartheid regime.
In the summer of 1988, Benn says, Israel reportedly sold South Africa 60 Kfir combat planes in a hushed-up deal  worth $1.7 billion. The planes were upgraded and renamed Atlas Cheetah and Israel’s involvement was played down because the US was party to the sanctions regime, according to Haaretz.
Israel joined the international sanctions in 1987 but said it would honour existing contracts so the deal went ahead anyway. A few weeks later, the Israelis launched the first Ofek reconnaissance satellite which Benn claims could only have been developed with South African funding. And only in 1991 was the US able to force the Israeli government to stop selling SA short and midrange missiles.
Maps which were only revealed in the past few days show how the Israelis plan to create bantustans for the Nomadic Bedouin in its southern Negev region. Tens of thousands of them would be forced into ghettoes to make way for new Jewish towns and military zones. A-word, anyone? 


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Israel inches closer to 'tipping point' of South Africa-style boycott campaign

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Analogies with apartheid regime in the wake of Mandela's death could accelerate efforts to ostracize Israel - especially if John Kerry's peace process collapses.

By Chemi Shalev

This has happened in recent days: The Dutch water company Vitens severed its ties with Israeli counterpart Mekorot; Canada's largest Protestant church decided to boycott three Israeli companies; the Romanian government refused to send any more construction workers; and American Studies Association academics are voting on a measure to sever links with Israeli universities.
Coming so shortly after the Israeli government effectively succumbed to a boycott of settlements in order to be eligible for theEUs Horizon 2020 scientific cooperation agreement, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement is picking up speed. And the writing on the wall, if anyone missed it, only got clearer and sharper in the wake of the death of Nelson Mandela.
There were valid arguments to be made both for and against Prime Minister Netanyahu's participation in Tuesdays memorial ceremony for Mandela, but there is no denying that the prime ministers inept on-again, off-again, too-expensive, leave-me-alone public handling of this sensitive issue attracted unwanted publicity and compounded an already precarious situation.
The embarrassing flap singled out Israel as odd man out," fueled media scrutiny of Israel's past collaboration with the apartheid regime and provided valuable ammunition to those who would equate the two. More ominously, from an Israeli point of view, the analogy between todays Israel and yesterdays South Africa could also stoke a belief that the former can be brought to its knees in much the same way as the latter was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
When the United Nations passed its first non-binding resolution calling for a boycott of South Africa in 1962, it was staunchly opposed by a bloc of Western countries, led by Britain and the United States. But the grassroots campaign that had started with academic boycotts in the late 1950s gradually moved on to sports and entertainment and went on from there to institutional boycotts and divestment. Along the way, the anti-apartheid movement swept up larger and larger swaths of Western public opinion, eventually forcing even the most reluctant of governments, including Israel and the U.S., to join the international sanctions regime.
In a 1998 article entitled International Norms, Dynamics and Political Change," political scientists Martha Finnemore, now of George Washington University, and Kathryn Sikking of the University of Minnesota laid out the foundations of the life cycle by which certain norms develop to shape the behavior of states and then of the international community as a whole. The first step, they claim, is norm emergence," when a new norm is championed by NGOs and norm entrepreneurs." The second stage is a norms cascade," when states fall into line to embrace the new norm. And a prerequisite for evolution from the first to the second stages is a tipping point that occurs when a critical mass of events and opinions converge to create the norms cascade.
In the case of South Africa, the first tipping point probably came in the Soweto riots of 1976, which sparked the protest and disinvestment campaigns that ultimately swept American universities, pension funds and multinational corporations. The second tipping point came after the black South African rebellion against the racist 1983 constitution and the imposition of a permanent State of Emergency in 1984-1985, which brought the rest of the world into line.
Tipping points," of course, are hard to predict, and efforts to do so have been the focal point of widespread, multidisciplinary research in recent years. You know the edge is out there, but its dark and foggy. We're really great at knowing where thresholds are after we fall off the cliff, but that's not very helpful, as lake ecologist and tipping point researcher Stephen Carpenter told USA today in 2009.
Israel could very well be approaching such a threshold. Among the many developments that could be creating the required critical mass one can cite the passage of time since the Twin Towers attacks in September 2001, which placed Israel in the same camp as the U.S. and the West in the War on Terror; Israel's isolation in the campaign against Irans nuclear programs; the disappearance of repelling archenemies such as Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gadhafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, to a lesser degree, Yasser Arafat; the relative security and lack of terror inside Israel coupled with its own persistent settlement drive; and the negative publicity generated by revelations of racism in Israeli society, the image of its rulers as increasingly rigid and right wing and the governments own confrontations with illegal African immigrants and Israeli Bedouin, widely perceived as being tinged with bias and prejudice.
In recent days, American statesmen seem to be more alarmed about the looming danger of delegitimization than Israelis are. In remarks to both the Saban Forum and the American Joint Distribution Committee this week, Secretary of State John Kerry described delegitimization as an existential danger." Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to the same JDC forum, went one step further: The wholesale effort to delegitimize Israel is the most concentrated that I have seen in the 40 years I have served. It is the most serious threat in my view to Israel's long-term security and viability.
One must always take into account the possibility of unforeseen developments that will turn things completely around. Barring that, the only thing that may be keeping Israel from crossing the threshold and going over the cliff in the international arena is Kerry's much-maligned peace process, which is holding public opinion and foreign governments at bay and preventing a tipping point that would dramatically escalate the anti-Israeli boycott campaign.
Which only strengthens Jeffrey Goldberg's argument in a Bloomberg article on Wednesday that Kerry is Israel's best friend." It also highlights, once again, how narrow-minded, shortsighted and dangerously delusional Kerry's critics, peace process opponents and settlement champions really are (though you can rest assured that if and when the peace process collapses and Israel is plunged into South African isolation, they will be pointing their fingers in every direction but themselves.)

 Follow me on Twitter @ChemiShalev
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ABBAS PRAISES APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA

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He might as well have ...
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Mahmoud Abbas, de facto leader of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, has made his clearest statement in opposition to the global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
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In South Africa, Abbas opposes boycott of Israel

 Ali Abunimah VIA Desert Peace
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A BDS South Africa banner at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, site of the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.
Mahmoud Abbas, de facto leader of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, has made his clearest statement in opposition to the global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
His comments have drawn strong condemnation from Palestinian and South African activists.
It has also emerged that South Africa’s chief rabbi, who spoke at Nelson Mandela’s memorial, is a committed supporter of Israel’s colonization of occupied land, a denier of its abuses of Palestinian rights and lived in a radical Israeli settlement.

Abbas opposes BDS

“No we do not support the boycott of Israel,” Mahmoud Abbas said at a press conference in South Africa, which he has been visiting to attend the Mandela memorial, The Starnewspaper reported on 11 December.1
“But we ask everyone to boycott the products of the settlements. Because the settlements are in our territories. It is illegal. … But we don’t ask anyone to boycott Israel itself. We have relations with Israel, we have mutual recognition of Israel.”
It is unclear what Abbas meant by “mutual recognition.” While Abbas and the Palestine Liberation Organization have recognized Israel, Israel does not recognize a Palestinian state or indeed any Palestinian rights whatsoever and continues to aggressively steal Palestinian land.

“Oblivious” to Palestinian struggle

Abbas’ comments conflict “with the Palestinian national consensus that has strongly supported BDS against Israel since 2005,” Omar Barghouti told The Electronic Intifada.
A founder of the BDS movement, Barghouti emphasized that he was commenting in a personal capacity.
“There is no Palestinian political party, trade union, NGO [nongovernmental organization] network or mass organization that does not strongly support BDS. Any Palestinian official who lacks a democratic mandate and any real public support, therefore, cannot claim to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people when it comes to deciding our strategies of resistance to Israel’s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid,” Barghouti said.
The Palestinian civil call for BDS urges “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era” and does not limit such campaigns only to settlement goods.
“Any Palestinian official who today explicitly speaks against boycotting Israel – particularly in a country like South Africa, where the ruling party, leading trade unions, churches and other civil society groups have warmly endorsed BDS – only shows how aloof he is from his own people’s aspirations for freedom, justice and equality, and how oblivious he is to our struggle for their inalienable rights,” Barghouti added.
Israel and its lobby in South Africa will be particularly pleased to hear Abbas’ comments, which come just weeks after South Africa’s foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabanesaid that her country was reducing its ties with Israel.

Akin to Bantustan leaders

Salim Vally, spokesperson of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa, told The Electronic Intifada that Abbas’ comments were “shocking” and represented an “attack on the global solidarity movement.”
Abbas’ words were “akin to what our erstwhile bantustan leaders would have said and this has the potential of undoing much of the work of the solidarity movement which is supported by the vast majority of South Africans,” Vally added.
Bantustans were nominally independent “states” set up by the apartheid regime with subservient leaders to disguise and legitimize apartheid. “Mandela and his movement fought against the Bantustan leaders all their careers,” Vally said.

Undermining Palestinian struggle

This is not the first time Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have sought to undermine the increasingly high-profile BDS movement.
In 2010, the PA launched a short-lived campaign urging Palestinians to boycott settlement goods. While welcomed by many, as I wrote at the time, its true purpose appeared to be to undermine the broader BDS movement.
Abbas himself took part in that campaign while urging trade with Israel. “We are not boycotting Israel, because we have agreements and imports from it,” he said.
Trade with Israel directly benefits Palestinian elites and the Palestinian Authority, which is entirely reliant on Israeli goodwill.
A now-defunct PA website supposedly meant to encourage the boycott of settlement goods even stated that “Regarding trade with Israel, the Palestinian Ministry of Economy confirms continuing its cooperation as it was agreed at the [1994] Paris summit.”
The Abbas-led PA is deeply entrenched in the Israeli occupation and relies on Israel for weapons to use in its crackdown against any form of Palestinian resistance.
As recently as October, Abbas boasted about the work PA security forces have done on behalf of the Israeli occupation army.
“The Palestinian Authority has achieved 100 percent success rate at security coordination with Israel,” Abbas said.
Refugee rights are a key pillar of the BDS call.

South Africa’s Chief (settler) Rabbi

This week, South African chief rabbi Warren Goldstein was one of the official speakers at the public memorial service for former President Nelson Mandela, lauding the late freedom fighter’s “mighty power of forgiveness.”
Goldstein, it turns out, earned his education at a radical religious school in an Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian land. He “is a graduate of the Beth El Yeshiva, the organization that founded and maintains Arutz Sheva.”
Arutz Sheva, which reported this, is a far-right pro-settler and anti-Palestinian media organization.
Beit El is a colony near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. The Beit El Yeshiva (alternatively spelled Beth El) was founded in 1977 by radical Jewish settlers from the Mercaz Harav religious school in Jerusalem.
“The foundations for the religious settlements in the West Bank were forged in Mercaz Harav,” according to Haaretz and it was from there that the earliest settlers to colonize the occupied territories set out after the 1967 war.
Last Saturday, Palestinian schoolboy Wajih Wajdi al-Ramahi, 14, was shot dead by an Israeli sniper. According to the boy’s father, the shots that killed his son were fired from a Beit El watchtower overlooking the adjacent Jalazone refugee camp where the family lives.

Occupation denier

In keeping with the Beit El Yeshiva’s extreme teachings, Goldstein himself has taken strongly anti-Palestinian positions. He even denies the occupation.
“The … untruth is the accusation of illegal occupation of Arab land,” Golstein wrote in aletter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Calling South African Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Ebrahim “unfit to hold public office,” Goldstein demanded he resign over the South African government’s support for Palestinian rights.
Goldstein even accused Ebrahim of “apartheid-style control of information and censorship” for calling on South Africans to avoid visiting Israel due to its ongoing human rights abuses.
In a recent interview, Goldstein called any comparison between Israel and its occupation on the one hand, and apartheid South Africa on the other, a “modern blood libel.”
Baleka Mbete, national chairperson of the African National Congress and master of ceremonies at the Mandela memorial, would disagree.
Last year she declared that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians was “far worse than apartheid South Africa.”
  1. The article, which appears on page 24 of the 11 December late edition, can be verified by searching for its headline “Palestinian head rejects boycott of Israel” at pressdisplay.com

Written FOR
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What does 'Israeli Apartheid' mean, anyway? The meticulous sub-division of people in Israel is guided by a principle of inequality that benefits the ruling class!

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Here is an article on Israeli Apartheid published in the highly regarded Israeli daily Haaretz. Written by award winning Israeli journalist Amira Hass. This article was sent out by the Israeli New Profile group. The article is useful for refugee claims in Israel and describes the severe discrimination against non-Jews and even Jewish Arabs in Israel and also for occupied West Bank and also for Gaza which is under a severe blockade. Article is also useful in comparing the differences and similarities between "Israeli apartheid" and South African Apartheid which is defined under International law as a crime against humanity. 

Edward C. Corrigan
Barrister and Solicitor
Certified Specialist in Citizenship and Immigration
and Immigration and Refugee Law
383 Richmond St. Suite 902 London, Ont, Canada,
N6A 3C4

Tel: 519-439-4015
Fax: 519-439-7657
Toll Free: 1-800-883-6217

Web site: www.edcorrigan.ca

http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.562477?v=0018FA324331285C8605B6ACAA296CAC

What does 'Israeli Apartheid' mean, anyway?

The meticulous sub-division of people in Israel is guided by a principle of inequality that benefits the ruling class.

By�Amira Hass
Haaretz, Published 04:11 09.12.13
What do those who say �Israeli Apartheid� mean?
They definitely don�t mean the official and popular biological racism that ruled South Africa. True, there is no lack of racist and arrogant attitudes here, with their attendant religious-biological undertones, but if one visits our hospitals one can find Arabs and Jews among doctors and patients. In that regard, our hospitals are the healthiest sector of society.
Those who say �Israeli Apartheid� refer to the philosophy of �separate development� that was prevalent in the old South Africa. This was the euphemism used for the principle of inequality, the deliberate segregation of populations, a prohibition on �mixing� and the displacement of non-whites from lands and resources for their exploitation by the masters of the land. Even though here things are shrouded by �security concerns,� with references to Auschwitz and heaven-decreed real estate, our reality is governed by the same philosophy, backed by laws and force of arms.
What, for instance?
There are two legal systems in place on the West Bank, a civilian one for Jews and a military one for Palestinians. There are two separate infrastructures there as well, including roads, electricity and water. The superior and expanding one is for Jews while the inferior and shrinking one is for the Palestinians. There are local pockets, similar to the Bantustans in South Africa, in which the Palestinians have limited self-rule. There is a system of travel restrictions and permits in place since 1991, just when such a system was abolished in South Africa.
Does that mean that apartheid exists only on the West Bank?
Not at all, it exists across the entire country, from the sea to the Jordan River. It prevails in this one territory in which two peoples live, ruled by one government which is elected by one people, but which determines the future and fate of both. Palestinian towns and villages suffocate because of deliberately restrictive planning in Israel, just as they do in the West Bank.
But Palestinians who are Israeli citizens participate in electing the government, unlike in South Africa?
That�s true. The two situations are similar, not identical. Arab citizens vote here, but they are removed from the decision-making processes that deal with their fate. There is another difference. In South Africa, an essential component of the system was a tight overlap between race and class, with the exploitation of the black working class in the interests of white-owned capital. Israeli capitalism does not depend on Palestinian workers, although cheap Palestinian labor played a major role in the rapid enrichment of different sectors in Israeli society following the 1967 war. South Africa had four racial groups (whites, blacks, coloreds and Indians.) Each one occupied a specific rung on the ladder of inequality, in order to perpetuate the privileges of the white population. The white race, English and Afrikaners, was defined as one nation, despite the large differences between them, whereas black Africans were divided into several tribe-based nationalities. This ensured that the whites were the largest group. Here, the separation is supposedly based on geography, designed to maintain and expand the privileges Jews enjoy.
But Jews too have sub-divisions and discrimination?
Definitely, according to origin (European Jews versus Arab Jews,) place of residence (center vs. periphery,) veterans vs. newcomers, or based on service in the military. However, compared to the Palestinians, even the most discriminated against and downtrodden Jews have more rights than the Palestinians living between the sea and the river. For example, the Law of Return applies to Jews of any origin but not to Palestinians, even those who themselves or whose parents were born here, but who now live in exile. Similarly, Jews can change their residence freely. Someone from Tel Aviv can re-locate to the West Bank, but someone from Bethlehem cannot move to the coastal areas.
The ladder of inequality has separate rungs for residents of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of sovereign Israel. These groups suffer from different degrees of violation of human and civil rights. There are sub-divisions at play that are designed to further fragment the other nation living here, with different approaches to �C�-designated areas on the West Bank, to Druze citizens, to Bedouin, Palestinians, Christians and Moslems. Any bureaucracy that creates such meticulous sub-divisions and classifications is guided by a principle of inequality that benefits one hegemonic group.
Are there other examples?
One can briefly mention the Afrikaner-style Prawer laws and Area C in the West Bank. From the 1950�s, the Afrikaner-led government in South Africa uprooted black, colored and Indian residents from their lands and homes to make room for white settlers. Everything was done in accordance with the prevailing white laws and legal logic. Those were the colonial underpinnings of the apartheid regime, which was established later. Here, too, the colonial component of uprooting the natives from their lands is proceeding in tandem with the policies of �separate development�.
Is there any hope?
Class-based apartheid in South Africa was not defeated. Critics on the left blame Nelson Mandela and other leaders for reaching an understanding with the previous regime whereby blacks would get the vote but whites would keep the money. While poverty remains �black� in South Africa, there is an alibi group of black Africans who became very wealthy. Nevertheless, one should not dismiss the transition to democracy and the social changes that took place in South Africa, as well as the methods of struggle demonstrated by Mandela and his comrades. That is why Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators last week carried his photos in demonstrations that the Israeli Defence Forces quelled by force.
But Shimon Peres eulogized Mandela warmly?
Mandela was a great forgiver. Peres played a major role in the security and economic ties Israel which established with the racist regime in South Africa and its pro-Nazi founders. As one of the founding fathers of the settlement enterprise in the West Bank and the instigator of the �functional solution,� he bears a large responsibility for the policies of �separate development� that prevail here.
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Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Tells His Israeli Fans, It’s Apartheid “Clear And Simple”

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Roger Waters performs The Wall Live in Barcelona, 2011. ( Wikipedia )
On September 7, 2013, Roger was interviewed by Alon Hadar for the magazine accompanying Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.  The article can be read here . Below is an open letter to the editor from Roger. The transcription that is referred to was pulled from a video recording of the nearly 90-minute on-the-record conversation between Roger and Alon. 

To the Editor

Dear Sir,

I do not read Hebrew so I have had to wait for a translation of the article your paper printed on Wednesday, 18th September, based upon an interview I did with Alon Hadar in Amsterdam the previous week.

Without wishing to fan the flames, I feel I owe it to my fans in Israel to correct the record on a number of points.

The article was a serious distortion of the actual interview I gave.

Both questions and answers were changed. I can only assume to suit an editorial agenda.

The measured, reasonable and humane conversation that Alon and I had in Amsterdam was intended as a way for me to communicate with my Israeli fans, to explain my position on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), to break down Walls, and shed light on possible misunderstandings and our shared predicament. It has been re-written as a combative, ill-natured, dog-fight. It appears, with all its distortions and untruths, to want to maintain the status quo, alienate me from my fans in Israel and retreat from any consideration of the position that all the peoples of the region deserve to live in peace and justice with equal rights for all under the same laws, irrespective of color, race or religion. I have today received and studied a transcript of the interview I gave. The thing that is most strikingly different between the actual interview and what you printed in your magazine is that you have rewritten all the questions. It is very shoddy journalism to hold up to be real, what is in fact, a fabrication. I attach a link to the transcript at the end of this letter, should your readers and my Israeli fans wish to know what really happened, and what was really said.

As for the article itself, the editorial content is littered with misinformation. As you know, I have an agreement with your paper that I have copy approval of my quotes. When I finally got an English translation of the article, even though there was very little time before you went to press, I sat up half the night trying to correct some of the worst errors. You largely ignored my input.

I intend no pettiness or rancor, but will mention two specific untruths. Firstly, the article claims that I am constantly contacting other musicians trying to persuade them not to perform in Israel. It’s simply not so. I have never written to Elton John or Rihanna. In fact, I have made no specific approach to anyone except Stevie Wonder, about an IDF fundraiser in Los Angeles, and Alicia Keys. There is one other Englishman, but my letter to him was in confidence and will remain so. That’s it. To their credit, Elvis Costello, and many others, supported BDS before me.

It is true I have recently written an open letter to my Colleagues in Rock and Roll declaring my support for BDS and asking them as a group to join the movement. We are attempting peacefully, through BDS, to encourage your government to change its colonial and apartheid policies.

There are many other distortions and untruths. I shall mention but one more of them. Alon asked me what I would like to say to Benjamin Netanyahu. In my reply I suggested, that based on his record, it seemed unlikely he would be the one to negotiate a just peace and that he might better spend his time looking for ‘The One,’ the one who might be Israel’s ‘de Klerk.’

For anyone who may not know: F.W. de Klerk was the last white president of South Africa and is best known for brokering the end of apartheid, and supporting the transformation of South Africa into a multi-racial democracy by entering into the negotiations that resulted in all citizens, including the country's black majority, having equal rights. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, along with Nelson Mandela, for his part in ending apartheid in South Africa. To be clear, I’m suggesting that Israel, like South Africa in the past, needs a leader who is prepared to negotiate a just and lasting peace based on equal rights.

I attach a translation of this letter in Hebrew and here is a link to a transcript of the whole on-the-record conversation I had with Alon in Amsterdam. http://rogerwaters.com/interview

With respect,

Yours truly,

Roger Waters
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BBC festival features Palestine Strings and condemnation of apartheid to jubilant applause

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Here is evidence that it is getting harder and harder to defend Apartheid in Israel and Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.

Excerpt from article:

"On August 8, seventeen young Palestinian musicians put Palestine on the ‘map’ of one of the world’s most prestigious international music festivals, the BBC Proms. Aged twelve to twenty-three years, they are members of the Palestinian Strings, a brainchild of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, Palestine’s preeminent music institution....

...Mr. Kennedy is the most high-profile classical artist to date to boycott Israel because of its expropriation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.[2] At last Thursday night’s concert he did something even more courageous: On the stage of London’s Royal Albert Hall, to a capacity audience of about five and a half thousand people, plus as many as two million listening live on BBC Radio 3, he invoked the taboo ‘A’ word—Apartheid—to describe the world where his young on-stage colleagues live. Nor did the BBC, at writing, excise the comment from its week-long online audio of the concert, and the recorded concert will be broadcast on BBC television to a viewership in the millions.[3]" 
Edward C. Corrigan
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<http://mondoweiss.net/2013/08/bbc-festival-features-palestine-strings-and-condemnation-of-apartheid-to-jubilant-applause.html>

"BBC festival features Palestine Strings and condemnation of apartheid to jubilant applause," by Tom Suarez, Mondoweiss, August 11, 2013. 
http://feedly.com/k/18mZ9fG
Nigel Kennedy on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall with members of the Palestine Strings and his Orchestra of Life.  [photo: Chris Christodoulou, BBC]
On August 8, seventeen young Palestinian musicians put Palestine on the ‘map’ of one of the world’s most prestigious international music festivals, the BBC Proms. Aged twelve to twenty-three years, they are members of the Palestinian Strings, a brainchild of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, Palestine’s preeminent music institution.
Their appearance at the Proms was a collaboration with the renowned violinist Nigel Kennedy and several members of his Orchestra of Life. Kennedy, well-known for his musical interests beyond the confines of standard Western practice, first learned of the Palestinian musicians from a Youtube video.
The entire concert was based around Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’. The works' programmatic character, combined with the improvisatory tradition of eighteenth century Italy, allowed Kennedy the wide artistic freedom that is his hallmark, and the combined ensemble widened this far beyond anything ever anticipated by the ‘red monk’ of Venice.
Vivaldi always the point of departure, the evening drifted into jazz ‘Seasons’ with Kennedy and his OoL, and micro-tonal Arabic “Seasons” with members of the Palestine Strings on violin, viola, and even voice. The result, as described by the reviewer for The Independent[1], was that “each movement became the framework on which free improvisations would be hung, some comic, some strange, some hauntingly beautiful.”
Mr. Kennedy is the most high-profile classical artist to date to boycott Israel because of its expropriation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.[2] At last Thursday night’s concert he did something even more courageous: On the stage of London’s Royal Albert Hall, to a capacity audience of about five and a half thousand people, plus as many as two million listening live on BBC Radio 3, he invoked the taboo ‘A’ word—Apartheid—to describe the world where his young on-stage colleagues live. Nor did the BBC, at writing, excise the comment from its week-long online audio of the concert, and the recorded concert will be broadcast on BBC television to a viewership in the millions.[3]
Kennedy’s statement roused the audience like a boy pointing out that the Emperor is naked or that there is a colossal elephant in the room. The hall broke into jubilant applause and a few ‘prommers’ (audience members attending with inexpensive standing room tickets) unfurled Palestinian flags. That was the overwhelming impression from our seats high in the gods; but one reviewer did witness some displeasure[4]:
A petulant voice behind me asked, ‘Why do we have to bring politics into this?’, another barked ‘Right, let’s leave now’. I’m glad its owner was persuaded by his children to stay because I cannot imagine he could have remained untouched by the encore, a performance of the slow movement of Vivaldi’s A minor Double Concerto by Kennedy and 15-year-old Palestinian violinist Mostafa Saad, whose eloquence cast a spell on the hall.

'Politics', indeed, is ever-present in the lives of the young Palestinian musicians. They did not ask 'to bring politics into this', but rather it is foisted upon every aspect of their lives. As one reviewer wrote:[5]
Watching the students playing around backstage, before performing with utter professionalism before their 6,000-strong audience, it is hard to imagine the difficulties they face when rehearsing in Palestine, and impossible to disentangle the ensemble’s existence from the politics surrounding it.
Palestinian flags unfurled at the Proms [photo: Amira Aziza]
Kennedy is the protégé of the late Yehudi Menuhin, whose father, the intellectual Moshe Menuhin, was among the most articulate of early anti-Zionists. Moshe’s Decadence of Judaism in Our Time[6] is a meticulously documented exposé of Zionism, written from first-hand experience.
When in 1897 the first Zionist Congress met in Basel, the BBC Proms concert series was already in its third season. Today, as the United States fuels the ‘peace process’ to further extend Israel’s sixty-five year lease on impunity, the Palestine Strings have not only made a refreshing artistic contribution, but their very presence on this high-profile London stage has reminded Britain that they still live and die under the catastrophe it set in motion nearly a century ago. 
Kennedy, Palestine Strings, and Orchestra of Life, Royal Albert Hall. [photo: T Suarez]
2. Kennedy stated this on-the-record as early as 2007. See e.g., Noam Ben Zeev, Punk rebel with a classical cause,Haaretz, July 24, 2007.
3. According to the BBC, the Proms are heard on the radio by as many as two million people, on television by as many as fifteen million.
4. Helen Wallace, Proms Diary: Nigel Kennedy and the Orchestra of Life, in classical-music.com, the official website of BBC Music Magazine, August 9, 2013.
5. Gemma Champ, Palestine Strings strike a political chord at London Proms, in The National, August 11, 2013
6. Yehudi Menuhin's father, Moshe Menuhin, attended the nationalistic Hebrew Gymnasia Herzlia in Jaffa as a youth, and lived through the rise of Zionism and the establishment of the Israeli state. There are two editions of hisDecadence of Judaism in Our Time: the first was in 1965, published by Exposition Press; the second, which includes a new section on the 1967 war, was published in 1969 by The Institute for Palestine Studies.
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Israel's new barrier with Syria: Another brick in the 'apartheid' wall?

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The walls around Israel are growing as the country's army builds a new physical barrier, this time on its border with Syria. The wall will reportedly begin in the southern part of the occupied Golan Heights, extending north from there. 

Israel says the move is designed to safeguard its citizens from fallout from the conflict in war-torn Syria. Others say the wall is just a new installment in one of Israel's most recognizable tools of injustice. 

"It's a wall of oppression. It's a wall of segregation. It's a wall of stealing the land of the people," Jamal Juma, of the Stop the Wall movement, told RT. 

Juma says the wall will end up only remaining in place temporarily, as those who oppose it will stand up for their rights. 

"Walls around the world that have been built to suffocate and oppress people have fallen down. Why would the Israeli wall stay? We are not going to settle for it. We are not going to accept the system they are imposing on us," he said. 

RT: Israel is citing the conflict in Syria and the rise of Islamist extremism there as its reasons. Doesn't Israel have a valid concern in this case? 

Jamal Juma: Israel has to recalculate what they're doing in the Middle East. Israel tries all the time to build walls around itself, claiming that people hate them and target them. Israel has harmed the whole region around it. Israel is building a wall around Palestinian areas, claiming it's for security - but it amounts to apartheid for the Palestinian people. They built a wall around Gaza and turned it into a jail - the biggest prison in the world. We know how devastating the situation in Gaza is. 

They still occupy parts of Syria, and are now building a wall on occupied land; they want to keep this land and keep themselves as occupiers. To keep building walls is not a solution. It needs to make peace with the region. In Syria and the Arab world, there are six million Palestinian refugees because of Israel. They have to solve the problem of the refugees, to give them the right to return to their homeland that has been taken from them. Israel cannot build its future at the expense of the people of the region. And building walls to protect themselves... walls are not going to protect the Israelis. People have rights, and they will keep claiming those rights. 

RT: Israel's most visible wall is its barrier separating Israel from the Palestinians, while it's also building settlements in the area. Is there any possibility for compromise here? 

JJ: You see how the building of settlements is escalating in the West Bank. Israel is building the settlements in a way to control the Palestinian people - this is going to destroy the possibility for Palestinians to have their own state and a normal life in the future. They lock the Palestinians into ghettos and reservations and they slice their areas so they are disconnected from each other. They are building a road system, and it's apartheid because it's two networks of roads separating them by tunnels and bridges, and they control this. They control the Palestinians within walls, with 34 checkpoints, or what they call "terminals." 

So all this is going to devastate the area. Palestinians are not going to stay long. Just like waiting for peace while Israelis are taking and swallowing their lands. Israel is pushing this to an explosion point. We witness Palestinians being attacked every day, in many villages. North of the Jordan Valley has been evacuated by Israelis. There was an attack on people south of Hebron. So they are waging a war on the Palestinian people and they want the walls to bring peace to them. Stealing people's land, locking them in jails, devastating their life is not going to bring peace in any way. Israel must realize that the area is changing. And it must understand the change that is needed for Israel to reconcile with the people. 

RT: You clearly have a strong message. You're from the Stop the Wall movement. Do you think your group will have a successful outcome, and will see the walls come down eventually? 

JJ: Walls around the world that have been built to suffocate and oppress people have fallen. Why would the Israeli wall remain? It's a wall of oppression. It's a wall of segregation. It's a wall to steal the land of the people. That's why this wall won't survive. The people will keep standing and resisting it, and it will fall. Israel created an apartheid system with this wall. 

The apartheid system failed in the twentieth century. Why would the Israeli system survive? We are struggling for human rights, our self-determination, our freedom, and ending this oppression that has been created by Israel. This is an element of that oppression, to keep control of the Palestinian people. We are not going to settle for this. We are not going to accept the system they are imposing on us.
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