Tel Aviv mall denies entry to three Arab men

[geek tragedy]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.653378

Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Mall refused to let in three Arab men earlier this week, with the company saying they were West Bank Palestinians and citing Israeli law under which entry permits are granted only for specific purposes.

“In this case, they were given permits for work only,” the mall said, adding that its guards are responsible for protecting shoppers’ security. “The Azrieli security crew acted in accordance with the law.”

It is not yet clear if the three men were indeed West Bank Palestinians or Israeli citizens. The story hit the social networks because Omer Senesh, who works in the building, was walking by as the incident occurred and filmed it on his phone.

The video shows two young Arab men waiting on the pavement as the third hands his ID card to a security guard. According to Senesh, the guard said he was acting on orders from the mall’s management.

"May I see your papers, comrade?"

Of course, Tel Aviv is supposed to be the progressive, totally not racist part of Israel.

[louis-t]

1. Comrade?

[geek tragedy]

2. Orwell, 1984 nt

[guillaumeb]

3. Let me see your ID

From a history of another apartheid society:

"They set out to more than maintain the separation of the races: they tried to turn back the clock and undo what appeared to them to be unacceptable integration. Blacks were working in white owned factories, other white businesses and in white homes. Blacks were largely segregated into enclaves in the cities and had their own facilities and doors of entry to public places along with other restrictions that were common in the South in the United States. But this was too much integration for members of the Nationalist Party. They applied the old apartheid dogma that blacks were "temporary sojourners" in the cities. New laws and a new segregation wiped out the so-called urban black spots. This included neighborhoods where people of different races had been living beside one another peacefully – the black suburb called Sophiatown and the heart of the Colored community in Capetown.

Those who had worked for the same employer for ten years or for different employers for fifteen years were allowed to continue living in cities and towns, but in urban areas they were forbidden to own their own homes. They had to rent less than satisfactory housing from local administration boards. Other non-whites were regarded as migrant workers who had to have special work permits, which were to be renewed every year. Blacks were now obliged to carry passbooks, open to inspection by any policeman or agent of the government whenever asked. Blacks had to acquire special permission for travel to various activities. Those no longer allowed in the cities, including the old and no longer useful, were to be forcibly removed to areas outside the cities designated as reserves for blacks – dusty places with abject poverty and far from what blacks considered home."


Can someone explain to me again how the Israeli treatment of Arabs in Israel is different from the above description of black life in South Africa?

[Scootaloo]

4. Because Apartheid is an afrikaans word.

...No seriously, that's the argument I've seen posed by posters here who claim royalty or name themselves after colleges.

[guillaumeb]

6. I too have seen the argument. As if the English language never borrowed

from other languages, or words originating from another language cannot be used in conversation.

Just to clear up what for some seems to be a source of confusion, "Apartheid" is the concept of separateness. When I say an "apartheid-like system" it does not imply that the system is located in South Africa, but that the same system is being employed elsewhere.

[oberliner]

5. I'll take a crack at it

Arabs in Israel serve in the parliament and sit on the supreme court.

Every state-run company in Israel is required to have at least one Arab citizen of Israel on its board of directors.

Arabs in Israel serve as generals who command forces in the Israeli army.

Arabs in Israel have positions of authority within the police force, including inspector-general.

None of these things would have been possible for a black person living in RSA.

Is that helpful?

[guillaumeb]

7. Can you say figurehead?

Consider:
"... Israel's Arab citizens live under racist discrimination that no self-deception can mask. Is there another country in the West where the names of 20 percent of its citizens don't appear among television correspondents, the press, the sciences, academia or the number of state employees in the largest cities, not at a ratio of two to 10, but even one to 10? And it's becoming worse over time.

Only around 7 percent of all state employees are Arab. The real per-hour average wage for Arabs in 2009 was nearly 40 percent below that of Jews, and the situation is deteriorating. Not only are there more poor among the Arabs, but they are poorer than the Jewish poor, and their poverty increases over time. "

My words? No, from Haaretz, an Israeli paper. The link:
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-glorious-state-of-israel-and-its-anti-arab-discrimination.premium-1.515462

And another take on the supposed equality:
INSTITUTIONALIZED DISCRIMINATION
•There are more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. directly or indirectly, based solely on their ethnicity, rendering them second or third class citizens in their own homeland.
•93% of the land in Israel is owned either by the state or by quasi-governmental agencies, such as the Jewish National Fund, that discriminate against non-Jews. Palestinian citizens of Israel face significant legal obstacles in gaining access to this land for agriculture, residence, or commercial development.
http://imeu.org/article/discrimination-against-palestinian-citizens-of-israel


I could continue, but the point has been made here many times that non-Jews are treated as second class citizens by the Israeli government. Simply admit the point and move on.

[oberliner]

12. OK

I certainly will not deny that there is discrimination in Israel. Of course there is.

You asked this question:

"Can someone explain to me again how the Israeli treatment of Arabs in Israel is different from the above description of black life in South Africa?"

I attempted to explain how it is different. I hope that I have done so effectively.

[guillaumeb]

18. I welcome your admission.

And I will match it by stating that I feel that the Palestinian leadership has many times not been very good. Many on the Palestinian side have engaged in anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist rhetoric that does not help the Palestinian cause. Whether the motivation for the rhetoric is Palestinian frustration because of Israeli intransigence or reflects ethnic hatred I cannot say.

But to my mind, the Israeli legal system does have many laws that make second class citizens out of Israeli Arabs. To deny this would be similar to a US southerner trying to deny that Jim Crow existed in the Southern US. In both cases there is too much evidence for any rewriting of history. The US is still struggling with the effects of centuries of discrimination and unequal treatment. One would hope that a similar narrative will not play in Israel.

Again, my feeling is that there are two necessary things that must happen for peace to be achievable. First, Israel must admit to treating Palestinians and Israeli Arabs as less than equal. Any laws that codify the inequality must be changed. Second, if Israel recognizes that there will never be peace without a complete withdrawal to the 1967 borders, and actually starts to withdraw, that will convince the world and the people living in the illegal settlements that the Israeli government is serious about the issue.

[Ken Burch]

9. Ok...but you'd have to call the West Bank situation apartheid. n/t.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

10. Or the Negev Bedouin sutuation,

or the East Jerusalem situation, or the denial of building permits situation, or the separate laws for Israelis and everbody else situation...

Hmmmmm... there seems to be a theme developing WRT these things.

[oberliner]

11. I call it an occupation with illegal settlements

And I call for an end to the occupation with a solution along the lines of the Geneva Initiative.

http://www.geneva-accord.org

Sadly, no one seems particularly interested on looking towards realistic solutions, or even discussing them around here.

[Little Tich]

13. As it is right now, the settlers are already in Israel.

They are not part of the local community, they don't participate in the local economy, they have no ties to the area whatsoever. It's like they live in a Israeli fishtank that just happens to be in the West Bank right now. For the settlers, a move back to Israel is no more than a move across the street.

No Geneva Accord is needed, just move the settlements into Israel.

[oberliner]

14. How do you feel about land swaps?

From the proposal:

2. Borders and settlements:

The border marked on a detailed map is final and indisputable.

According to the accord and maps, the extended borders of the State of Israel will include Jewish settlements currently beyond the Green Line, Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and territories with significance for security surrounding Ben Gurion International Airport. These territories will be annexed to Israel on agreement and will become inseparable from it.

In return to the annexation of land beyond the 1967 border, Israel will hand over alternative land to the Palestinian, based on a 1:1 ratio. The lands annexed to the Palestinian State will be of equal quality and quantity.

http://www.geneva-accord.org/mainmenu/summary

That way, the large settlement blocs that are adjacent to Israel just become Israel (since, as you said, they are "Israeli fishtank" communities anyway). In exchange, an amount of land equal in quantity and quality gets annexed by the new Palestinian state.

Do you think that is a reasonable idea?

[Little Tich]

15. Maybe, once it was possible with a swap,

but I don't think so. All the settlements are built in the wrong place, and they're all purposely built on ground that dominates the area and makes it impossible for Palestinian development nearby. They are in a way built like Norman forts in Britain that were built on hilltops to control the area and pacify the people living nearby.

Unfortunately, any reasonable swaps on the Palestinian side wouldn't include areas where the settlements are. And if there are no settlements that can be swapped, what's the point of a swap then?

So basically, the way I see it, Israel has to chose between the keeping the settlements and implementing the one-state solution, or giving them up and try for the two-state solution.

[oberliner]

16. Have you looked at the maps on that link?

Here is a pretty reasonable overview map with those proposed swaps:

http://www.geneva-accord.org/mainmenu/geneva-initiativeisrael-palestine-permanent-borders

There are also more detailed maps that focus on those specific border areas.

[Little Tich]

19. I have basically three objections.

The land in Palestine that is suggested in the swaps are needed for Palestine’s growth. For example, any growth in EJ is impossible because of settlements strategically placed in a ring around EJ. A swap with land far away doesn't improve the development of EJ. The same goes for most of the other land inside Palestine.

The second objection is that much of the land in Israel that would be swapped for land in Palestine seems to be of substantially lower value. I'm not sure if you know much about the geography of Israel, but these areas in the south are mostly desert and of no value for Palestine. It's probably better if Israel took the settlements and moved them to these areas, as I doubt that Palestine has the means to make use of them. I'm quite sure it's possible to move East Talpiyot, Givat Ze'ev, Ramot Allon, Pisgat Ze'ev, Ma'ale Adumim, Gilo etc to the lush hills of the Marsam area. After all, the makers of the Geneva Accord has deemed the areas to be of equal value.

Thirdly, I have an objection against not the swaps per se, but rather the whole Geneva Accord. There are no maps of which settlements that are to be removed at all. It's as if they don't exist. This oversight must be intentional subterfuge. Often maps are used to distort things by omission, like maps of Palestine w/o Israel. I suspect these missing settlements will be thrown in later, and Palestine will receive more sand in compensation.

In essence, I consider the Geneva Iniative to be an Israeli shopping list and a scam to sucker Palestine of land it needs.

[oberliner]

20. "There are no maps of which settlements that are to be removed at all."

Intentional subterfuge? This is a plan that was drafted in cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis.

All the details on the settlements are included at the link:

Settlements to be annexed to Israel under the Geneva Initiative model

Settlements to be evacuated under the Geneva Initiative model

http://www.geneva-accord.org/mainmenu/settlements

The land being swapped is not "mostly desert and of no value for Palestine" - what are you basing this on?

[Little Tich]

21. I missed the list.

And I sort of just assumed that land that Israel has no use for was desert.

Again, there is no map. And there’s something fishy with that list, Hebron ( חֶבְרוֹן ) is not listed. Have the settlers moved out of Hebron already?

I might seem stingy when it comes to the maps, but the whole site is opaque, and if there was no problem with the swaps, there should be no problem putting up good maps. Also there is no explanation for the swaps, and why the areas in Israel are good enough for the Palestinians, when obviously Israel has no use for them.

The problem is that the settlement blocs are in the wrong place, especially around Jerusalem, they just have to go. I still think that they can be moved to the areas in Israel that were proposed for the swap. These areas are not desert, just deserted, and it would solve the whole problem with the settlements.

Let’s just pretend that there were no settlements, and Israel asked a newly created Palestinian state, if there was a chance for a swap, where Israel would get the areas where the EJ settlements are. Palestine would just have to say no, because these areas are absolutely necessary for the Palestinian capital, because these exact areas are where the Palestinian capital will expand. Without these areas, a Palestinian capital wouldn’t be viable.

Even if Israel offered Haifa and environs to Palestine for the areas in EJ, Palestine would have to say no, because the swap would entail that there wouldn’t be a functional capital in EJ.

The main question about the proposed land swaps remains: What’s in it for the Palestinians? What would they ever gain by a land swap?

[Ken Burch]

17. That's what I've been doing the whole time.

It's the other pro-Israeli posters who are being unrealistic in demanding that the occupation go on indefinitely, even though they know that that can only make the situation worse.

[Little Tich]

8. I can’t find the video anywhere.

This doesn’t mean that event didn’t take place, but if I can’t see the purported racial discrimination with my own eyes, I’m not just going to assume it happened exactly in the way described by Haaretz.