"A Day in the Life of Abed Salama": 5-Year-Old's Death Sheds Light on Life Under Israeli Apartheid

[Uncle Joe]

We spend the hour with Nathan Thrall and Abed Salama, the author and subject of a remarkable new book detailing the many bureaucratic barriers and indignities that make the lives of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation even more difficult. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy focuses on the 2012 death of Salama's son, 5-year-old Milad, who was killed in a fiery bus crash during a school field trip to a theme park. What followed was a desperate daylong search by Salama and his family to locate Milad's body across different cities and hospitals, encountering numerous barriers due to the Israeli occupation system, like different ID cards giving varying levels of access through military checkpoints, and lack of help from any Israeli authorities. "This awful event allowed me, in telling the story, to describe the entire elaborate system of segregation and subjugation and apartheid in which all of these people live," says Thrall, who first wrote about the tragedy in a 2021 essay for The New York Review of Books . Salama says his main motivation in participating with Thrall was to keep Milad's memory alive. “When I start to talk about him, I feel that his spirit is behind me, around me,” he says. “I hope if anyone from the American government hears me … we want only justice. This is what we want as Palestinians.”

[Magoo48]

1. I've always found it somewhat incongruous that a nation which "freed the slaves"

finds its best friend in the Middle East in an oppressive, apartheid government.

I know that some Jews have always been uncomfortable with the hardline State view, while others fully support the heavy hand and support strengthening its grip.

I don’t like that we pour billions of dollars in aid and weapons into such a government.

Save your breath before you call me antisemitic, I am not. But I am fairly strongly opposed to organized religion in general.

[Beastly Boy]

3. Just for reference,

Israel, even under its current government, is the least oppressive, most progressive, least apartheid (whatever creative definition for the term you wish to use for it) state in the Middle East.

If the US foreign aid is to be governed by your standards, Israel should be the last Middle Eastern state to lose it. Feel free to suggest a better friend for the US in the Middle East.

Having said this, the above post has nothing to do with the OP, except as an opportunity to use the term "apartheid" as an insult rather than a fitting description.

[Magoo48]

4. Well ok then, that settles that.

[redqueen]

7. Just for reference

https://apnews.com/article/israel-apartheid-palestinians-occupation-c8137c9e7f33c2cba7b0b5ac7fa8d115

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/19/israel-apartheid-state-south-africa-netanyahu

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/11/israel-palestine-apartheid-israel-scholars/

[Chernevog]

10. Not gonna bother

But israel is not even remotely an apartheid government...
The palestinian ideology is an apartheid ideology

Any country that has had pabustinian members on the israeli supreme court cannot even be remotely described this way

[Beastly Boy]

2. Things like this happen regularly in neiboughring Syria and Lebanon

Every warring faction has its own bureaucracy, its own IDs, its own access regime, no offers of help for passage throughout a particular swat of land one has to navigate, adding to countless tragedies occurring within the official borders of these states that are left unreported.

Does Democracy Now ever accuse these states of apartheid on this basis? The idea would seem ridiculous. Yet, it is not ridiculous when it comes to Israel, and Israel alone.

I know, I know, I shouldn't compare the democratic state of Israel with those other countries. Well, I should.

I am not comparing the autocratic Syria or dysfunctional Lebanon to Israel. Nor am I excusing Israel's occupation of the West Bank. I am comparing the unabashedly one-sided, prejudicial and borderline antisemitic coverage of Israel in the media of the radical left. In this particular case, my beef is not with any of these countries. It is with Democracy Now.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Aren't Palestinians Semites?

[Beastly Boy]

6. You made me look through the whole thing, Uncle!

And listen intently. Not that I mind.

Not a single mention of "Syrian apartheid". No mention of "elaborate system of segregation and subjugation" at the hands of the "Syrian regime". No attempts to blame a tragic accident and its consequences on the "Syrian regime".

Mr. Chomsky is careful to call it the Asad regime. He making my point loud and clear.

[sabbat hunter]

8. Oh not

with the "Palestinians are Semites so they cannot possibly be Anti-Semitic. Everyone with half a brain knows that Anti-Semite means anti-Jewish.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Why is abusing Palestinians not considered anti-Semitic?

The same hatred filled racist based, evil dynamic is at work just the same.

It's not logical or moral.