Yes, it is apartheid

[subsuelo]

The anchorwoman was clearly shocked: I don't have time now to respond to what you have said, she told the former U.S. president, allowing Jimmy Carter to make a narrow escape from her clutches. Then she added that she did not want to imagine what would happen to him if he bumped into her colleague from the security affairs desk in Channel 2's dark alley. And the pundit sitting there, sunk in deep thought as always, nodded his heavy head, confirming: He's lucky, the bastard, that we didn't gang up on him and cut him to shreds.

That's how it is here: The rulers set the tone, and the media begins to gripe: Not only did Carter's mission not help, it did damage. He alone was the reason Gilad Shalit was not ransomed out of captivity during the holiday. That's what happens when an enemy of the human race, the twin of the Twin Towers' bin Laden, sticks his nose where it does not belong.

Let's let old Carter be, so he may let sleeping warriors lie; he will not be back. The contents of his words, however, should not be ignored. "Apartheid," he said, "apartheid" - a dark, scary word coined by Afrikaners and meaning segregation, racial segregation.

What does he want from us, that evil man: What do we have to do with apartheid? Does a separation fence constitute separation? Do separate roads for Jewish settlers and Palestinians really separate? Are Palestinian enclaves between Jewish settlements Bantustans?

...It is entirely clear why the word apartheid terrifies us so. What should frighten us, however, is not the description of reality, but reality itself. Even Ehud Olmert has understood at last that continuing the present situation is the end of the Jewish democratic state, as he recently said.

The Palestinians are unfortunate because they have not produced a Nelson Mandela; the Israelis are unfortunate because they have not produced an F.W. de Klerk.

Haaretz - read more

[The Call Up]

1. It's definitely apartheid - to any unbiased observer

[Boojatta]

9. Does Lebanon have apartheid...

or civil war?

[Shaktimaan]

20. Excellent question!

Look at the institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon. Three or more generations of people forced to live in camps within Lebanon's borders yet not eligible for citizenship, no access to state healthcare or education, restrictions against them working in most job fields, restricted from buying land. Compared to Israel's laws in the OPT Lebanon's are truly hellish.

Similar situations exist for Palestinians living in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and so on. Kuwait and I believe Saudi Arabia have already expelled their Palestinian populations and Iraq has already expelled a great deal of theirs.

And restrictions against non-Muslims exist in just about every Arab country across the middle east. Some countries don't even allow Jews, while most just have a special dhimmi status for them, in other words... officially designated second class citizens. Even in Palestine, where the PA has limited autonomy they have instituted a law forbidding the sale of real estate to Jews which carries a sentence of death for those convicted. And let's not forget the legal restrictions against women that exist in just about every nation in the ME except Israel.

So, are all of these Apartheid countries?

[Vegasaurus]

21. Every Arab country treats the Palestinians WAY worse than Israel

yet they are never accused of "apartheid", or "racism", or discrimination.

The Arab countries will not allow the Palestinians citizenship, have kicked them out, or leave them in horrific refugee camps.

I am waiting for anyone to call the Arab countries to task for their horrible treatment of the Palestinians.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

2. Many South African observers say it's WORSE than apartheid. nt

[Vegasaurus]

3. Bullshit. nt

[oberliner]

4. The solution to the problem is in the creation of an independent Palestinian state

Compromise will be the key.

[Vegasaurus]

5. But in order to have a Palestinian state

there has to be willingness on the Palestinian side, for that to happen. There has to be the will and desire.

Hamas's views, as well as those of the imans and religious persons, seems to contradict the desire for a peaceful state next to Israel.

So, the violence continues.

[azurnoir]

7. Orwellianism n/t

[madeline_con]

8. And reciprocation on Israel's side, also. n/t

[number6]

6. Yes, it is apartheid

;)

[Shaktimaan]

10. The Nazis Also Ate Breakfast (Pt. 1)

Reposted from the article's talkback

Title: The Nazis Also Ate Breakfast (Pt. 1)
Name: JP
City: NYC State: USA

Like all of you, the Nazis also ate breakfast. Does that make all of you just like the Nazis? No. Merely having details in common with something else does not make you just like that something else. Would you be acting just like the Nazis if you didn`t eat breakfast, but engaged in genocide? Yes, you would be. The critical thing about who the Nazis were and modern comparisons is the fact of the Final Solution, genocide.

Under apartheid people were segregated for racial reasons, so that the minority white gov`t could maintain control over the majority black population. That is the critical thing about what apartheid was. That is not, however, what underlies the roadblocks, separate roads or the security barrier.

What underlies such things is the need to prevent terrorist attacks. How do we know this? Because none of those things existed before the intifada and the terrorist attacks that accompanied it.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

12. Nazi references are illegal on this site.

And Palestinian were segregated for cultural and religious reasons.

same difference.

[Shaktimaan]

16. No they are not.

Care to show me that rule?

And Palestinian were segregated for cultural and religious reasons.

Wow, you truly believe that, don't you? Care to show me an instance of Israel taking any action whatsoever against any Palestinians that was not a result of anti-Jewish terrorism?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

18. Yes, indeed it is illegal.

QUOTING FROM THE GUIDELINES ABOVE:

Do not compare Middle East regional leaders and parties to Hitler or the Nazis. Use of these terms is considered inflammatory and should be avoided.

Shakti, what do you call Plan Dalet? For crying out loud, have the cajones to admit that the zionist dream is predicatd on the massive removal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land.

[Shaktimaan]

19. I am aware of that rule.

But I didn't break it. My post said nothing even remotely close to that. (It's not even my post actually, it's from the OP's talkback.)

The post made the point that having certain tertiary traits in common with something else doesn't necessarily mean that there's a significant similarity. Just as both myself and the nazis ate breakfast doesn't mean that I'm like the nazis, breakfast was not the defining trait of the nazis. Just as Israel and South African Apartheid share certain similarities, since they are not the ones that defined Apartheid or made it so despicable, it is dishonest to say that Israel practices Apartheid.

I call Plan Dalet a military strategy drawn up in the event that circumstances demanded its implementation. Plan D wasn't put into action until after Jerusalem was entirely cut off and the siege could not be broken any other way, about halfway into the civil war. As for the Zionist dream being predicated on massive ethnic cleansing the truth is that it was debated on by all players, Jewish Arab and English all. And even early proponents of transfer like Jabotinsky didn't propose full compulsory transfer.

There's a big difference between mutual transfer and expulsion, and your assertion that the Zionists had always planned expulsion and would have enacted it anyway isn't very well supported. The fact of the matter is that the civil war was begun by the Palestinians; it's outcome resulted from their actions. The actual number of people violently expelled was fairly low, the Haganah was not responsible for the vast majority of Palestinians who left. It was a war and war always results in fleeing refugees.

Had there been no war and the expulsions were truly inevitable then it would be a different story. But that isn't the case and you really can't build any argument on speculation. Whether or not transfer was necessary to Zionism is immaterial. The Palestinians gave them no other choice, it was their actions which made expulsion inevitable. The truth of the matter is that your anger doesn't result from the fact that people were expelled. More Jews were expelled far more completely across the ME than anything that occurred in Palestine. And unlike Palestine, there was no cause for it, their Jews posed no threat, they did not begin a civil war. In the end, the Palestinians and Arab states forced a compulsory population transfer. What the Zionists might have done otherwise is irrelevant in the face of what the Arabs themselves actually did.

[Vegasaurus]

22. They started all the wars

and then cry because they lost.

Things could have been so much different for them, but they have chosen 60 years of misery, as opposed to having an independent and prosperous state.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

23. Shakti, pretending Zionism isn't exclusivist by nature is just plain silly. nt

[Shaktimaan]

26. No more so than any other examples of ethnic nationalism. np

[ProgressiveMuslim]

27. It's the forcing 100s of 1000s from their land, and destroying their villages

in order to ensure that exclusivity that's the problem.

[Shaktimaan]

28. When did that happen?

My understanding of history puts the number of Arabs expelled in the tens of thousands. The rest left on their own. By any measure, the Arabs killed more Jews in Mandate Palestine than vice versa, and did so unopposed for quite some time before the Yishuv got themselves organized and began to defend themselves. If more Arabs left when the war began it was only because the Jews had nowhere to go.

Israel just didn't let them back in after the war was over. Was that to ensure exclusivity? Or was some degree of exclusivity deemed necessary after the Palestinians made it clear that any hopes of peaceful co-existence was a pipe dream? In other words, would those folks have lost their homes if the Palestinians hadn't started a war, massacred native Jews in Gaza and Hebron, then drove the rest from their homes and refused every attempt at negotiating peace offered to them? Would it have happened if the Palestinian's leaders hadn't actually allied themselves with Hitler in order to rid Palestine of Jews?

Here's the answer... in 1948, how many Druze were expelled from Israel?

[Shaktimaan]

11. The Nazis Also Ate Breakfast (Pt. 2)

Reposted from the article's talkback

Title: The Nazis Also Ate Breakfast (Pt. 2)
Name: JP
City: NYC State: USA

In the territories, there were no Israeli-only (and there are no Jew-only) roads before the campaign of shooting attacks on motorists, and there wasn`t a system of checkpoints before the suicide bombing campaign. If there were no terrorism, such things would not exist today.

If it were apartheid, there wouldn`t be places in Israel, like in Haifa, where Jews and Arabs live side-by-side, Arabs wouldn`t be allowed to serve in the Kenesset as they do, and wouldn`t have a member in the cabinet, as they have.

Use of the term "apartheid" is nothing more than rhetorical slight of hand meant to present one thing as something else. Apartheid was bad because it was a thing of racist subjugation.

The security barrier is not about that, the separate roads are not about that, and the checkpoints are not about that. They are about security, not subjugation. If it were the other way around, the policies would have exited before the terrorism, not been put in place to address the terrorism.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

13. Israel's occupation, characterized by murder, land theft, mass jailing, humiliation, exploitation

etc FAR predates the terrorism of the 90's.

Are you alleging that Israel's tyranny is a punishment?

[hack89]

14. Self protection

there are far fewer suicide bombings in Israel. Israelis probably see this as a good thing.

[Vegasaurus]

15. Not probably, but definitely

The fact that Palestinians are less comfortable is really not Israel's concern.

A nation, first and foremost, has the best interests, health and safety of its own citizens as its first order of business.

The fact is that the separation fence and checkpoints have prevented suicide bombers from coming into Israel and blowing up cafes and buses.

It has made Israel safer, and the lives of the Palestinians more difficult.

But before suicide bombing was celebrated as a national goal, Palestinians did not have walls or checkpoints.

They brought those on themselves.

And it is the innocents who suffer.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

24. Utter nonsense. nt

[Vegasaurus]

25. Shakti speaks the truth

There are no honest rebuttals, just "utter nonsense" because no one can deny what he says is true.

Start with point one.

Try to refute that with facts, not emotion.