Israeli-style apartheid and oppression must be challenged
Greg Barns says the killing of Palestinian protesters is just the latest injustice from racist Israel
IT is a measure of the insidious influence Israel has on Australian society that when approached recently to work with a group advocating for Palestinians, an academic in an Australian university declined, citing the need to maintain “balance”.
If that academic had been asked to support advocacy for black South Africans when the apartheid regime ran that nation, he would not have hesitated to do the right thing because it was the case that Australia as a society resolutely opposed the odious white regime that excluded all non-whites from participating fully in society for generations.
So how is it the universities, media and political class of Australia fear offending, and even actively support, a nation that is running its own form of apartheid, and which in recent weeks and days has used grossly disproportionate force against Palestinians who have been demonstrating on the Gaza Strip? Where is our concern for Palestinians getting a “fair go”?
Over the past few weeks Palestinians have been protesting on the impoverished Gaza Strip about the expropriation of their lands by Israel. Some protesters have used homemade rockets, burning tyres and other primitive weapons as they stepped into the no man’s land on the border. The vast majority of protesters have been peaceful. But Israel has used lethal force and killed about 30, and wounded over 1000. Images of protesters, unarmed, being shot in the back, and the killing of a journalist wearing clearly marked clothing saying “Press” have been seen around the globe. Even the pro-Israel New York Times in its editorial of April 11 observed, “Israel has a right to defend its border, but in the face of unarmed civilians it could do so with nonlethal tactics common to law enforcement, such as the use of high-powered fire hoses.”
The disproportionate use of force has been condemned by United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Liz Throssell. Ms Throssell’s statement noted “indications that the individuals killed or wounded were unarmed or did not pose a serious threat to well-protected security forces — and in some cases were actually running away from the fence.”
Naturally, holding Israel accountable for its inhumanity through a UN inquiry has been blocked by the US, and pathetic Little Washington, aka Canberra, has not said boo.
Israel is a deeply flawed society, led by a thug in Benjamin Netanyahu. Palestinians are second-class citizens because the reality is Israel is an apartheid state.
Last year in a report prepared for a UN agency, two of the world’s leading scholars on Israel and humans rights, Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley concluded that Israel practises apartheid against Palestinians.
In Israel there are 1.7 million Palestinians, 20 per cent of the overall population. But as Professor Falk says, while they “are allowed to form political parties and vote in elections”, this group “is prohibited by law from challenging the proclaimed
Jewish character of the state and is subject to a wide range of discriminatory nationality laws as well as administrative practices that severely restrict their rights, with effects on land acquisition, property, immigration, family reunification, and marital freedom.”
Australians should be deeply concerned that the response from Israel and its supporters like the US was to vilify professors Falk and Tilley, and to harass the UN to remove the report from its website. This is a typical tactics of the apartheid state that is Israel.
But at least Israel is a democracy, say its craven supporters. Really? Not if you are a Palestinian. And in any event what the next generation of Israeli politicians believe in is the domination of Palestinians and whatever violence is needed to ensure this takes place. Glenn Greenwald, the founder of the excellent independent media site The Intercept, said last week that the “younger generation of Israeli leaders think that Netanyahu is too moderate, that he’s too centrist, that he’s too soft on the Palestinians. They don’t believe in a Palestinian state. They don’t pretend to support the twostate solution. They want to dominate that land forever. They believe they’re religiously entitled to it. They want to — basically, they believe in apartheid, a policy of apartheid, forever suppressing what is soon to be the majority, the Palestinians, ruled by a minority of Israelis, using whatever war crimes and slaughter and murder they need to in order to suppress and intimidate that population,” Greenwald said in an interview.
Australians were happy to boycott South African sporting tours, products and cultural links until that nation released Nelson Mandela in 1990. So let’s get serious about pressuring Israel. The Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions movement is a brave global effort to force Israel into complying with international law and stop oppressing the Palestinian people.
Naturally, the Israel lobby labels its supporters antiSemitic. But if you care about “a fair go”, then join it. Greg Barns is a human rights lawyer who has advised state and federal Liberal governments.