Stephen LENDMAN
From inception, democracy in Israel was pure fantasy. Now rights for Jews alone is official with Knesset enactment of apartheid rule over Palestinian citizens.
The new Basic Law, the equivalent of US constitutional law, way exceeds contentiousness.
It’s the Jewish state’s version of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws. Israel is to Palestinians what Hitler’s regime was to Jews – in both countries treated like subhumans, forced to endure virtually every type indignity, degradation and crime against humanity.
Palestinians and Israeli Arab citizens are discriminated against in virtually all aspects of their lives – their fundamental freedoms denied, their personal safety jeopardized by what the late Edward Said called “refined (Israeli) viciousness.”
Ahead of enactment of Israel’s Nation-State law, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said the following:
The Basic Law “falls within the bounds of absolute prohibitions under international law and is therefore illegitimate as a colonial law with characteristics of apartheid.”
Last Sunday, Adalah’s general director Hassan Jabareen said:
“The Nation-State Basic Law is illegitimate, as it establishes a colonial regime with distinct apartheid characteristics in that it seeks to maintain a regime in which one ethnic-national group controls an indigenous-national group living in the same territory while advancing ethnic superiority by promoting racist policies in the most basic aspects of life.”
Adalah attorney Sawsan Zaher earlier explained that the Nation-State Law conveys to Israeli Arab citizens that “Jewish rights are superior” to theirs.
Here’s a link to Adalah’s July 16, 2018 position paper on Israel’s Nation-State Law.
Separately, Adalah said “(n)o country in the world today is defined as a democratic state where the constitutional identity is determined by ethnic affiliation that overrides the principle of equal citizenship.”
Enacting the measure illegitimately enshrines Jewish supremacy over equal rights for Arab citizens into Israeli Basic Law – what apartheid is all about.
It exceed the worst of South Africa’s version – including murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, arbitrary arrests, illegal imprisonments, denial of the right to life and liberty, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and other abusive acts imposed by Jews on Arabs.
Former UN Special Human Rights Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, Richard Falk, earlier said “Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid in relation to the Palestine people should be taken with the utmost seriousness by all those who affirm human solidarity and care about making visible the long ordeal of a suffering and vulnerable people.”
Writing for the Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid, Karine MacAllister earlier said:
It “involves or necessitates the denial of the other; of their presence, rights and existence on the land and reconstruction of the past, namely that the land was empty before the advent of Zionist settlement, hence the movement’s slogan, (creating the myth about) ‘a land without people for a people without land,”
adding:
Zionism is “a sophisticated legal, social, economic and political regime of racial discrimination that has led to colonialism and apartheid as well as the dispossession and displacement of the Palestinian people.”
“Colonialism flourishes by separating indigenous people from their land and heritage.”
Article 7(1)(j) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court calls apartheid a crime, stating:
“For the purpose of this Statute, (a) ‘crime against humanity’ means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
(a) Murder;
(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
(i) Enforced disappearance of persons;
(j) The crime of apartheid;
(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”
From inception, Israel stands guilty of virtually all of the above abuses and other high crimes against Palestinians – yet remains unaccountable because the world community supports the Jewish state, doing nothing to hold it accountable, nothing supporting fundamental Palestinian rights.
Apartheid is racism on steroids, institutionalized in Israel – now illegally codified under its Basic Law, defying international law, declaring the country to be the exclusive “nation-state of the Jewish people (and their) historic homeland…they have an exclusive right to…”
On Thursday, the measure was enacted by a 62 – 55 vote – officially adopting apartheid rule as the law of land, ending the myth of democratic rule once and for all.
Joint (Arab) List chairman Ayman Odeh denounced the bill, saying it “declare(s) (Israel) does not want us here,” affirming “Jewish supremacy…tell(ing) us that we will always be second-class citizens.”
Netanyahu praised enactment of the apartheid law, calling it “a defining moment.”
Indeed so – revealing Israeli viciousness in the cold light of day, its discriminatory nature, its contempt for Palestinians rights, officially denying what’s affirmed under international laws, norms and standards.
