And the Winner is Israeli Apartheid
By: Toufic Barakeh
David Rubinger, now aged 83, is an Israeli photojournalist. His camera continuously focused on Israeli events and only briefly was put aside for a gun during 1948war. Looking back after 60 years of theU.N unfortunate announcement to set up Israel as a state, he recalls a Hebrew poet writing that to be normal, a Jewish state needed “thieves and whores” like everywhere else. “Well, we have our thieves and whores,” says Rubinger, “but our politicians have made us fearful. They brought the ghetto mentality, the idea that every body’s trying to kill us. Ben-Gurion and other founders wanted to get away from that. They wanted Israelis to be normal (Time May 5, 2008).
Israelis have voted another general election dominated, yet again, by security concerns after Israel's 22-day war on Gaza. They started the deadly war, seizing the opportunity of a transition period in the US and tolerated by the outgoing president The Palestinians, as usual on the eve of each Israeli election, paid a heavy toll of the destruction of their buildings, homes and infrastructure. But the cost in human life resulted in severe pain and immeasurable sense of loss: 1,330 dead and 5,450 wounded. Half the victims are civilians. “Among the dead were 437 children under 16, 110 women, 123 elderly men, 14 medics and four journalists, according to Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza medical services”. This was happening while the world is watching the show on live TV!
"What goes around comes around". Their politicians motivated by personal gains planted the theory of fear and isolation. The voters voted accordingly. Hence anti Arab extremist Israel Beitunu’s Avigdor Leiberman finished third and became their king maker. Time’s Joe Klein, celebrated columnist close to President Barack Obama, wrote that the election has strengthened anti Arab forces who are isolating the country from the world and “Among other things, Lieberman had suggested that Israel should fight Hamas as "the U.S. did with the Japanese" — which some people saw as raising the remarkable spectre of innocent Israeli Arabs interned in concentration camps.”Lieberman has created a classic European anti-immigrant party," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. "Only his supporters are the immigrants, and their targets are people who have been on this land forever."
Labour’s Ehud Barak who had planned and executed the war against Gaza was a main loser because, in the voters’ opinion, did not kill enough Palestinians and ended the war prematurely. Consequently none of the winners will be mandated to enter with any meaningful peace negotiations with the Arabs.
Israel did not fail to establish itself as a military power in the region. From now and then it would find itself an immediate enemy like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Gaza’s Hamas. This is not it. Both parties are resistant movements against its invasion of their territories. Military might, will not bring Israel any security. The Arab governments by being complacent and declaring one sided peace-of-the-weak, are giving the Israelis enough rope to hang themselves, by continuing in neither all out war nor true peace and constant engagement in conflicts of the kind it did in Lebanon and Gaza. Where next?! This only humiliated and ended the mythical belief in the strength of their legendary army.
That is not it. Israel real worry is to control the danger within. Instead of accepting the one state solution, they continue to worry about the shift in demographics: Jews v Arabs. According to Haaretz Israel's population stands at “7.1 million, of which 76 percent is Jewish and 20 percent Arab” Include Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, The Arabs may have a small majority. Israeli’s do not stop worrying that the Arabs higher birth-rate will widen the gap quickly. This immoral racist mentality is “economically stupid and politically unsustainable” to quote from Philippe Legrain’s book “Immigrants Your Country needs them”. It is worth noting here that their targets are not immigrants but “are people who have been on this land, Palestine, forever”. This Leiberman does not make a secret of his wish to get rid of them one way or another. Imagine if the same thinking prevailed in the US; considering that the United States as an example “will have more diverse population, whites outnumbered by 2042”? What would President Barack Obama make out of such cold inhuman calculations?
Remember South Africa’s apartheid?
Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians can be easily likened to a system of apartheid, similar to SouthAfrica’s treatment of non-whites during the apartheid era. This treatment can be easily traced in a system of control of inequities in infrastructure, legal rights and access to land and resources between Palestinians and Israeli residents in what is known as the occupied territories (the territories captured by Israel from Egypt, Jordan and Syria during the 6-day war of 1967, consisting of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights). This likeness to apartheid include the second class treatment of Arab Citizens of Israel compared to the special status that Israel accords to Jews without reference to Palestinians.
This article opened by a question: .would Israel ever becomes a normal state?
Never!
